La bibliothèque d'Infosurr
Atlas press
ATLAS ARKHIVE
DOCUMENTS OF THE AVANT-GARDE
This new series is devoted to neglected groups or coherent issues within the avant-garde "anti-tradition" of the last one hundred years. Where possible these will take a documentary form : we will be translating, or reprinting, collections and documents edited by the groups themselves, or whenever possible (with recent or currently active groups) with editorial input from active members. The first issue is now available, the second underway, future issues will appear at intervals of between 6 & 9 months and may appear in a different order from that given here.
- ARKHIVE ONE : DADA BERLIN
- THE DADA ALMANAC. Edited by Richard Huelsenbeck, Berlin, 1920. Introduced and annotated by Malcolm Green & Alastair Brotchie. Translated by Malcolm Green, Barbara Wright, Terry Hale & Derk Wynand. Illustrations, biographies, etc, 176 pp.
THE DADA ALMANAC was assembled by Richard Huelsenbeck, one of the foremost Dadaists from the very inception of Dada to its end, and published in Berlin in 1920 at the high-point of Dadaist activities in the German capital : the Dada Almanac was and is the most important single Dadaist publication. Containing a wide range of poetry, polemics, essays, manifestos and deliberate confusions, not only does it present the vast range of Dadaist literary production and experimentation on an international scale, it also reveals many of the apparent contradictions which lie at the heart of Dada. Between rallying cries for abstract art and calls for a return to objectiveness, between political commitment and naughty pranks, insult and high art, atheism and mysticism, and much much more, the Dada Almanac shows the vital paradoxes which have surrounded Dada with so much of its mystique. As such the Dada Almanac is an essential document for anyone who wishes to reassess the often two-dimensional image which Dada has been bequeathed by the Parisian section of the movement.
Authors : Hans Arp, Johannes Baader, Hugo Ball, Paul Citroen, Paul Dermée, Daimonides, Max Goth, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann, Richard Huelsenbeck, Vincente Huidobro, Mario d'Arezzo, Adon Lacroix, Walter Mehring, Francis Picabia, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Alexander Sesqui, Philippe Soupault, Tristan Tzara. - ARKHIVE TWO : FRENCH SYMBOLISTS & DECADENTS
- THE BOOK OF MASKS. Essays by Remy de Gourmont, with authors' texts selected by Andrew Mangravite. Translated by Andrew Mangravite, Terry Hale, Iain White & others. Illustrations, biographies, 304 pp.
THE BOOK OF MASKS was published in two parts in 1896 and 1898 and consists of essays on the most important of his Symbolist contemporaries by the foremost critic and author of the period : Remy de Gourmont. (The "masks" referred to in the title are the series of remarkable portraits of the authors drawn by Felix Vallotton.) Each author is represented by texts dating from this period; de Gourmont's prefaces to each volume, and overviews of the Symbolists and their pre-occupations are included. The works of forty-seven authors are included, many never before translated into English.
Symbolism was a strange amalgam of the social turmoil of the time; its authors veered between an aesthetics based on simplicity and asceticism and the decadent debauches forever associated with Huysmans and Wilde. Their political associations were equally split, between Catholic piety and right-wing nationalism (Claudel, Barrès) and the anarchist individualism of Tailhade and Feneon. What united these disparate writers at their best was a fierce literature based on a renewed use of language, finely tuned, often astonishingly lush, and aimed at an intense examination of the borderland between inner and outer life.
Authors include : Paul Adam, Maurice Barrès, Léon Bloy, Édouard Dujardin, Eekhoud, Félix Feneon, André Gide, J.-K. Huysmans, Gustave Kahn, Jules Laforgue, Jean Lorrain, Pierre Loüys, Stephane Mallarmé, Stuart Merrill, Ephraim Mikhael, Robert de Montesquiou, Jean Moréas, Pierre Quillard, Rachilde, Henri de Regnier, Adolphe Rette, Saint-Pol-Roux, Marcel Schwob, Laurent Tailhade, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, etc. - ARKHIVE THREE : GEORGES BATAILLE & ACEPHALE
- ENCYCLOPADIA ACEPHALICA. Two important collections of texts by authors associated with Georges Bataille and his secret society Acephale. Introductory essays, photographs by Boiffard, biographies etc. 176 pp.
- ARKHIVE FOUR : FLUXUS
- AN ANECDOTED TOPOGRAPHY OF CHANCE. Daniel Spoerri, in collaboration with Robert Filliou, Emmett Williams and Dieter Rot, illustrations by Topor. 160 pp. approx.
FLUXUS was a loose association of American and European artists operating throughout the sixties and seventies, and the present book is the result of a long-term collaboration between four of its most perceptive and good-humoured participants. It not only personifies the whole Fluxus spirit, but also constitutes a semi-autobiography of an important section of the movement. What is the Topography ? Hard to explain the resonance of such a simple idea so brilliantly executed : Spoerri maps the objects left at random on his table one day (the map appears inside the original edition's dustwrapper). He writes about them, their associations; his friends write about what he writes, anecdotes, recipes, recollections, asides, footnotes upon footnotes proliferate : it is life itself in all its chaos as revealed by four sharp, witty and congenial members of the human species.
