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Idea Books

New Titles in Art & Essays + New distributed Publisher: Cthulhu Books

28 April 2025

A Book for Disappearance

Isbn 9781234567897
Publisher Cthulhu Books
Idea code 250320
€ 23.65

While the concept of disappearance may seem abstract or esoteric, it has tangible implications for both individual and collective action. In this book, disappearance emerges as an alternative and is explored through themes of extinction and ecology, using AI and image-generation platforms as collective tools. Short poetic and experimental texts on the multiple possibilities that surface from engaging with AI alter-egos are accompanied by an artistic exercise with image-generation technologies. The book is the outcome of the Postnatural Independent Program 2024 and explores the historical, ethical, and aesthetical paradoxes of working for and from disappearance.

168 p, ills colour & bw, 18 x 25 cm, pb, English

Making Kin – Animal Series

Isbn 9788409478514
Publisher Cthulhu Books
Idea code 250316
€ 16.15

The literary genre of xenofiction proposes an exercise of ethological research and imagination, placing our body inside another’s perspective. When we practice “becoming with” another’s experience, we practice empathy. When we embody collectiveness, we understand ourselves as a whole and therefore feel no separation. What would it be like to inhabit a body without limits or definition? Which words and meanings make us feel like “non-animals”? In this book, the contributions come from writers and non-writers who have experimented with non-human animals and hybrid bodies to create works and visual interpretations that explore different ways to experience “otherness”.

116 p, ills bw, 13 x 19 cm, pb, Spanish/English

Compost Reader – Institute for Postnatural Studies'

Isbn 9788409333585
Publisher Cthulhu Books
Idea code 250317
€ 16.15

Presented by the Institute for Postnatural Studies, based in Madrid, ‘Compost Reader’ asks you to think of the world to come as a great compost, and the act of composting as our new relational ontology. Composting makes us a single planetary material (humans, beings, objects, technologies). It is the past and it is the future. It is space, place, and it is matter. It is a world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social realms, where there are rituals of celebration, entanglements, and interrelationships. This book speaks about beginnings, new relationships, and unstable modes of doing, thinking, and being, allowing questions to spawn new questions.

156 p, ills bw, 15 x 21 cm, pb, Spanish/English

Compost Reader 2 – Institute for Postnatural Studies

Isbn 9788409661527
Publisher Cthulhu Books
Idea code 250318
€ 19.35

The second volume of ‘Compost Reader’ continues to espouse its vision of the world as an interconnected being, where all parts relate to one another. The act of composting becomes our new relational ontology. Composting is seen as a way of cultivating consciousness through questions instead of answers, and from uncertainty and doubt. Hydro-memories, a talking lion, sounds that live in a snail shell, a dry swamp, a herbal medicine witch girl, ephemeral queer performances, chemical-sensing tentacles, stone eaters, scriptures-fossil, dolphins in traffic, blue humanities, and digital forensic public spaces are just some of the matters fermenting in this book.

180 p, ills bw, 15 x 21 cm, pb, Spanish/English

Erik Mattijssen - Noticing Things

Isbn 9789090397979
Publisher Erik Mattijssen
Idea code 250301
€ 35.55

The world that Erik Mattijssen creates with his work is open and bright, in a playful way both harmonious and strange. There is beauty to be found, and lightness, but also signs of melancholy. The way he deals with the darkness of life is indirect, playful, and mysterious, without ever becoming overly sentimental or frivolous. The exuberant palette of colours he employs is necessary to shake our perception awake for a moment. Nothing becomes larger than life, but rather brighter. It is like an invitation to see more than everyday objects, to look through the physicality and observe them the way the artist does, with astonishment, pleasure, compassion, and longing.

