This coming Friday, we have a table at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, February 1−3, 2013.
Stop by and visit Marc; he will be there on our behalf.
8 months ago
New in our webstore: Temporary Services: 7 Offset Poster Booklets
Since 1998, Temporary Services has made a publication for nearly every project we do. Usually it’s a half-letter size booklet, but when we want to print a lot of something and don’t have much money, we often make a poster booklet that folds down from 11 X 17 inches. This set includes 7 color offset poster booklets from 2005-2012. A big chunk of cheap Temporary Services printed publications, wrapped in a printed band and ready for your wall or library!
8 months ago
New in our webstore: Temporary Services: 7 Offset Poster Booklets
Since 1998, Temporary Services has made a publication for nearly every project we do. Usually it’s a half-letter size booklet, but when we want to print a lot of something and don’t have much money, we often make a poster booklet that folds down from 11 X 17 inches. This set includes 7 color offset poster booklets from 2005-2012:
Prisoners’ Inventions (2005), Product Placements (2005), Alexis Petroff (2005), Personal Plastic (2008), TS in Austin, TX (2008), Half Letter Press (2008), Supermax Subscriptions (2012)
Some of these posters are being offered for the first time since the events they were made for. Also included is our new poster for the project Supermax Subscriptions with Tamms Year Ten and Sarah Ross. A big chunk of cheap Temporary Services printed publications, wrapped in a printed band and ready for your wall or library!
11 months ago
Half Letter Press Newsletter
June 2012
“Let’s go straight to the point. How does art become subversive of the social order? How does it undermine normal, legitimate, accepted patterns of behavior, and how does it open up possibilities for the transformation of everyday life? What can subversive art accomplish in the political arena? And what are its limits, how can it exceed them in the future?.”
- Brian Holmes, in Escape The Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society
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HELLO
We’ve got some new stock to announce as well as some old favorites that you may have missed the first time around. Help a new graduate build their book collection, or grab something interesting to read for your next holiday!
The current Reading Room installment by Sarah Ross and Ryan Griffis is a real treat. They have found some readings for us to offer for free download (teachers! use those PDFs!) and suggested new stock for us to carry. Highlights are listed below in the Regional Relationships section.
Among many other wonderful endeavors, Sarah and Ryan organize the Regional Relationships subscription series, which anyone who wants new discoveries in their mailbox should check out. Regional Relationships commissions artists, writers, activists, and scholars to create works that investigate the natural, industrial, and cultural landscapes of a region. Sarah and Ryan write, “It is a platform to reimagine the spaces and cultural histories around us. An invitation to join in seeing what we can learn, and learning what we can see, by juxtaposing spaces and narratives that are usually kept apart.” We offer the 2011 edition, with work from Claire Pentecost and Matthew Friday.
You can see past Reading Rooms here.
Don’t forget to check out our curated page on Kickstarter to find new and imaginative projects that we think you should support.
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Regional Relationships Related
Regional Relationships subscription 2011: Two projects, including Matthew Friday’s “A Map Without Boundaries” (map with tools for you to visualize your own region) and “Greetings From The Cornbelts,” a postcard project by Claire Pentecost. $50
Stories In Reserve: Book and CD set including three audio tours, $15
Touring Olympia: Exposition Park, Los Angeles: CD and booklet in special box highlighting a future/historical tour of the 2020 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, that collapsed when all the athletes went on strike. $18
Designated Drivers: 24-page booklet documenting artists and groups involved in this Temporary Services-organized project (and featuring Ryan Griffis & Sarah Ross). $4
Regional Relationships Picks
NEW AT HLP The Nevada Test Site: A Guide To America’s Nuclear Proving Ground: The Center for Land Use Interpretation put out this book (researched and written by Matthew Coolidge) that describes America’s weapons and research and development field site in depth. $15
NEW AT HLP Surface Tension: Problematics of Site: Ken Ehrlich & Brandon LaBelle edited this critical collection of essays addressing art and public space. Includes a CD of audio works (selected by Stephen Vitiello). $25
Cultural Practices Within And Across: A collection of writings on local and trans-local cultural production across Europe, edited by Doina Petrescu, Constantin Petcou, and Nishat Awan. $35
Filter Detroit: Volume 1: Edited by Kerstin Niemann, this is a publication about a collaborative project with the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the College for Creative Studies Detroit. An experimental transnational research project about the structural and creative developments in the Moran Street neighborhood in Detroit shaped by insider and outsider perspectives. $45
Not If But When: Culture Beyond Oil: a collaborative publication by British groups Liberate Tate, Platform, and Art Not Oil. $15
Power/Exchange: a booklet documenting a 2002 project by Deborah Stratman made in Wendover, Utah and dealing with the communications and energy corridors that surround and affect Wendover. $9
Regional Relationships Free Download
Click here to download the essay ”New Axioms For Reading The Landscape: Paying Attention to Political Economy and Social Justice,” by Don Mitchell (from 2008’s Political Economies of Landscape Change, Vol. 89, No. 1). Check out the Reading Room page for more free readings and suggestions.
