The Self-Reliance Library is an autonomous reading and creating library. It is a collection of older books and reference materials that Temporary Services has found inspiring while doing our own projects and living our lives. The Self-Reliance Library contains recently published titles as well as out of print books we are just discovering. It includes a couple of our own publications as well. The collection is designed to provoke the reader, solve creative problems, or suggest imaginative directions for a range of creative practices.

Topics in the Self-Reliance Library include: visionary architecture, desperate or wildly imaginative mobility, miniature architecture and nomadic living, self-publishing and design, everyday repair solutions, designs for fantasy worlds and alternate realities, technologies used in prisons and other restrictive or impoverished settings, ecologically sound living, survivalism, weapon production for self defense or recreation, skill-sharing, and approaches ...

The Self-Reliance Library is an autonomous reading and creating library. It is a collection of older books and reference materials that Temporary Services has found inspiring while doing our own projects and living our lives. The Self-Reliance Library contains recently published titles as well as out of print books we are just discovering. It includes a couple of our own publications as well. The collection is designed to provoke the reader, solve creative problems, or suggest imaginative directions for a range of creative practices.

Topics in the Self-Reliance Library include: visionary architecture, desperate or wildly imaginative mobility, miniature architecture and nomadic living, self-publishing and design, everyday repair solutions, designs for fantasy worlds and alternate realities, technologies used in prisons and other restrictive or impoverished settings, ecologically sound living, survivalism, weapon production for self defense or recreation, skill-sharing, and approaches to living radically.

This booklet includes color reproductions of the covers of twenty-six of the books in the library, and short writings on all forty-nine titles.

Martino Gamper is the kind of product designer we all have been waiting for: Brimming with ideas, energy and humour, his designs are disarmingly irreverent and irresistibly fun, and unlike anything one will see in the puristic galleries of contemporary design. Crossing over from studying sculpture to completing an MA in product design at the prestigious Royal College of Art under Ron Arad, Gamper has had little time to worry over the theoretical do’s and don’t’s of his profession – instead, he has followed a simple rule of learning by doing, meaning: the more you do, the more you learn.

At a time where design is overly concerned with form and less so with function, Gamper is not all too bothered with either, but rather with how design might affect the everyday. Coming to attention in 2007 with his epic project ‘100 Chairs in 100 Days’, where he assembled discarded furniture and waste material into curious and charismatic new pieces, considering the history of materials ...

Martino Gamper is the kind of product designer we all have been waiting for: Brimming with ideas, energy and humour, his designs are disarmingly irreverent and irresistibly fun, and unlike anything one will see in the puristic galleries of contemporary design. Crossing over from studying sculpture to completing an MA in product design at the prestigious Royal College of Art under Ron Arad, Gamper has had little time to worry over the theoretical do’s and don’t’s of his profession – instead, he has followed a simple rule of learning by doing, meaning: the more you do, the more you learn.

At a time where design is overly concerned with form and less so with function, Gamper is not all too bothered with either, but rather with how design might affect the everyday. Coming to attention in 2007 with his epic project ‘100 Chairs in 100 Days’, where he assembled discarded furniture and waste material into curious and charismatic new pieces, considering the history of materials as well as the context of his work has become an important element of Gamper’s practice, which sits comfortably and playfully between the worlds of industrial design and fine art.

If anything, his work is driven by an insatiable curiosity and openness, which is also expressed by the frequent collaborations with friends from different fields. Martino Gamper treats his work as a means of communication and interaction, by frequently inviting visitors and passers-by on the street to join and engage, or by creating not only the furniture, but also improvising the 7 course-menus for his legendary Trattoria pop-up dinner evenings – elevating, as an inevitable and highly welcome side effect, design into a profoundly social activity.

With mono.kultur, Martino Gamper talked about his idea of fun, why a chair is the ultimate challenge and what design has in common with cooking.

Visually, the issue is bursting with references and ideas, reclaiming image material from left and right, while unveiling the structure of a book with three booklets of different sizes all lovingly assembled into one – and manually at that, which makes for some rough edges or rather what we like to call extra personality.

