Biographies / autobiographies

 
 
Hans Ulrich Obrist -
2025
English edition
Sternberg Press - Imagine/otherwise
forthcoming
In this deeply personal volume, Simone Fattal's close friend and confidante Hans Ulrich Obrist delves into the artist's past to explore the remarkable breadth of her body of work.
Ludovic Burel - Le laboratoire de fermentation
2025
French edition
it: editions
forthcoming
The first documentary account by artist, curator and publisher Ludovic Burel, Le laboratoire de fermentation (The fermentation laboratory) retraces four years of investigation, carried out on several continents, into wild and cultivated plants and the means of fermenting them, questioning our relationship to both the human (individual and society) and the non-human (plant and other).
Ross Bolleter - Suivez ma Trace / Track Me Down
2025
bilingual edition (English / French)
Lenka lente
forthcoming
Ross Bolleter's latest collection of poems draws on his experience as a musician/composer especially in the field of ruined piano, and includes tributes to Thelonious Monk and other luminaries who have inspired him over a lifetime of musical and poetic creation. This new book explores the themes of childhood, eros, love, death—and football.
Enzo Mari - 25 façons de planter un clou
2025
French edition
Les presses du réel – Architecture / design / graphic design – Design/Théories
forthcoming
An autobiographical account and uncompromising meditation on the meaning of design, in the voice of the man who represented the ethical and political conscience of the discipline in the second half of the 20th century.
Marc Ribot - Jusqu\'à la corde
2024
French edition
Lenka lente
An essential guitarist for over forty years, and an enlightened partner to John Zorn, Tom Waits and John Lurie, Marc Ribot composes here, through memories, short stories and essays, a self-portrait of rare originality.
Skye Arundhati Thomas -
2024
English edition
Sternberg Press - Imagine/otherwise
In this first critical volume and biography of the Indian artist Lalitha Lajmi (1932–2023), author Skye Arundhati Thomas delves into Lajmi's archives, papers, letters, and sketchbooks in pursuit of clues about the artist's character and path.
Unica Zürn - Katrin - The Tale of a Young Writer
2024
English edition
Crackers
A partly autobiographical novel that the German surrealist artist and author Unica Zürn (1916-1970) wrote for her ten-year-old daughter in 1953, although it would never be published in her lifetime. This is the first translation of the tale from German into English.
Robert Cantarella - Les Carrossiers
2024
French edition
Les presses du réel – Literature – Al Dante
Al Dante - Poetry & Literature
Magda Stawarska -
2024
English edition
Sternberg Press - Imagine/otherwise
This critical biography guides readers through artist Magda Stawarska's practice via a series of journeys—from the streets of Istanbul to the canals of Venice and across the waters of Zanzibar.
Gilles Perraudin - Les jours sont ronds
2024
French edition
Caryatide / Cosa Mentale - Essays
The story/manifesto of an architect's life: a re-reading of Gilles Perraudin's career by himself, enabling us to retrace the path of a thought in perpetual motion.
Servin Bergeret - Iris Clert - singulièrement galeriste
2024
French edition
Les presses du réel – Criticism, theory & documents – Fama
This monographic essay explores Iris Clert, an unclassifiable and emblematic figure of the 1960s artistic avant-garde.
Miquel Mont - ÉL S. A. - Biographie#Dissociée
2024
texts in French, Catalan, Castilian, English
Naima
The culmination of a multidisciplinary project developed over ten years, where Miquel Mont blends real and fictional autobiographical elements to explore the economy of affects.
 Iliazd - PhiloSophia - Istanbul 1921
2024
English edition
Rab-Rab Press
The fifth volume of the bie bao series presents Ilya Zdanevich's fictional auto-biographical writings based on his one-year stay in Istanbul in 1921.
Danny Lyon - This Is My Life I\'m Talking About
2024
English edition
Damiani - Photography
A picaresque memoir written from inside the heart of the revolutionary twentieth century by one of its most crucial witnesses.
