VOLUMES Art Publishing Days 2024 16. & 17. November 2024 Zentralwäscherei Zürich

Beginning in the 1990s, the efflorescence of a technology-driven, ostensibly post-industrial “new economy” brought with it a revival of interest in an array of concepts and discourses relating to systems, and the “systems thinking” that had animated both progressive utopian projects of the 1960s and 70s and the totalizing global geopolitical schemas of the Cold War. This issue of Counter-Signals began as an attempt to assemble a reappraisal of this reappraisal of cybernetics and systems theory that, it was hoped, would offer critical perspectives to counter the uncritical affirmation that characterized much of architecture and design discourse. As the call propagated outwards through world, it expanded into wider fields of systematicity and a more complex, though no less urgent and acute, constellation of discontents.

Pueblo is a book about a country falling apart, about a city -Caracas- eating itself in.

Marinella is Anna's charming neighbor.
She has long white hair and strong psychic and telepathic abilities.
She loves pink and blue, popcorn and colorful sweets.
She has a special relationship with angels and the afterlife, where her husband Piero and her recently deceased cat Minny live.
Their bond with Marinella consists of listening, telepathy and the sharing of stories, notes, gifts and small sweets that she leaves as bait on the stairs leading to Anna's apartment to invite her to enter her den and spend time with her.
Marinella, a descendant of a baroness, reads Novella 2000 in her armchair, surrounded by old objects and cobwebs.

A discussion with the artist and author on illustrated narratives in handbound books and artist process contexts. How the 2024 book release "Lotus" is both a contemporary mystery fiction story set in Zurich and part of a broader art history context connected to Japan.

Issue #29 of zweikommasieben hovers in a state of in-between. It presents itself as a printed magazine, focused on the documentation of contemporary music and sounds. As always, it features far-reaching interviews with artists and essays by writers that we hold dear, from DeForrest Brown Jr. on Lonnie Holley, to 37 rapid-fire questions posed to Golin by Jazmina Figueroa, or an essay on longing and nostalgia by Biz Sherbert.
At the same time, the magazine, which was designed by Laurenz Brunner and Dominik Bissem, applies formal strategies that so clearly stem from the digital. Leaning into some of its most recognizable signifiers, like simultaneity, multi-tabbing, or hyperlinking, zweikommasieben #29 aspires to be something that it’s not. How does one turn over a screen and scroll on printed matter, and what might get lost in the transfer? Our desire (a term that’s reoccurring in this very issue, applied with a myriad of meanings) to capture the present moment in music and culture is continuously challenged by a fear of missing out.

The series The Fleurop List references a list of code names of the German secret service BND, in which friendly states that were spied on (which recently caused a major scandal), were given the names of plants. This list is astonishing because it shows how, within Europe, everyone is spying on everyone else. But it also shows clichés and images that are used at the highest level between states. Why is the code name for Turkey a hemp plant, but the code name for the USA is a flowering hydrangea? Because of its floridity, this list was internally called the "Fleurop list" in intelligence circles – after the well-known florist from the Internet. The name thus brings a pop and commercial world touch to the world of state secrets. In the photo series, the various countries are presented with artificial plants and are portrayed drippingly beautiful in the photo studio: Fake flowers, like fake names as an image for a (secret) artificial second world that is above what is publicly known. This world mixes in the events of the world every day and leaves its footprints. The sashes in the national flags are reminiscent of the wreaths and flowers and flower arrangements in memory of important events.