The Atlas Press edition will be a reformatted version of the famous Something Else Press edition of 1966, to which we will add, for the first time in English, the annotations of Dieter Rot, who anecdoted the German edition while translating it. There will be a new introduction by Spoerri, Willliams, Rot & Topor. - ARKHIVE FIVE : ERIK SATIE
- ERIK SATIE - A Mammal's Notebook. Collected writings of Erik Satie. Selected and Introduced by Ornella Volta, translated by Antony Melville, fully illustrated. Approx 176 pp,
Dismissed as a bizarre eccentric by most of his contemporaries Erik Satie has come to be seen as a key influence on twentieth century music. Composer, among other pieces, of the ubiquitous Gymnopedies, of 3 pieces in the form of a pear, of the Dada opera Relache and of "furniture music." He was a valued friend of his most illustrious contemporaries : Debussy, Brancusi, Picabia, etc., assuming various personae at different periods of his life : from "velvet gentleman" to quizzical bespectacled bureaucrat.
His poignant and humorous writings embody all his contradictions. Magazine contributions include his Memoirs of an Amnesiac and wryly comic musical commentaries. Also included here are the gnomic annotations to his musical scores, the publications of his private church, his absurdist play Medusa's Trap, his advertisement copy for his local suburban newspaper, and the mysterious, elaborately calligraphed, "private advertisements" found stuffed behind his piano after his death. He died, as he lived, "without quite ceasing to smile." - THE NEXT ARKHIVE : THE OULIPO & ITS OFFSPRING
- AN OULIPO COMPENDIUM. Edited by Alastair Brotchie in collaboration with Harry Mathews & Thieri Foulc. Translations by Harry Mathews, Iain White & others. Illustrations, maps, games, biographies, manifestos etc. 300 pp.
The OULIPO was founded in 1960 by the author Raymond Queneau and the mathematician/chess-player Francois Le Lionnais, originally to investigate the possibilities of combining mathematics and literature. Oulipo stands for Ouvroir de litterature potentielle (roughly "Workshop of Potential Literature"). The group's preoccupations soon widened to include all aspects of "constrictive form" in writing, from simple forms like the sonnet to an entire novel written with words lacking the letter "e" (Perec's La Disparition). The group has met monthly for 30 years now and publishes its own Bibliotheque Oulipienne (more than 70 publications) as well as anthologies of their collective activities. This compendium will also include examples of Oulipian methods used by various American authors (Gilbert Sorrentino, Dallas Wiebe, Keith Waldrop, etc.).
The Oulipo has spawned numerous versions of itself devoted to constrictive form in other areas : the Oulipopo (Ouvroir de litterature potentielle policier = "Workshop for potential detective fiction"), the Oupeinpo applies similar methods to painting.
Authors (Oulipo) include : Noël Arnaud, Marcel Benabou, Claude Bens, Italo Calvino, François Caradec, Stanley Chapman, Marcel Duchamp, Luc Etienne, Paul Fournel, Jacques Jouet, Latis, François Le Lionnais, Jean Lescure, Harry Mathews, Michele Metail, Oskar Pastior, Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau, Jacques Roubaud. Artists (Oupeinpo) : Jacques Carelman, Jean Dewasne, Thieri Foulc, Aline Gagnaire. - FORTHCOMING ARKHIVES ON GRAND JEU, VIENNA ACTIONISTS, SIXTIES COUNTER-CULTURE, COLLEGE OF PATAPHYSICS, UBU.
This anthology collects together two series of essays taking the form of enclopadias assembled by Bataille and the authors associated with the review Documents and the later Acephale group. The first was published as a serial : the Dictionnaire Critique in Documents ; the second, the Da Costa Encyclopedique was published anonymously by the group after the liberation of Paris in 1947. Both cover the essential ideas of Bataille and his associates : sacred sociology; scatology, death and the erotic; base materialism; the aesthetics of the formless; sacrifice, the festival and a politics of tumult etc : a new description of the limits of being human. Humour, albeit sardonic, is not absent from these remarkable redefinitions of the most heterogeneous objects or ideas : Camel, Church, Civilisation, Dust, Museum, Skyscraper, Spittle, Threshold, Work to name but a few.
The Documents group was celebrated for joining together artists, authors, sociologists and ethnologists (among the most important of their time) in a literary and philosophical project. The Acephale group was more mysterious : even its membership is only vaguely known, and its activities remain secret. The origins of the Da Costa were only revealed in 1993 : it was edited by Isabelle Waldberg and Robert Lebel in the USA during the war, yet even now the identities of the authors of a large part of it remain unknown.
Authors include : Jacques Baron, Georges Bataille, André Breton, Jacques Brunius, Charles Duits, Carl Einstein, Jean Ferry, Marcel Griaule, Michel Leiris, Isabelle & Patrick Waldberg, etc.
Atlas In English Atlas En français
INFOSURR, 1, grande rue, 45410 Lion en Beauce, France Bibliothèque - Bulletin Infosurr - Abonnement - Menu central - Message
- ARKHIVE FOUR : FLUXUS