Jean-Marie Gleize - Je deviens (séances)
2024
French edition
Les presses du réel – Literature – Al Dante
Al Dante - Poetry & Literature
This latest book—part of a ten-volume series that began with Léman in 1990—takes up and redistributes the elements of an investigation whose main material is autobiographical. The author restores an imaginary "childhood" that he writes about in a poetic attempt to understand it, and never ceases to "become".
Wesley Brown - Blue in Green (paperback edition)
2023
English edition
Blank Forms - Books
Wesley Brown narrates the day when trumpeter Miles Davis was assaulted by the New York Police Department. A dramatic and humorous story, told from multiple perspectives including that of Frances Taylor, Davis's wife, and the musicians in Davis's bands: a timely meditation on the psychological impact of police brutality, through the lens of a day in the life of Miles Davis.
Bruno Fernandès - Dadakan ! - Nu intègre descendant les préjugés
2023
French edition
Les presses du réel – Avant-gardes – Délashiné!
The life and work of the precursor of happening and streaking in Japan, Itoi Kanji (aka Dadakan, 1920-2021): the first comprehensive chrono-biographical study in Western language on the great Japanese Dadaist nudist ascetic, with a rare iconography.
Pierre Henry - Diary of my sounds
2023
bilingual edition (English / French)
Maison ONA
New expanded edition of an essential text for defining the thought of composer Pierre Henry (1927-2017): a musical biography in the sense of a diary and an autobiography in forty-two sequences that accompanied him in various forms between 1977 and 2005 (audio download link included).
Inge Bondi - Ernst Haas - Letters & Stories
2023
English edition
Damiani - Photography
Writer Inge Bondi sheds fresh light on the life of her close friend and colleague, the Austrian American photographer Ernst Haas (1921–86), an early innovator in color photography, whom she first met in New York's Magnum offices in 1951.
Louis Reyes Rivera - A Strange Celestial Road - My Time in the Sun Ra Arkestra
2023
English edition
Blank Forms - Books
In this memoir, Harlem-born trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah recounts decades of national and international touring with the Sun Ra Arkestra and charts the rise of New York loft jazz scene, offering a fascinating portrait of advanced music in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan from the 1970s through the 1990s.
Igor Terentiev - Tenderness Record - The Life of Ilya Zdanevich
2023
English edition
Rab-Rab Press
Igor Terentiev's biography of Ilya Zdanevich published in 1919 in Tbilisi.
Yann Chateigné Tytelman - Blackout
2023
French edition
CEC (Centre d'édition contemporaine)
A very personal text by Yann Chateigné Tytelman, curator and critic, who establishes a link between his past, his childhood and his career as a curator, his artistic choices, his exhibitions, often in connection with the theme of silence.
Olga Medvedkova - Nom, prénom, patronyme - Enquête en trois cahiers
2023
French edition
Les presses du réel – Criticism, theory & documents – Œuvres en sociétés
An experience of introspection, an epistemological reflection and an act of resistance in the face of depersonalization, around the question of the name.
Virginie Despentes - نظرية كينغ كونغ
2023
Arabic edition
Kulte Editions
First Arabic translation of Virginie Despentes' cult book King Kong Theory.
Julia Scher - Filzengraben Boulevard (vinyl LP)
2023
Small World
35.00 31.00 €
An autobiographical artist-talk as a performance delivered from the artist's bed over Zoom.
Joel Meyerowitz - The Pleasure of Seeing - Conversations with Joel Meyerowitz on sixty years in the life of photography
2023
English edition
Damiani - Photography
65.00 59.00 €
The oral and visual autobiography of one of American photography’s most legendary figures.
Jeph Jerman - Listen - Jeph Jerman in conversation with Aram Yardumian
2023
English edition
Errant Bodies
A sketch history of the 1980s American home-taping and electronic music scene through the career of sound artist, field recordist, percussionist, and visual artist Jeph Jerman.
Matthias Brunner - Magnificent Obsessions Saved My Life
2023
English edition
Edition Patrick Frey
A life, between art and cinema (the Swiss film curator’s visual autobiography, with guest appearances from Fassbinder, Warhol, Waters and many more).