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NEW & NOTABLE
Why The Exhibit Was Canceled: A new (2012) offset print job for this publication! Actual “behind-the-scenes” correspondence between an artist and a curator as they attempt to negotiate the details of the artist’s upcoming exhibition. $2
Big Women, Big Girls: We’re happy to carry the second publication printed by the fantastic new press Stamped Books. Big Women, Big Girls is a small, thick, multi-colored book with flash fiction by Cate Stevens-Davis. The book itself has long “hairs” coming off the side and thick pages that range in size. From Stamped Books: “The text gives insight into the world of plus-sized women. It enters into their insecurities, but also their passions. The stories range from heartfelt, encounters to hilarious bar pick-ups.” $12
Reason’s Monsters: On a recent trip for an exhibition in Kansas City, we met artist and printer Nicholas Naughton who co-runs La Cucaracha Press, a compact printing facility run by a really fun group of guys. We were so impressed by Nicholas’ chapbook with poet Carmen Gimenez Smith that we decided to buy some copies on the spot to distribute through Half Letter Press. In Reason’s Monsters, Naughton reimagines Goya’s important “Disasters of War” through the pen of an artist reflecting on the disasters of America’s present wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. Goya’s vultures become American eagles, clawing and biting at the flesh of our victims. Each two-page spread combines a drawing by Naughton with a sharp poem by Gimenez Smith, including one - “Infidelity (11/13)” that invokes Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. $10
When Santa Claus Came To Town With Solvognen: This is a 2010 reprint, by Torpedo Press, of the tale of a small army of Santa Clauses that created a lot of looting opportunities in 1974 Copenhagen. Solvognen was an activist theater group associated with Christiania, the autonomous neighborhood of Copenhagen, Denmark. $13
The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest (No. 8): We’re excited to see a new issue out from our friends at The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest! This thick reader includes contributions by Ultra Red, Jaleh Mansoor, Ayreen Anastas, the Survival Kit Collective, and Libertad Guerra. $20
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SOUND BREAK
Temporary Services recently organized an experimental series of concerts called Music Mountain in a working-class area called Tingbjerg, on the outskirts of Copenhagen. This was in conjunction with the Visit Tingbjerg festival and exhibition, and was the first time that all of the bands we chose had ever performed in Tingbjerg. All of the concerts were free and open to the public, and situated in unlikely spaces for music to be heard. Check out images and audio of concerts by Papir, Yoke & Yohs, and more here.
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DON’T FORGET …
ESCAPE THE OVERCODE: ACTIVIST ART IN THE CONTROL SOCIETY
ART GANGS: PROTEST & COUNTERCULTURE IN NEW YORK CITY
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WANT TO ORDER?
Our website processes orders using Paypal, so you can use a credit/debit card, or your existing Paypal account. We will also accept alternative methods of payment including money orders, checks, and some trades. Some ideas are here.
To use an alternate method of payment, please contact us about it first and we can give you instructions on how to complete the transaction. Send an email to pubishers@halfletterpress.com to talk to us.
ATTENTION STORES, DISTROS, SCHOOLS, LIBRARIES!
We offer volume discounts to schools and libraries and wholesale pricing to stores and distributors on some titles. We would especially like you to consider the books that we have published under the Half Letter Press imprint, including:
Revolution as an Eternal Dream: The Exemplary Failure of the Madame Binh Graphics Collective
Please contact us at publishers@halfletterpress.com for pricing and distribution details.
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About this newsletter:
Half Letter Press News is a message to fans, friends, and customers of Half Letter Press. To join or leave the email list for this newsletter, or to change the address where you receive it, please email publishers@halfletterpress.com.
Half Letter Press is run by Brett Bloom, Marc Fischer, and Salem Collo-Julin. Our HQ is in Chicago, and we live there, in Philadelphia, and in Copenhagen. Under the concrete and away from the prying arms of the internet, we all live in indigenous lands. Half Letter Press, P.O. Box 12588, Chicago, IL, 60612, USA. http://www.halfletterpress.com.
1 year ago
Temporary Services has been scanning our old publications and putting new PDFs on our Booklets page for free download. Here is:
Prisoners’ Inventions - Three Dialogues, Booklet #61, April 2004.
Prisoners’ Inventions was a collaboration with Angelo, an incarcerated artist. He illustrated many incredible inventions made by prisoners to fill needs that the restrictive environment of the prison tries to supress. The cover features a recreation of Angelo’s prison cell that is part of exhibitions of Prisoners’ Inventions.
This booklet includes several discussions about this complicated collaboration. The full length book Prisoners’ Inventions remains out of print however we do plan to get it back into print eventually. The next edition will have a lot of new drawings of inventions that Angelo has observed in recent years.
You can see which Temporary Services booklets we still have available for sale on our page at Half Letter Press.
1 year ago
A 2-page spread from Untitled, images and text by Mads Ranch Kornum, booklet #22, July 2000.
Temporary Services has been scanning our old publications and putting new PDFs on our Booklets page for free download. You can see which booklets we still have available for sale on our page at Half Letter Press.
