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Writing by Artist

Writing by Artist is the first collection to focus on William Wegman’s lengthy and deeply funny relationship to language and is filled with previously unknown and wildly entertaining texts, drawings, and early photographs spanning the early 1970s to the present.

Not your standard book of essays, the publication was meticulously edited by Andrew Lampert to feature works incorporating words in one form or another. In some instances, the text is simply a caption or a few hand-written words, but all of the selected works hinge conceptually and pictorially on writing and language.

Writing by Artist offers a wide range of entry points into the artist’s universe. There are early photographic works, which may be familiar, but from there, things delightfully unravel with absurd non-sequiturs typed on Princess Cruises stationary, imagined restaurant reviews, witty annotations to a curator’s essay, musings on ancient footwear, deliberate mistranslations, reworked greeting cards, fictional advertisements for real life products, and other surprising prose forms.

Ultimately, Writing by Artists alters the logic and pushes the boundaries of what artist writing can be—shedding new light for those only familiar with Wegman’s later work, while serving as a welcome reminder of the artist’s madcap inventiveness for the already enlightened. In short, what you do or don’t know about William Wegman now conveniently fits into this strangely beguiling collection.

William Wegman was born in 1943 in Holyoke, Massachusetts. His work has been exhibited at museums and galleries internationally including retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Centre Pompidou. Recent exhibitions include Before/On/After: William Wegman and California Conceptualism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Wegman has also created film and video works for Saturday Night Live, Nickelodeon, and Sesame Street and appeared on The Tonight Show, The David Letterman Show, and The Colbert Report.

Andrew Lampert is a New York-based artist, writer, archivist, and primary in the firm Chen & Lampert. His works have been internationally exhibited at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Film Festival, Getty Museum, Toronto International Film Festival, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam, among many other venues. He has edited books on Tony Conrad, Manuel De Landa, George Kuchar, and Harry Smith. Lampert was formerly Curator of Collections at Anthology Film Archives, where he preserved hundreds of films and videos and co-programmed public screenings. His videos are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix.

352 Pages
8.5 x 11 inches
Paperback
March 2022
ISBN: 9781737797906

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Editor: Andrew Lampert
Designer: Scott Ponik
Managing Editor: James Hoff

Black Phoenix: Third World Perspective on Contemporary Art and Culture

This publication is a compilation of all three issues of the journal Black Phoenix published as a single volume. Edited and published by Rasheed Araeen and Mahmood Jamal between 1978 and 1979 in the United Kingdom, Black Phoenix remains a key and radical document of transnational solidarity and cultural production in the visual arts, literature, activism, and beyond.

More than a decade after the liberation movements of the 1960s and the historic Bandung and Tricontinental Conferences, which called for social and political alignment and solidarity among the nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America in order to dismantle Western imperialism and (neo)colonialism, Black Phoenix issued a rallying cry for the formation of a liberatory arts and culture movement throughout the Third World. International in scope, Black Phoenix positioned diasporic and colonial histories at the center of an evolving anti-racist and anti-imperialist consciousness in late 1970s Britain and beyond—one that would yield complex and nuanced discourses of race, class, and postcolonial theory in the decade that followed. Black Phoenix proposed a horizon for Blackness that transcended racial binaries, across the Third World and the West.

Contributors include art critics, scholars, artists, poets, and writers, including Rasheed Araeen (Pakistan) and Mahmood Jamal (Pakistan), Guy Brett (United Kingdom), Kenneth Coutts-Smith (United Kingdom), Ariel Dorfman (Chile), Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay), N. Kilele (Tanzania), Babatunde Lawal (Nigeria), David Medalla (Philippines), Ayyub Malik (Pakistan), Susil Siriwardena (Sri Lanka), and Chris Wanjala (Kenya).

Rasheed Araeen is a Karachi-born, London-based artist, activist, writer, editor, and curator. Aareen founded the critical journals Black Phoenix, Third Text, and Third Text Asia, and took on activist roles with the Black Panthers and Artists for Democracy. His work has been exhibited widely, including, most recently, at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Chicago; BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead; MAMCO, Geneva; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Tate Britain, London; the 2017 Venice Biennale; and Documenta 14, Athens/Kassel, among others.

