Hey artist-parents, check out this new publication at Half Letter Press. We have Andrea Francke’s Invisible Spaces of Parenthood in the store!

Andrea Francke, a London based artist and mother, opened a functioning daycare center (crèche) for her graduate show. Francke, who moved to Britain from Brazil to study, assumed that having a child would be just a matter of adopting some new routines and then back to business as usual with her art work, social life, etc. When the Chelsea College of Art and Design decided to close the nursery where Francke kept her son while she attended classes, the artist realized that daily life with a child would not be going along as planned.

Francke joined with other parents to protest the nursery closing but the school’s administration was not moved. The artist set up a functioning daycare in the gallery of her thesis exhibition which created a platform for public discussions of how budget cuts to public services in Britain were affecting small children and families. Many things came out of Francke’s functioning daycare installation. She connected with local nurseries and other parents. She broke boundaries between public (gallery/university space) and private (daycare, childhood, etc). She also realized that her fellow students without children were not concerned with her struggle, because they felt it didn’t apply to their live—she felt invisible as the parent of a small child in an academic art context.

All of these discoveries led to her work with the Showroom, a gallery in London that works with the intersection of art, research, and participation. They invited Francke as part of Communal Knowledge, a series with artists partnering with local groups and organizations in the Showroom’s neighborhood—considered one of the poorest in Great Britain.

Francke put together Invisible Spaces of Parenthood: A collection of pragmatic propositions for a better future, an exhibition that expanded on her thesis show with events, workshops, interviews with childminders and other care workers, activist connections, and a publication. This manual contains eight specially commissioned essays as well as interviews, event excerpts, discussions and documentation from the exhibition. HLP’s Brett Bloom has an essay in the book he co-authored with his partner, Bonnie Fortune.

Brand new booklet, Records as Portable Exhibitions and Interactive, Participatory Objects, arrived just in time for our exhibition that opens this Tuesday at Texas State University.

Our November Newsletter is available.

[Image — Public Phenomena: Pile of bikes, Copenhagen, 2011]

Ghost House in the Nørrebro neighborhood of Copenhagen. Similar to images from the book Public Phenomena of Ghost Houses from Chicago, Portland, Barcelona and Halifax.

We are offering Mobile Phenomena + Audible Dwelling together for a low price.

Book release for Mobile Phenomena at Motto Charlottenborg, November 6th, 19.00-21.00, with Nils Norman and Benny Henningsen’s mobile pizza oven: there will be free pizza!

Here is the facebook event link.

Image: mobile pile of crap posing as governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin

Once was mobile, we think. Probably a bike cart. Heavy, heavy use. This image also didn’t make into Mobile Phenomena. Image is from Chicago.

Spread from our new book Mobile Phenomena!

We are having a book release for it at Motto Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, November 6th.

Sneak Peak: Mobile Phenomena

This is the cover of our latest publication. It is at the printer right now. We hope to have it in a couple of weeks.

As we get ready to send a new book to the printer this week, we just wanted to remind you that we have great books in stock, like a recent one we published: 

Revolution as an Eternal Dream: the Exemplary Failure of the Madame Binh Graphics Collective by Mary Patten, with a preface by Lucy Lippard and an afterword by Gregory Sholette

Revolution as an Eternal Dream: the Exemplary Failure of the Madame Binh Graphics Collective (MBGC) examines the political practice and visual propaganda of a now-obscure women’s poster, printmaking, and street art collective based in New York City between 1975 and 1983. For a brief, intense period of time, the MBGC collaborated on projects against racism and in solidarity with national liberation movements, producing many beautiful multicolored silkscreened prints, note cards, banners, posters, and other print ephemera before withdrawing into the isolation of a sectarian and militaristic political line. By 1982 its core members were in prison or underground. Revolution as an Eternal Dream calls up the perpetual desire for revolution, but also the frailty of such dreams.

Please spread the word about this publication. We will give away a free copy signed by Mary Patten to one random person that reblogs this post. You have until midnight Central time on September 16th to reblog this and then we’ll pick a winner.

[Click the book cover for more details and a look inside]

New at Half Letter Press! Deep Routes: The Midwest In All Directions

Deep Routes: The Midwest in All Directions collects essays from the Compass Collaborators and their extended networks of colleagues and conspirators. It is a collection of stories about learning where we are – by inhabiting, traversing, and exchanging narratives in the expansive region that some people call the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor. Emerging from a geologic territory shaped by retreating Pleistocene ice sheets and further carved by generations of plant, animal and human habitation, these essays contemplate another planetary shift that has transformed our very existence: global neoliberal capitalism. The authors critically reflect on the nature of territory, citizenship, mobility and the possibilities for a more just and egalitarian society. Drawing from sites within the the Midwest (such as parts of Minneapolis, Detroit, Rockford, Madison, Southern Illinois) and excursions far beyond it (locales as distant as Togo, China and Argentina) the twenty-seven contributors explore the wealth of associations these many journeys have nurtured.

With contributions from: Phil Bellfy, Jen Blai, Rozalinda Borcila, Nicholas Brown, Alan Corbiere, Jill Doerfler, Bonnie Fortune, Ryan Griffis, Abbilyn Harmon, Brian Holmes, Sarah Kanouse, Nicholas Lampert, Sarah Lewison, Jenna Loyd, Don Lyons, Dylan Miner, Faranak Miraftab, Shiri Pasternak, Claire Pentecost, Ryan Rice, Matthias Regan, Sarah Ross, Kristin Schimik, Heath Schultz, Daniel Tucker, Dan S. Wang, and Mike Wolf

Compass Collaborators grows from an association of 14 artists and activists who have been exploring the ties and relationships between global economic trends and on-the-ground lives in disparate neighborhoods, cities, and rural regions. This book is our second editorial investigation of the radical Midwest, a record of encounters, regional knowledge production, and gestures toward reciprocal self-recognition.

Get a copy of the book.

Whoops! A quick correction to our June newsletter: the right link is now up for “New Axioms For Reading The Landscape: Paying Attention to Political Economy and Social Justice,” written by Don Mitchell. You can find it in the Free Stuff section at the bottom of the Reading Room page. Add it to your June reading list and check out the other suggestions posted by Regional Relationships in the current Reading Room. (via READING ROOM: REGIONAL RELATIONSHIPS : Half Letter Press, Independent Art & Publishing & Infrastructure)