240 p, ills colour & bw, 21 x 26 cm, pb, English

Erik Mattijssen - Oog voor Dingen

Isbn 9789090397429
Publisher Erik Mattijssen
Idea code 250300
€ 35.55

The world that Erik Mattijssen creates with his work is open and bright, in a playful way both harmonious and strange. There is beauty to be found, and lightness, but also signs of melancholy. The way he deals with the darkness of life is indirect, playful, and mysterious, without ever becoming overly sentimental or frivolous. The exuberant palette of colours he employs is necessary to shake our perception awake for a moment. Nothing becomes larger than life, but rather brighter. It is like an invitation to see more than everyday objects, to look through the physicality and observe them the way the artist does, with astonishment, pleasure, compassion, and longing.

240 p, ills colour & bw, 21 x 26 cm, pb, Dutch

One Single Kite – Liesbeth Abbenes Maurice Scheltens Bertjan Pot

Isbn 9789083528908
Publisher Kite Club
Idea code 250322
€ 34.05

The three members of the self-proclaimed Kite Club love everything about kites, so publishing their process in making a single kite seemed like a natural expression of their affection towards these wonderful objects. After all, the construction of a kite involves many beautiful stages. The particular model represented here is based on a traditional Japanese design called ‘Kaku Dako’, which roughly translates to “rectangular kite”. Usually constructed out of paper and bamboo, their version of the kite is made from ripstop nylon with a carbon fibre frame, which can be dismantled and reassembled for storage, transportation, use, and display. Get inspired to make your own kite!

54 p, ills colour, 24 x 32 cm, pb, English

Fragments of Repair

Isbn 9789493329317
Publisher Jap Sam Books
Idea code 250327
€ 19.45

'Fragments of Repair' is the fourth publication in BAK’s publishing series BASICS which revisits fundamental questions and urgencies of our time—the “basics”—and seeks to develop afresh the building blocks of lexicons, tactics, scenarios, and relations that enable action in contemporary conditions. Today’s entwined crises reveal deep-seated wounds that issue from historical colonialisms and present-day authoritarianisms, economic disparity and growing racial violence, and the abuses inflicted on vulnerable populations and the planet. To address this disquieting chaos, this book, co-conceptualized by artist Kader Attia with curators Maria Hlavajova and Wietske Maas, offers a collection of long- and short-form essays, visual essays, and conversations on decolonial repair as both a tool and a tactic of engagement with the current state of the world.

256 p, ills colour & bw, 16 x 23 cm, pb, English

Isabelle Graw - Fear and Money

Isbn 9781915609694
Publisher Sternberg Press
Idea code 250288
€ 23.95

In this fictional work by author and art historian Isabelle Graw, fear indeed eats the soul of the protagonist as she struggles to survive in a world increasingly defined and divided by money, addressing the situation with psychoanalytic depth. Relatable to anyone who recognizes the stream of anxious thoughts along with feelings of isolation and abandonment, the gripping inner monologue in this latest novel from Graw also offers instances of relief, connecting all who feel equally stuck, frayed, and neurotic, and suggesting a collective route through this crisis-shaken world.

200 p, ills bw, 13 x 21 cm, pb, English

Provoking Freeport Magic: Art Assemblage in Late Capitalism

Isbn 9783956796227
Publisher Sternberg Press
Idea code 250289
€ 16.00

What is magic – and what can it do? In this book, Jessica Backsell investigates the magic of the art world and culture’s persistent tendency to present art as emblematic of an alternative value system. Using the empirical example of the freeport - luxury storage facilities where valuable artworks are kept for preservation and tax purposes - Backsell examines the implications of viewing the art world through its contingent entanglements and practices. Focusing on the contested space of the freeport, Backsell engages with the enduring “culture versus capitalism” debate. She challenges the notion of magic as an innate, mysterious force, instead proposing it as a practice—a vital yet overlooked component of the curatorial toolkit. This practice, which she terms “conspicuous withdrawal,” is central to how art is positioned and understood today.