Mahmood Jamal was born in Lucknow, India, and moved to Britain from Pakistan in 1967. He published several books of poetry, including Sugar Coated Pill (2007), and translated the Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi (2009) and Faiz: Fifty Poems (2013), among other titles. In 1983, he co-formed the all-Asian Retake Film and Video Collective production company, and initiated Epicflow Films in 1989. Jamal worked as an independent producer and writer; produced several documentary series, including Islamic Conversations; was a lead writer on Britain’s first Asian soap, Family Pride (1991–92), and wrote and produced Turning World (1996) for Channel4 television. He died in London in December 2020.

108 pages
8.3 x 11.8 inches
Paperback
April 2022
ISBN: 9781736534670

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Editors: Rasheed Araeen and Mahmood Jamal
Managing Editor: Rachel Valinsky
Managing Designer: Dan Bourke

Room

Room is a letterpress print by William Wegman produced on the occasion of Primary Information’s publication of William Wegman: Writing by Artist. The work  is created from a 1973 drawing by the artist that is included in the publication. It is produced in an edition of 75 and is hand-numbered and signed by the artist.

William Wegman was born in 1943 in Holyoke, Massachusetts. His work has been exhibited at museums and galleries internationally including retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Centre Pompidou. Recent exhibitions include Before/On/After: William Wegman and California Conceptualism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Wegman has also created film and video works for Saturday Night Live, Nickelodeon, and Sesame Street and appeared on The Tonight Show, The David Letterman Show, and The Colbert Report.

8.5 x 11 inches
Letterpress print
Edition of 75 + 5 APs
1973/2022

Top Stories

Top Stories was a prose periodical published from 1978 to 1991 by the artist Anne Turyn in Buffalo, New York, and New York City. Over the course of twenty-nine issues, it served as a pivotal platform for experimental fiction and art through single-artist issues and two anthologies. The entire run of Top Stories is collected and reproduced here across two volumes.

Top Stories primarily featured female artists, though in Turyn’s words a few men “crept in as collaborators.” Although primarily “a prose periodical” (as its byline often stated), the issues varied in form and aesthetics, pushing the boundaries of what prose could be and, from time to time, escaping the genre altogether. In fact, the only parameters required for participants were that the periodical’s logo and issue list be included on the front and back covers, respectively.

A great deal of the works are short stories by the likes of Pati Hill, Tama Janowitz, and Kathy Acker, whose Pushcart Prize–winning “New York City in 1979” appeared for the first time in book form as part of the series. Constance DeJong contributes “I.T.I.L.O.E.,” a widely unavailable work that features the artist’s trademark prose and is sure to please fans of her novel, Modern Love. The largest issue of the periodical is undoubtedly Cookie Mueller’s “How to Get Rid of Pimples,” which consists of a series of character studies of friends interspersed with photographs by David Armstrong, Nan Goldin, and Peter Hujar altered with freshly drawn blemishes.

Top Stories also celebrates less conventional literary forms. Issues by Lisa Bloomfield, Linda Neaman, and Anne Turyn take the form of artists’ books, juxtaposing image and text to construct tightly wound, interdependent narratives. Jenny Holzer and Peter Nadin present a collaborative work in copper ink comprised of truisms by Holzer on corporeal and emotional states and drawings of abstract bodies by Nadin. Janet Stein contributes a comic, while Ursule Molinaro provides a thorough index of daily life (and the contempt it produces) consisting of entries that were written just prior to lighting a cigarette.

Primary contributors include Kathy Acker, Laurie Anderson, Sheila Ascher, Douglas Blau, Lisa Bloomfield, Linda L. Cathcart, Cheryl Clarke, Susan Daitch, Constance DeJong, Jane Dickson, Judith Doyle, Lee Eiferman, Robert Fiengo, Joe Gibbons, Pati Hill, Jenny Holzer, Gary Indiana, Tama Janowitz, Suzanne Jackson, Suzanne Johnson, Caryl Jones-Sylvester, Mary Kelly, Judy Linn, Micki McGee, Ursule Molinaro, Cookie Mueller, Peter Nadin, Linda Neaman, Glenn O’Brien, Romaine Perin, Richard Prince, Lou Robinson, Janet Stein, Dennis Straus, Sekou Sundiata, Leslie Thornton, Kirsten Thorup, Lynne Tillman, Anne Turyn, Gail Vachon, Brian Wallis, Jane Warrick, and Donna Wyszomierski.