Interview by Emily King & Kai von Rabenau / Works by Martino Gamper

Michaël Borremans recently found a new way to kick off a productive day: One of his former assistants used to enjoy her morning coffee with a hint of vodka and some maple syrup, ‘just a tiny, tiny bit of vodka, like 1:10, and then some syrup to sweeten it’, and now the Belgian artist has also made it a habit to rely on the nameless drink’s subtle power to ‘open up your blood vessels’. Even so, his day’s work still amounts to no more than what he calls ‘low production’. Low it might seem – particularly to speculators who want to make easy money on the recent hype around Borremans’ haunting paintings, drawings, and films. But low he shouldn’t call it, as he knows all too well that he is very ‘self-censoring’ and will only let the best possible work, sometimes after multiple attempts and different versions, leave his combined home and workplace in Ghent. ‘Low production’ in his case simply means ‘high standards’.

These high standards have, over the last ...

Michaël Borremans recently found a new way to kick off a productive day: One of his former assistants used to enjoy her morning coffee with a hint of vodka and some maple syrup, ‘just a tiny, tiny bit of vodka, like 1:10, and then some syrup to sweeten it’, and now the Belgian artist has also made it a habit to rely on the nameless drink’s subtle power to ‘open up your blood vessels’. Even so, his day’s work still amounts to no more than what he calls ‘low production’. Low it might seem – particularly to speculators who want to make easy money on the recent hype around Borremans’ haunting paintings, drawings, and films. But low he shouldn’t call it, as he knows all too well that he is very ‘self-censoring’ and will only let the best possible work, sometimes after multiple attempts and different versions, leave his combined home and workplace in Ghent. ‘Low production’ in his case simply means ‘high standards’.

These high standards have, over the last decade, attracted more and more people to his work; nowadays, they even come to his house, unannounced, trying to snatch up a piece of the pie. But Michaël Borremans is an artist who is extremely devoted and loyal – to his galleries, to his ideas he calls ‘ghosts’, to his themes, to his entire vision and approach. He’s a man who needs his pencil like he needs a smoke, who takes to drawing when others write in their diaries, and who treats his brushes and canvasses like a lover, going back and forth between moments of intense attraction and temporary loathing. For an artist who doesn’t believe in free will or individuality, he’s quite a personality.

However, success didn’t come overnight for Michaël Borremans, who was born in Geraardsbergen, one of the country’s oldest towns, in 1963. A graduate of the Sint-Lucas Hogeschool voor Wetenschap & Kunst in Ghent, he worked as a teacher at Ghent’s Stedelijk Secundair Kunstinstituut for a few years, and only decided to focus on his own artistic output when already in his thirties. Even before he had big solo exhibitions in New York (David Zwirner), Paris (La Maison Rouge), Stuttgart (Württembergischer Kunstverein), Tokyo (Gallery Koyanagi), Amsterdam (De Appel) or Antwerp (Zeno X Gallery), before the Queen of Belgium requested some of his work for the Royal Palace in Brussels, before novelists like Sven Hillenkamp (Fußabdrücke eines Fliegenden, 2012) or bands like dEUS (Vantage Point, 2008) asked to have their works illustrated with his signature still lifes and figurative close-ups, Borremans was never afraid to see things through and to work hard – nor to be hard, on himself and his own work.

Whereas in his small-scale drawings, his tekeningen, he often creates larger scenarios, clinical and uncanny situations charged with deformity, unequal power relations and oppression, his paintings and more recent minimalist film works mostly focus on human beings devoid of individuality, free will or clear missions in life. The futile tasks carried out by the generic, universal types he initially found and ‘borrowed’ from old magazines and other media have by now made way for intricately planned and highly detailed scenarios the trained photographer shoots first with actual models and then translates into the unique figurative language he employs as a painter. Charged with the same surreal, unsettling and almost ‘Lynchian’ quality (Borremans’ Trickland is especially reminiscent of Benjamin Horne’s futile endeavors), his source materials, whether found or not, are the starting point for an open-ended dialogue with his artistic forbears, a reflection on the various traditions of his media, and an ongoing quest to find new ways to create illusions. Forcing the viewer to deal with philosophical questions about rituals of interpretation and meaning, the more layers and dimensions he adds, the more things become unclear, and painfully so. It is this lack of clarity, this perpetual state of suspense that makes his work endlessly captivating.