152 p, ills bw, 13 x 19 cm, pb, English

A Model

Isbn 9789464460759
Publisher Roma Publications
Idea code 250283
€ 31.10

This book, 'A Model', parallels an exhibition at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean. The museum’s director Bettina Steinbrügge conceived this exhibition as a conversation with the ever evolving contemporary art museum. This publication, with an essay about the roles museums can take, in theory, in practice, and in use, enacts how Steinbrügge engages the artists in the exhibition to sit with this shifting idea. Commissioning major works by Nina Beier & Bob Kil, Rayyane Tabet, Oscar Murillo, or Claire Fontaine and historical works by Alvar Aalto and Tomaso Binga the exhibition uses the format of prologue, body, and epilogue to overlap gestures in the museum space. Likewise, this book engages the designer Julie Peeters, photographer Adrianna Glaviano, and artist Jason Dodge as editor to stage a publication that makes a new exhibition, 'A Model', between these pages.

248 p, ills colour, 22 x 29 cm, pb, English

Dessin – Collection Antoine de Galbert

Isbn 9791095991472
Publisher Editions Empire
Idea code 250321
€ 41.95

This book brings together over 500 drawings from the Antoine de Galbert Collection. Gathered over a period of almost 40 years and comprising works by more than 200 artists, the drawings are presented in the form of an alphabet book, which naturally leads to the generation of chance encounters and intriguing juxtapositions. Included are works by Isaac Abrams, Atelier Van Lieshout, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Hans Bellmer, Cathryn Boch, Michaël Borremans, John Cage, Hiroyuki Doi, Marcel Dzama, Lucio Fontana, Jochen Gerner, Elika Hedayat, Oda Jaune, René Magritte, Elina Merenmies, Annette Messager, Panamarenko, Thomas Schütte, Pae White, and many others.

324 p, ills colour & bw, 22 x 30 cm, pb, French/English

Contemporary Art from India Schoo Collection

Isbn 9789493329324
Publisher Jap Sam Books
Idea code 250326
€ 34.00

This book is dedicated to contemporary art from India, compiled by Eegje Schoo. She started her collection when she was the Dutch ambassador to India from 1987 to 1991. In the years that followed, Schoo continued to promote art from India through her Amsterdam-based Foundation for Indian Artists (FIA). She recently donated parts of her collection to Museum Arnhem, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and Kunstmuseum Den Haag. This publication delves deeper into the background of the Schoo Collection, the artists Schoo followed, often from the earliest beginnings of their careers, her activities with FIA, and of course the works she collected.

388 p, ills colour, 17 x 25 cm, pb, Dutch/English

Vlatka Horvat - By the Means at Hand

Isbn 9783949973765
Publisher Archive Books
Idea code 250261
€ 25.55

'By the Means at Hand' offers a look into Vlatka Horvat's eponymous project, presented at the Pavilion of Croatia at the 60th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia in 2024. Horvat invited some 200 international artists—friends and friends of friends, all living "as foreigners" in different countries around the world—to exchange small-scale artworks with her, all made for the occasion. For every work she received, Vlatka sent to each artist a collage from the series she was making while in residence in Venice. All the artworks travelled to Venice and back via informal transport networks; in bags and suitcases of friends, acquaintances, and sometimes strangers enlisted as couriers for the project.

368 p, ills colour & bw, 22 x 27 cm, pb, English

Tomás Saraceno - Life(s) of webs: arachnophobias, arachnophilias, and other stories

Isbn 9788880562948
Publisher Nero
Idea code 250159
€ 17.20

The book 'Tomás Saraceno. Life(s) of Webs: Arachnophobias, Arachnophilias, and Other Stories' is published alongside the permanent installation of the same name by Tomás Saraceno, housed in the Church of the Madonna del Carmine within the National Museum of Matera. It includes essays exploring the cultural significance of spiders and webs from an interspecies perspective, alongside a section of colour images dedicated to the installation in Matera.

