American author Kathy Acker was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Working through an experimental and avant-garde tradition, she wrote numerous novels, essays, poems, and novellas from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. As a postmodernist, plagiarist, and post-punk feminist, she continues to inspire generations of writers, philosophers, and artists. Get Rid of Meaning is the first comprehensive publication on Acker’s work from an artistic and literary perspective. It includes previously unpublished material from Acker’s personal archive and other collections. The publication is the compilation of a multipart research project including an exhibition and a symposium at Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe.

With contributions from: Kathy Acker, Eleanor Antin, Dodie Bellamy, Hanjo Berressem, Ruth Buchanan, William S. Burroughs, Anja Casser, Georgina Colby, Leslie Dick, Claire Finch, Johnny Golding, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Anja Kirschner, Chris Kraus, Sylvère Lotringer, Douglas A. Martin, Jason McBride, Karolin Meunier & Kerstin Stakemeier, Avital Ronell, Carolee Schneemann, Daniel Schulz, Matias Viegener & McKenzie Wark.

This 21st issue of F.R. David is edited by Will Holder with Andrea di Serego Alighieri. Seemingly more fragmented than usual, it includes contributions, quotes, found materials, and excerpts from Maggie Nelson, Charles Mingus, Octavia Butler, John Keats, Alice Notley, Paul Abbott, Bernadette Mayer, Fred Dewey, John Cage, Marion Keiner, Anne Carson, and others. An afterword by Nicolas Schoffer entitled “Microtime” concludes this wandering, inscrutable journey.

Accompanying a series of solo collaborations in 2020, this publication offers the first comprehensive and global perspective on Jeremiah Day’s work as an artist, performer, researcher and teacher. As it details Day’s specific works and evolution between visual and performing arts and between political reflection and engagement the result also serves as sourcebook for the legacy of the intersection between dance and the visual arts of the 1960s and 70’s and the models of cultural practice emerging from the work of Hannah Arendt.

Texts by Alain Cueff, Fred Dewey, Jan Verwoert, Angelika Stepkien, Julia Robinson. Designed by Will Holder.

Josef Bauer, Körpergalerie,1974
Dear Trisha Brown – A letter from Robert Wilhite
Dear Mr Christopher Williams – A letter from Robert Wilhite
Nina Beier – In tribute to time spent walking with Will (2013)
Will Holder – Caption card (2014)
Democracy is Empty, A conversation between Doug Ashford and Mierle Laderman Ukeles, originally published in Documents, no.10, Fall 1997, pp. 23-30
Lucky Dime, for Seth Siegelaub by Willem Oorebeek
Thoughts on control by Raivo Puusemp
Jan Mot and Germaine Kruip in discussion about Ian Wilson
A letter to Céline Condorelli by Tyler Coburn
A conversation between Eva Berendes and Doug Ashford
A conversation between Lucy Skaer and Willem Oorebeek
Invited by Tirdad Zolghadr, Marina Noronha’s Curatorial Systems Manifesto (as a response to Mierle Laderman Ukeles)
Céline Condorelli, Three letters to all and no one – strangers, friends, collaborators, allies
Notes on a lunch meeting (with Willem Oorebeek) by Kate Strain
Sarah Browne, Remembering Gray, 2013 – In collaboration with Alice Lyons
Beatrice Gibson, A letter to Axel Wieder (and also implicity to Will Holder)
David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey – A conversation
Victoria Dejaco – Lantern slides

Designed by Marc Hollenstein.

The 5th installment of The Social Life of the Book series is a an assemblage of text fragments taken from different books by LA-based writer Chris Kraus, conceived and annotated by artists and writers Jon Bywater, Louise Menzies and Marnie Slater. By reading through Kraus’s texts looking for traces of New Zealand, where she grew up, the three Kiwis question the representation of the distant; how it is embodied by characters, situations, language, and in the writing/reading dynamics Kraus creates.

The Social Life of the Book is a collection of commissioned texts dealing with books, and how they engage with the circulation of ideas and the agency of social situations. It brings together artists, publishers, writers, designers, booksellers, etc. who consider books less as finished objects or forms but for their disruptive potential and their ability to produce new relationships, new publics and new meanings.

Designed by Will Holder.

The 6th installment of The Social Life of the Book series is a section of the catalogue of publications from English artist Helen Chadwick’s personal library, reproduced by Will Holder for single mothers. The library was acquired in 2006 and is held by the Henry Moore Institute archive, Leeds, UK.

The Social Life of the Book is a collection of commissioned texts dealing with books, and how they engage with the circulation of ideas and the agency of social situations. It brings together artists, publishers, writers, designers, booksellers, etc. who consider books less as finished objects or forms but for their disruptive potential and their ability to produce new relationships, new publics and new meanings.

Designed by Will Holder.