Michaël Borremans is an artist who is extremely focused, concentrated and refreshingly serious about what he does, with a very consistent vision that’s been apparent throughout all of his work from the mid-90s until today. Self-taught – although he calls Baroque portrait master Diego Velázquez his teacher – he keeps returning to the human figure and the sometimes unbearable weight attached to human existence: the fears, the flaws, the futility, the terror, the turmoil, and the tragedy. Luckily, all of this weight is ultimately counterbalanced by a heavy, bittersweet chuckle and a thick puff of smoke – and when it lifts, this cloud of smoke, Borremans is already gone, off to create the next set of illusions, in his free hand, ideally, a glass of champagne.

The topic of this notebook by Jill Bennett is life in the anthropocene, the present eon, which is characterized by human activities. Derived from geology, the term anthropocene circumscribes an era that began with the industrialization and spans a vanishingly brief time of 250 years, in which, however, a paradigm change has occurred. Its implications have generated some resistance, uttered, for example, when denying that climate change, a decisive trait of the anthropocene, is a man-made phenomenon. The comprehensive change in our understanding of the world has had effects on how we eat, shop, and move around, but it also offers the potential for inventions in the socio-ecological systems: when ecological thinking begins to influence our ways of working, it may eventually lead to a transdisciplinary revolution. Bennett names examples of transdisciplinary processes from the realm of art, such as Amy Balkin’s work Public Smog (2004–ongoing), which incorporates the earth’s atmosphere. ...

The topic of this notebook by Jill Bennett is life in the anthropocene, the present eon, which is characterized by human activities. Derived from geology, the term anthropocene circumscribes an era that began with the industrialization and spans a vanishingly brief time of 250 years, in which, however, a paradigm change has occurred. Its implications have generated some resistance, uttered, for example, when denying that climate change, a decisive trait of the anthropocene, is a man-made phenomenon. The comprehensive change in our understanding of the world has had effects on how we eat, shop, and move around, but it also offers the potential for inventions in the socio-ecological systems: when ecological thinking begins to influence our ways of working, it may eventually lead to a transdisciplinary revolution. Bennett names examples of transdisciplinary processes from the realm of art, such as Amy Balkin’s work Public Smog (2004–ongoing), which incorporates the earth’s atmosphere.

Jill Bennett is a writer, researcher and cultural critic based at the National Institute for Experimental Arts, Sydney.

In times when the exchange with the world largely takes place on the Internet, the search engine Google primarily regulates the parameters and formats of this conversation. For the philosopher and media theoretician Boris Groys, Google thus takes on the traditional role of philosophy and religion. Philosophical precursors for the dissolution of different kinds of discourses, the emancipation of words from grammar and accordingly their equalizing, as Google produces it, span from Plato to Saussure’s structuralism to Derrida’s deconstruction. Another analogy is the twentieth-century avant-garde’s production of word clouds that are freed from their context, in particular the Conceptual art of the 1960s and ’70s. As a result of the radical freeing of words, Groys names “the struggle for a utopian ideal of the free flow of information—the free migration of liberated words through the totality of social space.”

Philosopher, art critic, and media theorist Boris Groys (*1947) ...

In times when the exchange with the world largely takes place on the Internet, the search engine Google primarily regulates the parameters and formats of this conversation. For the philosopher and media theoretician Boris Groys, Google thus takes on the traditional role of philosophy and religion. Philosophical precursors for the dissolution of different kinds of discourses, the emancipation of words from grammar and accordingly their equalizing, as Google produces it, span from Plato to Saussure’s structuralism to Derrida’s deconstruction. Another analogy is the twentieth-century avant-garde’s production of word clouds that are freed from their context, in particular the Conceptual art of the 1960s and ’70s. As a result of the radical freeing of words, Groys names “the struggle for a utopian ideal of the free flow of information—the free migration of liberated words through the totality of social space.”