152 p, ills colour & bw, 10 x 17 cm, pb, English

Jo Ann Callis – Dish Trick

Isbn 9798991412810
Publisher Luhz Press
Idea code 250313
€ 41.35

Through humorous compositions and jarring juxtapositions, Jo Ann Callis’ book explores the emotions latent in the objects of the home. As one of the first major practitioners of the “fabricated photographs" movement, she transforms the ordinary into unfolding dramas, and invites the viewer to collaborate in the fiction. This book delves into the artist’s archive and entwines her late 1970s photographs and 1980s black-and-white “Grid” still lifes. By way of gatefolds, the narrative of the book physically unveils itself, revealing a set of scenes modular in their path and rich in the anxieties domestic sphere

110 p, ills colour & bw, 16 x 20 cm, hb, English

Radio Ballads: Songs for Change

Isbn 9783947858620
Publisher K. Verlag
Idea code 250306
€ 29.90

'Radio Ballads: Songs for Change' revisits the spirit of the revolutionary BBC series (1957–64) that amplified the voices of workers and underrepresented communities through song and storytelling. Over sixty years later, Serpentine Civic Projects commissioned four new Radio Ballads (2019–23) by artists Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim, and Ilona Sagar, working with carers, social workers, and residents in Barking and Dagenham. This publication weaves their complex stories of care, grief, and resilience through eight collaborative songs, exploring how creative collaboration can foster interdependence, healing, and collective action. It asks: what collective songs are needed for today’s crises?

608 p, ills colour, 18 x 21 cm, pb, English

Tekla Aslanishvili - The Mountain Speaks to the Sea

Isbn 9789493382138
Publisher Onomatopee
Idea code 250303
€ 18.50

'The Mountain Speaks to the Sea' explores Tekla Aslanishvili’s experimental film trilogy, which examines how ports, railways, and smart city projects function as technologies of citizenship and sovereignty. It reveals the disruptive impacts of large-scale energy and transport projects on the ecologies of the South Caucasus by connecting distant geographies with future visions. Focusing on the power of moving images to shape and dismantle infrastructures, the publication weaves fragmented (hi)stories of people living around sites of transit and extraction - those who disrupt material systems to challenge state violence. Blending an artist’s book and a reader, The Mountain Speaks to the Sea experiments with translating film into print. Edited by Tekla Aslanishvili and Silvia Franceschini, it features contributions from Alexandra Aroshvili, Ifor Duncan, Silvia Franceschini, Evelina Gambino, and Timothy Mitchell.

344 p, ills colour & bw, 11 x 18 cm, pb, English

Lerin/Hystad - Electronic Flora

Isbn 9789198870527
Publisher Art & Theory Publishing
Idea code 250166
€ 55.90

This book captures Lerin/Hystad’s unique encounters with over 100 plant species through sketches, text, and music. It explores the idea that, while plants remain distinctly “other,” our shared planet requires balancing connection and respectful distance. In response to growing environmental awareness, the artists seek less mediated, more direct interactions with nature.Their work emphasizes ecological interconnectedness, challenging the human-centered view that places people above other life forms. By attaching sensors to plants, Lerin translates their natural rhythms—electrical signals shared with animals, fungi, and bacteria—into sound. Hystad complements this by carefully drawing the plants in their habitats, encouraging us to value the hidden complexity and intelligence of the non-human world.

256 p, ills colour & bw, 23 x 33 cm, pb, English

Énormément bizarre – Collection Jean Chatelus Donation fondation Antoine de Galbert au Centre Pompidou

Isbn 9791095991380
Publisher Editions Empire
Idea code 250256
€ 52.70

"Enormously strange"are the words chosen by artist Wim Delvoye to describe the incredible collection gathered by Jean Chatelus (1939–2021) in his Parisian apartments from the late 1960s onwards. From the bedroom to the garage, this book takes us into his modern-day cabinet of curiosities, as precise and demanding as it is disturbing and thought-provoking. The collection includes the work of numerous artists such as Cindy Sherman, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Mike Kelley, Yayoi Kusama, Christian Boltanski, and Gina Pane, alongside Komo masks and religious knick-knacks. This catalogue was published on the occasion of its donation to Centre Pompidou.