David Armstrong, Nan Goldin, JT Hryvniak, Peter Hujar, Nancy Linn, Trish McAdams, Linda Neaman, Marcia Resnick, Michael Sticht, and Aja Thorup all make appearances as well, contributing artwork for the covers or as illustrations.

Anne Turyn is a photographer based in New York. Turyn’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kunsthalle Bern, Denver Art Museum, Walker Art Center, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

954 pages
5.5 x 8.5 inches
Paperback
February 2022
ISBN: 9781736534618

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Editor: Anne Turyn
Managing Editor: Hiji Nam
Managing Designer: Rick Myers

Untitled page from Humpty Dumpty

Untitled page from Humpty Dumpty is a letterpress print produced on the occasion of Primary Information’s publication of Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979. The print is produced in an edition of 50 and includes a hand-numbered certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

This work was originally produced in 1969 as part of Niccolai’s first book of poetry, Humpty Dumpty, much of which is reproduced in Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979. 

Giulia Niccolai is a poet, artist, essayist, and translator based in Italy.

8.5 x 12.5 inches
Letterpress Print
Edition of 50 (+5 APs)
2020

Victory Defeat

Victory Defeat is a letterpress print produced on the occasion of Primary Information’s publication of Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979. The print is produced in an edition of 50 and includes a hand-numbered certificate of authenticity stamped by the artist.

Victory Defeat was originally produced in 1980.

Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt is an artist based in Germany. She is well known for her typewriter and mail-art works, which she produced in the 1970s and 1980s.

8.5 x 12.5 inches
Letterpress print
Edition of 50 (+5 APs)
2020

Directed Cages

Directed Cages is a letterpress print produced on the occasion of Primary Information’s publication of Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979. The print is produced in an edition of 50 and includes a hand-numbered certificate of authenticity stamped by the artist.

Directed Cages was originally produced in 1983.

Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt is an artist based in Germany. She is well known for her typewriter and mail-art works, which she produced in the 1970s and 1980s.

8.5 x 12.5 inches
Letterpress print
Edition of 50 (+5 APs)
2020

Typecode 9

Typecode 9 is a letterpress print by Tomaso Binga produced on the occasion of Primary Information’s publication of Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979. The print is produced in an edition of 50 and is hand-numbered and signed by the artist.

The work was originally produced in 1978 and is part of a larger series of Typecodes, many of which are included in Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979.

Tomaso Binga is an Italian artist and poet working in performance, collage, painting, and installation.

12.5 x 12.5 inches
Letterpress print
Edition of 50
2020

X-Small

This limited-edition is a facsimile reproduction of a Godzilla t-shirt created and designed in 1993 by Stefani Mar, Helen Oji, Tony Wong, and Charles Yuen. It’s being produced by Primary Information to celebrate the recent publication of Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network 1990-2001, which was edited by Howie Chen.

Shirts are only available on a made-to-order basis with a limited window for pre-orders. If you’d like to purchase this edition, please order before 6:00 pm on Friday, December 10. After this date, all orders will be closed and the edition will no longer be available. All orders will ship on or before January 3.

Click here to view all available t-shirt sizes.

The collective known as Godzilla: Asian American Art Network was formed in 1990 to support the production of critical discourse around Asian American art and increase the visibility of Asian American artists, curators, and writers, who were negotiating a historically exclusionary society and art world. Founded by Ken Chu, Bing Lee, and Margo Machida, Godzilla produced exhibitions, publications, and community collaborations that sought to stimulate social change through art and advocacy. For more than a decade, the diasporic group, having grown from a local organization into a nationwide network, confronted institutional racism, Western imperialism, anti-Asian violence, the AIDS crisis, and representations of Asian sexuality and gender, among other urgent issues.