Philosopher, art critic, and media theorist Boris Groys (*1947) is Global Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science at New York University

Writing notes is an essential component of academic life, a ritual that is performed with as many handwritings as there are individuals. In her essay, Pamela M. Lee addresses the phenomenon of illegibility within notes: of what use are notes if they cannot be deciphered at a later time? Lee develops her “semiotics of illegibility” with reference to the extensive archive of notes written by the prominent American art historian Meyer Schapiro. In Lee’s view, the illegibility of Schapiro’s script stands in especially stark contrast to the clarity of his texts. Incorporating psychoanalysis and literary criticism, Lee’s study draws from Schapiro’s own unique approaches to the theory of signs, and in particular from his canonical paper “On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs,” which can be traced back to notes, excerpts of which are reproduced in this publication.

Art historian and cultural critic Pamela M. Lee (*1967) is Professor ...

Writing notes is an essential component of academic life, a ritual that is performed with as many handwritings as there are individuals. In her essay, Pamela M. Lee addresses the phenomenon of illegibility within notes: of what use are notes if they cannot be deciphered at a later time? Lee develops her “semiotics of illegibility” with reference to the extensive archive of notes written by the prominent American art historian Meyer Schapiro. In Lee’s view, the illegibility of Schapiro’s script stands in especially stark contrast to the clarity of his texts. Incorporating psychoanalysis and literary criticism, Lee’s study draws from Schapiro’s own unique approaches to the theory of signs, and in particular from his canonical paper “On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs,” which can be traced back to notes, excerpts of which are reproduced in this publication.

Art historian and cultural critic Pamela M. Lee (*1967) is Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.

“Consider a fictional multiple integral equation that is a flawed trope and a serious joke in an effort to picture what an intersectional—or intra-actional—theory might look like in Terrapolis. Think of this formalism as the mathematics of sf. Sf is that potent material semiotic sign for the riches of speculative fabulation, speculative feminism, science fiction, science fact, science fantasy—and, I suggest, string figures.” In her text, Donna Haraway, author of the influential “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985), devises the formula for a possible world, Terrapolis, and places it in connection to string figures, which, as pictures of cosmological constellations and creation myths, constitute a popular cultural practice among the Navajo to this day.

Cultural theorist, biologist and feminist Donna Haraway (*1944) is Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a member of the Honorary Advisory Committee ...

“Consider a fictional multiple integral equation that is a flawed trope and a serious joke in an effort to picture what an intersectional—or intra-actional—theory might look like in Terrapolis. Think of this formalism as the mathematics of sf. Sf is that potent material semiotic sign for the riches of speculative fabulation, speculative feminism, science fiction, science fact, science fantasy—and, I suggest, string figures.” In her text, Donna Haraway, author of the influential “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985), devises the formula for a possible world, Terrapolis, and places it in connection to string figures, which, as pictures of cosmological constellations and creation myths, constitute a popular cultural practice among the Navajo to this day.

Cultural theorist, biologist and feminist Donna Haraway (*1944) is Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a member of the Honorary Advisory Committee of dOCUMENTA (13).

Introduction by Fernando García-Dory

In a lifetime of work with farmers around the world, George Chan, the father of integrated farming, has been searching for a formula that would transform “waste into wealth”. He brought together their ancient knowledge with new technologies and elaborated a theory based on circularity and sustainable recycling where farming can exist with zero input and zero emissions—the Integrated Farming and Waste Management System. For the so-called Dream Farms, a sustainable cycle was developed using material and energy in different stages, such as raising chickens and using their waste as extra nutrients for the plants, effecting an increase of crop and gain. Chan has been a pioneer of our modern take on non-pollution and bio-farming, but unfortunately his revolutionary model comes out of site-specific research and exchanges and thus remains for the most part unknown. This notebook brings together key ideas of this committed thinker in the form of drawings, ...

Introduction by Fernando García-Dory

In a lifetime of work with farmers around the world, George Chan, the father of integrated farming, has been searching for a formula that would transform “waste into wealth”. He brought together their ancient knowledge with new technologies and elaborated a theory based on circularity and sustainable recycling where farming can exist with zero input and zero emissions—the Integrated Farming and Waste Management System. For the so-called Dream Farms, a sustainable cycle was developed using material and energy in different stages, such as raising chickens and using their waste as extra nutrients for the plants, effecting an increase of crop and gain. Chan has been a pioneer of our modern take on non-pollution and bio-farming, but unfortunately his revolutionary model comes out of site-specific research and exchanges and thus remains for the most part unknown. This notebook brings together key ideas of this committed thinker in the form of drawings, diagrams, notes, and photographs, which are introduced by Fernando García-Dory, who has carefully compiled these papers in close exchange with Chan.