556 p, ills colour & bw, 21 x 30 cm, pb, French/English

Instituting: space-making, refusal, and organizing in the arts and beyond

Isbn 9783949973147
Publisher Archive Books
Idea code 250259
€ 18.40

'Instituting' explores "instituting" as a fluid and critical method in curating, art-making, and organising—an ongoing process that shapes and reshapes structures. It examines how infrastructures emerge in moments of rupture, bringing together practices of gathering, fleeing, and inhabiting spaces. Instituting is framed as both situating and transforming, always in dialogue with its surroundings. This book includes articles, discussions, artistic works, and reflections on shared spaces in the arts and beyond. It considers instituting as both an act of making and unmaking—of resisting fixed forms while engaging institutions. By embracing instability, it invites new ways of studying, organising, and imagining spaces in response to contemporary challenges.

284 p, ills colour & bw, 13 x 22 cm, pb, English

Studies on Squats

Isbn 9783949973840
Publisher Archive Books
Idea code
€ 18.40

Studies on Squats is an evocative exploration of embodied resistance and political movement that uses the multifaceted posture of the “Asian Squat” as a lens through which broader concepts of migration, illness, and resilience are examined. In Studies on Squats, the body—in its most vulnerable and potent states—becomes a speculative site for reclaiming agency by crafting new forms of protest that draw from ancestral strength, humor and eroticism. This posture, rich with cultural resonance, offers as an entry point to imagine ways in which the body can engage in acts of defiance against systems of oppression. Studies on Squats invites the audience to consider how dance and choreographic thinking can serve as tools for envisioning alternative futures, where artistry empowers those enduring systemic social injustices to transform their realities.

128 p, ills bw, 12 x 18 cm, pb, English

Jytte Høy – Words Found More Added

Isbn 9783962160203
Publisher The Green Box
Idea code 250234
€ 31.10

'Words Found More Added' presents the collected series of works by Danish artist Jytte Høy in which she looks for sentences in literature read in connection with her art practice. Høy’s working method is to borrow a sentence and to make an answer to it with a sentence of her own. Furthermore, Høy creates an artwork that adds a visual aspect to the sentences. The aim is to stir up emotions and cross them with mental images. The books that Jytte Høy reads are given or suggested to her by other artists, curators and friends. The selected authors are mostly well known to the public, such as Virginia Woolf, Jacques Roubaud and Anne Carson. With a text contribution by Mai Misfeldt.

96 p, ills colour & bw, 18 x 28 cm, pb, Danish/English

Nigel Peake – Hotel Drawings

Isbn
Publisher Nigel Peake
Idea code 250043
€ 39.20

‘Hotel Drawings’ consists of a set of eight posters of drawings by Nigel Peake in a folder. The drawings were inspired by Peake’s visits to various hotels in Japan, in the cities of Tokyo, Aomori, Kamakura, Kyoto, and Nara. His fascination with the built environment, geometric shapes, and patterns is evident in his work, which is characterised by meticulous attention to detail, precision, and a deep appreciation for the intricate beauty of everyday life. The folded posters are accompanied by a text, “In the Hotel, the Song Sings Itself”, by Jun Iwasaki, a Japanese artist who works in photography and text and is based in The Hague.

8 posters in folder, ills colour, 19 x 28 cm, no text

Daniel Eatock - I Invite you to...

Isbn 9791254931257
Publisher Corraini Edizioni
Idea code 250140
€ 30.25

This book contains over one hundred invitations, encouraging you to engage actively, do the work, and avoid passivity. These invitations range from the literal to the metaphorical and the absurd - each accompanied by a photograph of an artwork. The aim is to inspire a way of questioning and seeing the world. Part manual, part monograph, part manifesto - this is a cookery book of food for the mind. Anyone, except galleries and traders, is welcome to use these suggestions. Inspired by Enzo Mari’s Autoprogettazione? - not only in content but also in its graphics and spiral binding - this book invites you to design, create, imagine, and reinvent works of art. Beginning with an outline provided by the author, it offers a series of suggestions to inspire new ways of seeing, discovering, and making. Each copy includes an original work by Daniel Eatock - a signed and numbered Felt-Tip Print.

