Inventory Arousal is an artists’ book by American artist and publisher James Hoff with writer, editor, and archivist Danny Snelson. The book reassembles a set of reference texts originally gathered during a live, transnational editorial performance. An associative lecture given by Hoff in Oslo, featuring hundreds of images and hours of artists’ video, was mirrored by Danny Snelson in Tokyo, via Skype, who simultaneously extracted and manipulated a massive body of previously compiled texts concerning key avant-garde figures, publications, works, and movements that Hoff discussed. These sources included artist interviews, book reviews, magazine articles, memoirs, stock lists and blog posts. Acting as a quasi-transcript of this joint performance, Inventory Arousal reveals an unpredictable narrative formed along the predictable contours of collective history.