George Chan (*1923) is an environmental engineer.

Fernando García-Dory (*1978) is an artist and agro-ecologist living between Madrid, Berlin, and the northern Spanish mountains.

This notebook is a homage of the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist to the French author, poet, and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928–2011), who passed away this year. Glissant, one of the most influential figures of the French-speaking Caribbean and a pioneer of postcolonial thinking, called “attention to means of global exchange which do not homogenize culture but produce a difference from which new things can emerge”. Obrist encountered Glissant at the beginning of his curatorial path, following a recommendation by Alighiero Boetti, then through his books, and later in person. In the introduction, Obrist creates a multilayered portrait of the intellectual, laying out some of his key concepts: the creolization of the world, “archipelic thought,” and the museum as archipelago, as well as utopia. These ideas are expressed in a personal tone by Glissant in a selection of title pages of his books with drawings, notations and poetic dedications that are reproduced here in facsimile. ...

This notebook is a homage of the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist to the French author, poet, and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928–2011), who passed away this year. Glissant, one of the most influential figures of the French-speaking Caribbean and a pioneer of postcolonial thinking, called “attention to means of global exchange which do not homogenize culture but produce a difference from which new things can emerge”. Obrist encountered Glissant at the beginning of his curatorial path, following a recommendation by Alighiero Boetti, then through his books, and later in person. In the introduction, Obrist creates a multilayered portrait of the intellectual, laying out some of his key concepts: the creolization of the world, “archipelic thought,” and the museum as archipelago, as well as utopia. These ideas are expressed in a personal tone by Glissant in a selection of title pages of his books with drawings, notations and poetic dedications that are reproduced here in facsimile.

Édouard Glissant (1928–2011) was a French writer, poet, and philosopher.

Curator and critic Hans Ulrich Obrist (*1968) is Co-Director, Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, London.

“Toilet Paper”, a visual communication project that grew out of a collaboration between artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, is a next-generation magazine that combines commercial photography, twisted narratives and surreal imagery to create a series of powerful, ambiguous visual tableaux.

Maurizio Cattelan is once again challenging the rules of the contemporary cultural system that he himself belongs to, subverting its paradigms: this time, by poking fun at the world of slick magazines and stuffy, self-referential art critics. “Toilet Paper” fearlessly builds a bridge between commercial photography and fine art, relying on the camera of well-known Italian photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari to create an archive of images that seem to bring Cattelan’s dreams, fixations and nightmares to life.
In an interview with the Italian edition of Vogue, Pierpaolo Ferrari commented, “The magazine springs from a passion/obsession that Maurizio and I ...

“Toilet Paper”, a visual communication project that grew out of a collaboration between artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, is a next-generation magazine that combines commercial photography, twisted narratives and surreal imagery to create a series of powerful, ambiguous visual tableaux.

Maurizio Cattelan is once again challenging the rules of the contemporary cultural system that he himself belongs to, subverting its paradigms: this time, by poking fun at the world of slick magazines and stuffy, self-referential art critics. “Toilet Paper” fearlessly builds a bridge between commercial photography and fine art, relying on the camera of well-known Italian photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari to create an archive of images that seem to bring Cattelan’s dreams, fixations and nightmares to life.
In an interview with the Italian edition of Vogue, Pierpaolo Ferrari commented, “The magazine springs from a passion/obsession that Maurizio and I have in common. Each picture springs from an idea, even a simple one, and then becomes a complex orchestration of people who build tableaux vivants. This project is also a sort of mental outburst”.
TOILET PAPER

“Toilet Paper”, a visual communication project that grew out of a collaboration between artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, is a next-generation magazine that combines commercial photography, twisted narratives and surreal imagery to create a series of powerful, ambiguous visual tableaux.