96 p, ills colour & bw, 23 x 16 cm, pb, Italian/English

Radium Dreams

Isbn 9781999713140
Publisher The Women’s Art Collection
Idea code 250152
€ 22.20

Accompanying the exhibition 'Radium Dreams' at The Women's Art Collection, this illustrated publication traces the unique collaboration between award-winning poet Sue Hubbard and internationally acclaimed artist Eileen Cooper RA. The exhibition showcased a series of poems and artworks inspired by the remarkable life story of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie. Sue Hubbard's poems and Eileen Cooper's drawings and collages conjure Curie's remarkable life through closely observed moments of struggle, tenderness and joy.

80 p, ills colour & bw, 17 x 24 cm, pb, English

Hilding Linnqvist With His Pencil as an Antenna to The World

Isbn 9789198870596
Publisher Art & Theory Publishing
Idea code 250233
€ 52.70

During his long life, Hilding Linnqvist (1891–1984) made around seventy trips to four continents. From these destinations there are thousands of drawings preserved by The Hilding Linnqvist Foundation in Stockholm. Linnqvist always carried sketchbooks in his pocket and for him drawing was a seamless extension of the sensory apparatus, capturing aspects of existence that neither the camera, the diary, nor the letter could access. In short: his pencil was an antenna to the world. This book makes a comprehensive overview of the travel drawings which until now have remained largely unexplored. It presents more than a hundred drawings, most of them reproduced on a 1:1 scale, as full spreads from the sketchpads. Starting from the first trip in 1920, the drawings lead from France to North Africa, India and Greece to finally return to Sweden.

240 p, ills colour & bw, 24 x 25 cm, hb, Swedish/English

Anna McCarthy: The Hills Have Crazy Eyes – Woman in a Landscape

Isbn 9783689170073
Publisher Edition Taube
Idea code 250203
€ 25.00

"The Hills Have Crazy Eyes – Woman in a Landscape" by Anna McCarthy is a poetic-philosophical work that, in its search for change and healing, juxtaposes the structures of violence against women with humanity’s interaction with nature. It is an assemblage of fragments of personal experience and quotations in German and English, narrated through the history of the perception of nature and mountaineering, and accompanied by sketches, drawings, and paintings created during McCarthy's own en plein air mountaineering expeditions. The book is the second part of a dilogy. The first volume, Trickles & Oozes, is an anthology of drawings depicting melting figures. Both books relate to the performance The Hills Have Crazy Eyes, which premiered at the Münchner Kammerspiele in May 2024.

92 p, ills colour, 20 x 30 cm, pb, English/German

Peter Funch – Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Isbn 9788785336002
Publisher At Last Books
Idea code 250229
€ 66.40

For the first time, Peter Funch’s iconic series 'Babel Tales' and '42nd' and 'Vanderbilt' are presented together, with texts by Mette Sandbye, Ane Cortzen, William Pym, Jesper Elg, Douglas Coupland, and Paul Auster. Funch’s meticulously crafted images appear spontaneous but result from years of observation. 'Babel Tales' (2006–2024) merges time and space into surreal moments, while '42nd' and 'Vanderbilt' (2007–2016) documents Manhattan’s morning rush hour, revealing recurring human patterns. Exploring themes of individuality, collectivity, and surveillance, these series challenge our perception of everyday life. The book also includes archival materials, offering insight into Funch’s creative process.

256 p, ills colour & bw, 30 x 23 cm, hb, English

Unruly Kinships

Isbn 9789493329294
Publisher Jap Sam Books
Idea code 250236
€ 29.20

Kinship is something to be made and not given, and it is one way we create relations with and in the world. Through essays, artistic reflections, and conversations, this book explores kinship as an ongoing process of relational experimentation rather than a fixed concept. With contributions from artists, theorists, and writers, this book examines unruly desires, ancestral connections, and liberatory forms of care that envision the expansive possibilities for kinship. By challenging blood relations and nuclear family structures, the work reimagines care and solidarity, inspiring new ways of creating and sustaining relationships in contemporary society.

288 p, ills colour & bw, 16 x 22 cm, pb, German/English


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