The archiving continues. Temporary Services has been scanning our old publications and putting new PDFs on our Booklets page for free download. Here is:
Untitled, images and text by Mads Ranch Kornum, booklet #22, July 2000.
You can see which booklets we still have available for sale on our page at Half Letter Press.
1 year ago
Happy New Year from Half Letter Press!
Temporary Services has been busy scanning our old publications and putting new PDFs on our Booklets page for free download. Here is:
Chiang Mai Ravioli, booklet #42, December 2001.
This was a small booklet for an ephemeral public art project in Thailand. You can see which booklets we still have available for sale on our page at Half Letter Press.
1 year ago
![Temporary Services has been busy scanning our old publications and putting new PDFs on our Booklets page for free download. Here is a fresh, more readable new scan of:
Why the Exhibit Was Canceled, by [Artist], booklet #38, October 2001.
This booklet presents actual ‘behind the scenes’ correspondence between an artist and a curator (both made anonymous) as they attempt to negotiate the details of the artist’s upcoming exhibition. The institution raises late concerns about the artist’s work a month before the show is to open. The artist is asked to change his work and make unusual concessions so that the institution can cover its ass and this leads to the artist canceling the show. This booklet salvages a difficult experience and makes public the kind of internal dialog between artists and institutions that is extremely hard to access. A booklet that has been much loved, debated and discussed by teachers, students and arts administrators.
You can see which booklets we still have available for sale on our page at Half Letter Press.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx16hiRndo1qb13i1o1_500.png)
Temporary Services has been busy scanning our old publications and putting new PDFs on our Booklets page for free download. Here is a fresh, more readable new scan of:
Why the Exhibit Was Canceled, by [Artist], booklet #38, October 2001.
This booklet presents actual ‘behind the scenes’ correspondence between an artist and a curator (both made anonymous) as they attempt to negotiate the details of the artist’s upcoming exhibition. The institution raises late concerns about the artist’s work a month before the show is to open. The artist is asked to change his work and make unusual concessions so that the institution can cover its ass and this leads to the artist canceling the show. This booklet salvages a difficult experience and makes public the kind of internal dialog between artists and institutions that is extremely hard to access. A booklet that has been much loved, debated and discussed by teachers, students and arts administrators.
You can see which booklets we still have available for sale on our page at Half Letter Press.
Temporary Services has been busy scanning our old publications and putting new PDFs on our Booklets page for free download. Here is:
Group Work: A Compilation of Quotes About Collaboration from a Variety of Sources and Practices, booklet #48, April, 2002.
You can see which booklets we still have available for sale on our page at Half Letter Press.
Temporary Services has been busy scanning our old publications and putting new PDFs on our Booklets page for free download. Here is:
Mobile Signs Systems: A Temporary Public Art Project, booklet #5, June, 1999.
This project featured sandwich boards by: Jim Duignan, Anthony Elms, Oli Watt, Harold Jefferies, Jacqueline Terrassa, Erik Brown, Zena Sakowski & Rob Kelly, Matti Allison & Marc Fischer, and Michael Piazza with Ronald S. from the Cook County Juvenile Dentention Center
You can see which booklets we still have available for sale on our page at Half Letter Press.
1 year ago
: BOOKLET & KOSMOS LANE GALLERY with VERY TEMPORARYよむ、きく、みるKosmos Lane... «
If you are in Tokyo this weekend, stop by and see our publications during this presentation of Booklet Press’s library!
BOOKLET & KOSMOS LANE GALLERY with VERY TEMPORARY
よむ、きく、みる
Kosmos Lane Gallery と BOOKLET によるポップアップショーを開催します. Kosmos Lane Gallery からは東京ベースの詩人、影山さんの朗読を午後４時から行います. BOOKLET：小規模出版社とアートZines の中規模図書室は、BOOKLETの出版しているタイトルと2011年度に図書室に寄贈されてきたタイトルをお見せ致します。
駒場IIキャンパス (map)
…
via book-let
1 year ago
: 図書室への寄贈を頂きましたLibrary Contribution Temporary Services / Half Letter... «
We are really happy to have our mission statement translated into Japanese! Equally excited about connecting with the fine folks at Booklet in Tokyo.
図書室への寄贈を頂きました
Library Contribution
Temporary Services / Half Letter Press が下記のタイトルを送ってくれました：
出版物を一つずつカバーするかわりに、彼らの活動ステートメントを載せます。「Half Letter Press はTemporary Services によって始められた出版社と、実験的オンライン・ストアです。Temporary Service のメンバーは、Brett Bloom, Salem…
via book-let
2 years ago
With a nod to the Academy Awards tonight, we remind you that skewed, scary, and silly stereotypes of artists still persist in movies and television shows. From crazy, substance-abusing extroverts to asexual, bitter hermits, artists are a bunch of BANANAS (at least in the Hollywood lens). Our booklet Framing The Artists explores and reviews many of these less-than-silver screen moments.
Can you identify these three fictional white male painters?
2 years ago
