We are living in a time of polarization. Cultural and educational institutions are confronted with the responsibility to provide tools and spaces for critical reflection, for engagement, and, more fundamentally, for meeting and recognizing each other in our differences. In this decolonial essay Rolando Vázquez introduces his critique which offers an option for thinking and doing beyond the dominant paradigms. It provides a critical analysis of modernity understood broadly as the western project of civilization, while it seeks to overcome the dominion of western epistemology and aesthetics and their embedded eurocentrism and anthropocentrism.

Vistas Of Modernity - Decolonial Aesthesis And The End Of The Contemporary

Arts & Photography

Rolando Vazquez

History & Criticism

Jap Sam Books

Named for Susan Sontag's legendary 1969 film, this book brings together current commentary on the controversial issues of cultural imperialism in the Dutch East Indies. In meaty texts and film excerpts by Raimond Chaves, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Hans Heijnen, Paulo Herkenhoff, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ossama Mohammed, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Jose Alejandro Restrepo and others, the project tackles topics like post-war cultural imperialism, forms of urban creole sub-cultures, and the role of institutions designed to classify and display the artifacts of other cultures. Includes stills from Andy Warhol's cult classic film, Susan Sontag. A rich buffet of ideas and images, this book is the final product of a multi-disciplinary program produced at Agentur, a project space in Amsterdam.

Duet for Cannibals: Forms of Cultural Appropriation

Inti Guerrero

This luminous monograph is the first retrospective on Dutch minimalist light artist Jan van Munster, whose works recall the best of Dan Flavin s. Though he has shown widely throughout Europe and Japan, he has remained little known to American audiences. This extraordinarily beautiful book follows van Munster's work from his early discovery of American minimalism, specifically the California Light Space Movement in 1969. The development of his work, frequently constructed in neon, began with pieces in galleries and museums and has blossomed through its engagement with the streets and public spaces of cities, where he has erected large scale pillars of light and brightly glowing installations.

Jan Van Munster - Licht Light

Peter Lodermeyer

Marcel Pinas: Artist, More Than an Artist

Marcel Pinas

Individual Artists

The key to conserving and preserving modern and contemporary works of art lies in the gathering of specific content related and technical information. This must have publication is the first comprehensive handbook of guidelines and good practices with easy to follow tips, checklists and sample interviews that provide the tools needed to retrieve accurate information from the artists who created the works. For curators, conservators, scientists, artists, lawyers and art historians, this unprecedented book is a collaboration between SBMK (Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art) and the RCE (Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands). Featured essays by Lydia Beerkens, Tatja Scholte and Sanneke Stigter, among many others.

The Artist Interview - for Conservation and Preservation of Contemporary Art. Guidelines & Practice

Lydia Beerkens (et. al)

Art has its Billboard charts. They focus mostly on artists and exhibitions in urban centers. A Decade of Country Hits is devoted to uncharted hits thriving instead on rural aesthetics and rural knowledge. This richly illustrated volume documents ten years of collective works initiated by artist Richard Saxton in rural communities around the world, from the American Midwest and Southwest to parts of Europe, Australia, and South America. Impossible to attribute to any one artistic genre, the works archived here explore a growing community of artists and researchers drawn to the rural experience in all its complexity. It resembles a sketchbook: with drawings, photographs, and from the hip accounts in the field, as well as contributions from likeminded artists, musicians, poets, and writers. Designed by Peter de Kan, the book is published by Jap Sam Books and distributed in North America and Canada by RAM Publications & Distribution. A Decade of Country Hits includes an international roster of contributors. It contains interviews with Todd Bockley, co-director of the Center for Social Sculpture; Twink Metzler, founder of Living Room Studios; architectural historian Robert Nauman; and Wapke Feenstra, artist and co-founder of Myvillages. Featured throughout are new collaborations with Zach Boddicker, singer and songwriter for 4H Royalty; Kurt Wagner, singer and songwriter for Lambchop; and Matthew Fluharty, director of Art of the Rural. Providing context for the work are essays by artist Stuart Hyatt, founder of TEAM Records; as well as essays by critics and writers Josh Garrett-Davis, author of Ghost Dances: Proving Up on the Great Plains; Mimi Zeiger, author of New Museums: Contemporary Museum Architecture Around the World, Tiny Houses, and Micro Green; and Enrique Ramirez, whose writing has appeared in Perspecta, Thresholds, AA Files, and elsewhere. In addition are essays by award-winning artists Marjetica Potr , Chris Sauter, and Fernando García-Dory, founder of A Shepherds School; as well as essays by curators, Ian Hunter, director of the LITTORAL Arts Trust; Marco Marcon, co-founder of International Art Space, and Kirsten Stoltz, programming director of the M12 Collective. The M12 Collective s recent exhibitions and commissioned works have appeared at the Kalmar Konstmuseum; the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale; the Chicago Cultural Center, Franklin Street Works; the Wormfarm Institute; the 2011 Australian Biennial spaced: art out of place; and the 2010 Biennial of the Americas.

A Decade of Country Hits: Art on the Rural Frontier

Margo Handwerker

Richard Saxton

Archive Crisis: Stefanos Tsivopoulos

Hilde De Bruijn

The second publication in the new pocket-sized Center Pivot Series from Richard Saxton s alternative Colorado-based art and environmental collective, M12, and co-published by M12 s Last Chance Press and Jap Sam Books, An Equine Anthology explores the cultural history of the American horse. Interdisciplinary in approach, the series explores and connects the changing realities of rural landscapes and communities around the world, presenting an array of curated notes, documents and research ephemera combined with images, poetry and more formal visual and written works. Stitching together nonlinear histories, testimonies and interpretations of equine culture from the American Southwest and beyond, this anthology includes horsemeat recipes, rodeo histories, photographs and paintings of the horse by contemporary western artists. Contributors include noted animal welfare advocate Temple Grandin, M12 founder Richard Saxton, Wapke Fenstra from Myvillages, novelist Josh Garrett-Davis, native American artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and New Mexico based photographer Clea G. Hall, among others. Contributions by: Clea G. Hall, Matthew Fluharty, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Temple Grandin, M12, the Brunetti Family, Matt Slaby, Nell Boeschenstein, Oli Robbins, Wapke Feenstra, Kultivator, Josh Garrett-Davis, Richard Saxton, Kirsten Stoltz, Stuart Hyatt

An Equine Anthology / Central Pivot Series Volume 2

Nell Boeschenstein

Josh Garrett-Davis

Kirsten Stoltz

Focusing on German cultural and architectural theorist Walter Benjamin's "constellation of awakening," TU Delft's Footprint 18 investigates Benjamin's conceptualization of "dialectical images," his use of montage, his refusal of notions of both progress and decline, and his effort to demonstrate how images belong not only to a particular time but attain legibility only at a particular time. Famously, according to Benjamin, image is what comes together in a flash to form a new "constellation." In his Arcades Project, he engaged architecture directly, especially the work of B.tticher, positing an architectural unconscious and the role of the optical as crucial for understanding commodification. Contributions by theorists Patrick Healy, Andrej Radman, Stefan Koller, Lutz Robbers, and Frances Hsu, architects Jolien Paeleman and Rodrigo Rieiro D.az, and Stephen Michael Witherford Fulbright Research Fellow Ross Lipton, writer and media consultant Sarah K. Stanley and cultural theorist St.phane Symons.

Footprint 18: Constellation of Awakening: Benjamin and Architecture

Andrej Radman

Patrick Healy

DIY Klarenstraat: A New Perspective on the Post-War Social Housing Block

Patricia Van Ulzen

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Books by Jap Sam Books