Maurizio Cattelan is once again challenging the rules of the contemporary cultural system that he himself belongs to, subverting its paradigms: this time, by poking fun at the world of slick magazines and stuffy, self-referential art critics. “Toilet Paper” fearlessly builds a bridge between commercial photography and fine art, relying on the camera of well-known Italian photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari to create an archive of images that seem to bring Cattelan’s dreams, fixations and nightmares to life.
In an interview with the Italian edition of Vogue, Pierpaolo Ferrari commented, “The magazine springs from a passion/obsession that Maurizio and I have in common. ...

“Toilet Paper”, a visual communication project that grew out of a collaboration between artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, is a next-generation magazine that combines commercial photography, twisted narratives and surreal imagery to create a series of powerful, ambiguous visual tableaux.

Maurizio Cattelan is once again challenging the rules of the contemporary cultural system that he himself belongs to, subverting its paradigms: this time, by poking fun at the world of slick magazines and stuffy, self-referential art critics. “Toilet Paper” fearlessly builds a bridge between commercial photography and fine art, relying on the camera of well-known Italian photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari to create an archive of images that seem to bring Cattelan’s dreams, fixations and nightmares to life.
In an interview with the Italian edition of Vogue, Pierpaolo Ferrari commented, “The magazine springs from a passion/obsession that Maurizio and I have in common. Each picture springs from an idea, even a simple one, and then becomes a complex orchestration of people who build tableaux vivants. This project is also a sort of mental outburst”.
TOILET PAPER

“Toilet Paper”, a visual communication project that grew out of a collaboration between artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, is a next-generation magazine that combines commercial photography, twisted narratives and surreal imagery to create a series of powerful, ambiguous visual tableaux.

Maurizio Cattelan is once again challenging the rules of the contemporary cultural system that he himself belongs to, subverting its paradigms: this time, by poking fun at the world of slick magazines and stuffy, self-referential art critics. “Toilet Paper” fearlessly builds a bridge between commercial photography and fine art, relying on the camera of well-known Italian photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari to create an archive of images that seem to bring Cattelan’s dreams, fixations and nightmares to life.
In an interview with the Italian edition of Vogue, Pierpaolo Ferrari commented, “The magazine springs from a passion/obsession that Maurizio and I have in common. ...

“Toilet Paper”, a visual communication project that grew out of a collaboration between artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, is a next-generation magazine that combines commercial photography, twisted narratives and surreal imagery to create a series of powerful, ambiguous visual tableaux.

Maurizio Cattelan is once again challenging the rules of the contemporary cultural system that he himself belongs to, subverting its paradigms: this time, by poking fun at the world of slick magazines and stuffy, self-referential art critics. “Toilet Paper” fearlessly builds a bridge between commercial photography and fine art, relying on the camera of well-known Italian photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari to create an archive of images that seem to bring Cattelan’s dreams, fixations and nightmares to life.
In an interview with the Italian edition of Vogue, Pierpaolo Ferrari commented, “The magazine springs from a passion/obsession that Maurizio and I have in common. Each picture springs from an idea, even a simple one, and then becomes a complex orchestration of people who build tableaux vivants. This project is also a sort of mental outburst”.

“Toilet Paper”, a visual communication project that grew out of a collaboration between artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, is a next-generation magazine that combines commercial photography, twisted narratives and surreal imagery to create a series of powerful, ambiguous visual tableaux.

Maurizio Cattelan is once again challenging the rules of the contemporary cultural system that he himself belongs to, subverting its paradigms: this time, by poking fun at the world of slick magazines and stuffy, self-referential art critics. “Toilet Paper” fearlessly builds a bridge between commercial photography and fine art, relying on the camera of well-known Italian photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari to create an archive of images that seem to bring Cattelan’s dreams, fixations and nightmares to life.
In an interview with the Italian edition of Vogue, Pierpaolo Ferrari commented, “The magazine springs from a passion/obsession that Maurizio and I have in common. ...

“Toilet Paper”, a visual communication project that grew out of a collaboration between artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari, is a next-generation magazine that combines commercial photography, twisted narratives and surreal imagery to create a series of powerful, ambiguous visual tableaux.

