You can tell so much about a person from their collection of books. Friend, potential lover, there’s nothing like having a good nose through someone’s personal belongings, and the look and feel of someone’s book collection gives you an insight into their psyche and further develops how you might see them.
Check out eFlux’s project with Martha Rosler and her library here.
You can tell so much about a person from their collection of books. Friend, potential lover, there’s nothing like having a good nose through someone’s personal belongings, and the look and feel of someone’s book collection gives you an insight into their psyche and further develops how you might see them. Spine after spine, type and cover designs span decades where their aesthetics tell you as much about the content as their titles or authors. Books that look old and well handled where you might be treated to hand-written notes in margins or a smattering of little explanation marks where the reader’s found something that excites them; maybe even a post-it note or a bus ticket used as a place holder. There’s something rather epistemological in looking upon someone’s library, where we feel we might know the truth of the collector more intimately on the basis of what they choose to surround themselves with. Yes, the phenomenology of a book collection with all its physical presence, unique character and intellectual nouse can be quite seductive to a roving mind and I don’t think looking through the contents of someone’s Kindle would have quite the same affect at all!
By Amos Vogel (1974)
A classic returns. Accompanied by over 300 rare film stills, Film as a Subversive Art analyses how aesthetic, sexual, and ideological subversives use one of the most powerful art forms of our day to exchange or manipulate our conscious and unconscious, demystify visual taboos, destroy dated cinematic forms, and undermine existing value systems and institutions. Published by CT Edition and Distriubted Art Publishers. Buy it here
“I think it must be the most exciting and comprehensive book I’ve seen on avant-garde, underground and exceptional commercial film.” Norman Mailer
A classic returns. The original edition of Amos Vogel’s seminal book, Film as a Subversive Art was first published in 1974, and has been out of print since 1987. According to Vogel – founder of Cinema 16, North America’s legendary film society – the book details the ‘accelerating worldwide trend toward a more liberated cinema, in which subjects and forms hitherto considered unthinkable or forbidden are boldly explored.’ So ahead of his time was Vogel that the ideas that he penned some 30 years ago are still relevant today, and readily accessible in this classic volume. Accompanied by over 300 rare film stills, Film as a Subversive Art analyses how aesthetic, sexual, and ideological subversives use one of the most powerful art forms of our day to exchange or manipulate our conscious and unconscious, demystify visual taboos, destroy dated cinematic forms, and undermine existing value systems and institutions. This subversion of form, as well as of content, is placed within the context of the contemporary world view of science, philosophy, and modern art, and is illuminated by a detailed examination of over 500 films, including many banned, rarely seen, or never released works.