T-shirt
Open Edition
December 2021

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Designers: Stefani Mar, Helen Oji, Tony Wong, and Charles Yuen
Managing Designer (2021): William Bahan
Printer: Flying Saucer Press

 

 

Small

This limited-edition is a facsimile reproduction of a Godzilla t-shirt created and designed in 1993 by Stefani Mar, Helen Oji, Tony Wong, and Charles Yuen. It’s being produced by Primary Information to celebrate the recent publication of Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network 1990-2001, which was edited by Howie Chen.

Shirts are only available on a made-to-order basis with a limited window for pre-orders. If you’d like to purchase this edition, please order before 6:00 pm on Friday, December 10. After this date, all orders will be closed and the edition will no longer be available. All orders will ship on or before January 3.

Click here to view all available t-shirt sizes.

The collective known as Godzilla: Asian American Art Network was formed in 1990 to support the production of critical discourse around Asian American art and increase the visibility of Asian American artists, curators, and writers, who were negotiating a historically exclusionary society and art world. Founded by Ken Chu, Bing Lee, and Margo Machida, Godzilla produced exhibitions, publications, and community collaborations that sought to stimulate social change through art and advocacy. For more than a decade, the diasporic group, having grown from a local organization into a nationwide network, confronted institutional racism, Western imperialism, anti-Asian violence, the AIDS crisis, and representations of Asian sexuality and gender, among other urgent issues.

T-shirt
Open Edition
December 2021

—
Designers: Stefani Mar, Helen Oji, Tony Wong, and Charles Yuen
Managing Designer (2021): William Bahan
Printer: Flying Saucer Press

 

Medium

This limited-edition is a facsimile reproduction of a Godzilla t-shirt created and designed in 1993 by Stefani Mar, Helen Oji, Tony Wong, and Charles Yuen. It’s being produced by Primary Information to celebrate the recent publication of Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network 1990-2001, which was edited by Howie Chen.

Shirts are only available on a made-to-order basis with a limited window for pre-orders. If you’d like to purchase this edition, please order before 6:00 pm on Friday, December 10. After this date, all orders will be closed and the edition will no longer be available. All orders will ship on or before January 3.

Click here to view all available t-shirt sizes.

The collective known as Godzilla: Asian American Art Network was formed in 1990 to support the production of critical discourse around Asian American art and increase the visibility of Asian American artists, curators, and writers, who were negotiating a historically exclusionary society and art world. Founded by Ken Chu, Bing Lee, and Margo Machida, Godzilla produced exhibitions, publications, and community collaborations that sought to stimulate social change through art and advocacy. For more than a decade, the diasporic group, having grown from a local organization into a nationwide network, confronted institutional racism, Western imperialism, anti-Asian violence, the AIDS crisis, and representations of Asian sexuality and gender, among other urgent issues.

T-shirt
Open Edition
December 2021

—
Designers: Stefani Mar, Helen Oji, Tony Wong, and Charles Yuen
Managing Designer (2021): William Bahan
Printer: Flying Saucer Press

 

Large

This limited-edition is a facsimile reproduction of a Godzilla t-shirt created and designed in 1993 by Stefani Mar, Helen Oji, Tony Wong, and Charles Yuen. It’s being produced by Primary Information to celebrate the recent publication of Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network 1990-2001, which was edited by Howie Chen.

Shirts are only available on a made-to-order basis with a limited window for pre-orders. If you’d like to purchase this edition, please order before 6:00 pm on Friday, December 10. After this date, all orders will be closed and the edition will no longer be available. All orders will ship on or before January 3.

Click here to view all available t-shirt sizes.

The collective known as Godzilla: Asian American Art Network was formed in 1990 to support the production of critical discourse around Asian American art and increase the visibility of Asian American artists, curators, and writers, who were negotiating a historically exclusionary society and art world. Founded by Ken Chu, Bing Lee, and Margo Machida, Godzilla produced exhibitions, publications, and community collaborations that sought to stimulate social change through art and advocacy. For more than a decade, the diasporic group, having grown from a local organization into a nationwide network, confronted institutional racism, Western imperialism, anti-Asian violence, the AIDS crisis, and representations of Asian sexuality and gender, among other urgent issues.

T-shirt
Open Edition
December 2021

—
Designers: Stefani Mar, Helen Oji, Tony Wong, and Charles Yuen
Managing Designer (2021): William Bahan
Printer: Flying Saucer Press