Maurizio Cattelan is once again challenging the rules of the contemporary cultural system that he himself belongs to, subverting its paradigms: this time, by poking fun at the world of slick magazines and stuffy, self-referential art critics. “Toilet Paper” fearlessly builds a bridge between commercial photography and fine art, relying on the camera of well-known Italian photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari to create an archive of images that seem to bring Cattelan’s dreams, fixations and nightmares to life.
In an interview with the Italian edition of Vogue, Pierpaolo Ferrari commented, “The magazine springs from a passion/obsession that Maurizio and I have in common. Each picture springs from an idea, even a simple one, and then becomes a complex orchestration of people who build tableaux vivants. This project is also a sort of mental outburst”.
TOILET PAPER

This publication by Bill Wilson elaborates on each of the pages of “A Book about Death” by Ray Johnson.

Ray Johnson “A Book about Death”, 1963–1965

Ray Johnson’s (Detroit, 1927) early work consisted of intricately painted geometric abstractions influenced by Albers’ color theories, and he exhibited with the American Abstract Artists group, including Ad Reinhardt and Leon Polk Smith. Soon, however, he turned to complex collages combining images with ink and paint or other surface textures that reflected the atmosphere of Abstract Expressionism then still prevalent in New York. During the 1950’s, Johnson established the format and style he would continue to use throughout his life. Kindred in spirit to the work of Joseph Cornell, he called his small irregularly shaped collages “moticos”, an anagram for “osmotic” (from osmosis). Johnson’s works continued the Dada and Surrealist tradition of collage (including that of Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst) and pursued ...

This publication by Bill Wilson elaborates on each of the pages of “A Book about Death” by Ray Johnson.

Ray Johnson “A Book about Death”, 1963–1965

Ray Johnson’s (Detroit, 1927) early work consisted of intricately painted geometric abstractions influenced by Albers’ color theories, and he exhibited with the American Abstract Artists group, including Ad Reinhardt and Leon Polk Smith. Soon, however, he turned to complex collages combining images with ink and paint or other surface textures that reflected the atmosphere of Abstract Expressionism then still prevalent in New York. During the 1950’s, Johnson established the format and style he would continue to use throughout his life. Kindred in spirit to the work of Joseph Cornell, he called his small irregularly shaped collages “moticos”, an anagram for “osmotic” (from osmosis). Johnson’s works continued the Dada and Surrealist tradition of collage (including that of Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst) and pursued the provocation of paradoxical verbal and visual puns, absurd juxtapositions, word-play riddles and hidden references with a witty nihilistic sense of humor.

Johnson wrote poetic texts and letters and integrated language and a unique system of cryptic signs into his work. Considered by many the “father of Mail Art”, as early as 1953 Johnson began sending highly conceptual images/texts to friends, often encouraging the recipient to “add to” the work, or “please send to” someone else, or “return to Ray Johnson”. Forming the “New York Correspondence School” in 1962, Johnson established an enormous network of participants throughout the world – one which remains active even after his death, as is evident with Ray Johnson web sites on the Internet. Paralleling the idea of Allan Kaprow’s Happenings and of later Fluxus events, in the early 1960’s he began doing “Nothings” – informal performance art or non-art pieces which were continued over the years under the guise of NYCS meetings or lectures. Johnson was recognized as much for his performance-like persona as his collages and mailings.

In 1968, on the day Andy Warhol was shot, Johnson himself was mugged, an event which precipitated his move to Locust Valley, Long Island. Although he remained involved with the art scene through conversations and correspondences, he gradually withdrew from actively exhibiting. Johnson continued to make art, however, such as the master collages he worked on over a period of many years. He also continued to perform in his own circuitous ways, until apparent suicide on the night of Friday the 13th of January, 1995, when he was last seen leaping off the bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island doing the back stroke into oblivion, and act some consider to be his last “performance”.

Between 1963 and 1965, Ray Johnson printed thirteen pages of his Book about Death with the Pernet Printing Company, 120 Lexington Avenue at 28th Street. His title, which designated the thirteen unbound pages as a book, is A Book about Death, yet also A Boop about Death and A Boom about Death. Those thirteen photo-offset pages were re-printed in 1976 for a catalogue, Correspondence, North Carolina Museum of Art, Richard Craven, editor and curator. The Carolina pages were folded once from the bottom, hence are not quite like the pages Ray folded for envelopes.