Norbert Bugeja - Oublie qu\'elle n\'est pas là
2023
French edition
Les presses du réel – Literature – Al Dante
Al Dante - Poetry & Literature
A poetic journey through the anxious spaces of memory, explored here by one of the most powerful voices of Mediterranean poetry of his generation.
Ahmed Slama - Marche-frontière
2023
French edition
Les presses du réel – Literature – Al Dante
Al Dante - Poetry & Literature
A very personal literary narrative, with a singular writing, of a migrant's experience of wandering and borders.
Georges Appaix - Post-scriptum
2022
French edition
CND (Centre National de la Danse) - Notebooks (ebooks)
The French choreographer looks back on his career in a very personal text, both playful and poetic.
 Iliazd - Iliazda at the Birthday Party - Autobiographical Lecture, 1922
2022
English edition
Rab-Rab Press
The English translation of Zdanevich's Dadaist autobiographical lecture in Paris in 1922, where he adopts the name Iliazda. In this entertaining lecture, the achievements of the avant-garde is presented as a combination of zaum, polymorphous sexuality, aleatory forms and scatological interpretation of culture.
Omar Kholeif -
2022
English edition
Sternberg Press - Imagine/otherwise
The first comprehensive monograph of the art and life of Iranian American artist of Armenian descent Sonia Balassanian: in this deeply personal portrait, author Dr. Omar Kholeif weaves together poetry, memoir, and historical anecdote to trace the contours of Balassanian's world.
Raphaël Minnesota - Patrice Kirchhofer - Un cinéma pariétal
2022
French edition
Les presses du réel – Cinema & video art
Raphaël Minnesota retraces the career and explores the whole oeuvre of Patrice Kirchhofer (1953-2019), one of the most mysterious and mythical filmmakers of French experimental cinema.
Wesley Brown - Blue in Green
2022
English edition
Blank Forms - Books
Wesley Brown narrates the day when trumpeter Miles Davis was assaulted by the New York Police Department. A dramatic and humorous story, told from multiple perspectives including that of Frances Taylor, Davis's wife, and the musicians in Davis's bands: a timely meditation on the psychological impact of police brutality, through the lens of a day in the life of Miles Davis.
Liam Gillick - A Max De Vos
2022
English edition
MER. B&L
A novel by Liam Gillick.
Richard Hertz - Jack Goldstein et la CalArts Mafia
2022
French edition
Les presses du réel – Criticism, theory & documents – Documents
JRP|Editions - Documents (co-edition Les presses du réel)
The fascinating story of Jack Goldstein, the beginnings of CalArts, and some of the illustrious fellows who, in the 1970s and 1980s, led the transition from conceptual art to the Pictures Generation, paints an uncompromising picture of the art world then and now.
Marie Gispert - Jean Cassou - Une histoire du musée
2022
French edition
Les presses du réel – Art History – Œuvres en sociétés
A history of the museum of modern art, exhibitions and discourses on art and its public in the 20th century, from the trajectory of Jean Cassou (1897-1986), writer, resistance fighter, art critic, poet and chief curator of thenational museum for modern art of France from 1945 to 1965.
Jan-Christopher Horak - Saul Bass - Autopsie du design cinématographique
2022
French edition
Les presses du réel – Architecture / design / graphic design – Design – Misceallenous
The first book to examine the life and work of the fascinating figure of Saul Bass, exploring the designer's revolutionary career and his lasting impact on the entertainment and advertising industries.
Camille Azaïs - Homemakers
2022
French edition
Tombolo Presses
The first published fiction text by art critic and author Camille Azaïs, which questions the return to the home of American women since the 2010s.
Julius Eastman - Gay Guerrilla - L\'histoire de Julius Eastman
2022
French edition
Éditions 1989
A collection of biographical and musical essays about composer-performer Julius Eastman—a compelling portrait of Eastman's enigmatic and intriguing life and music.
 Boris Blank & Dieter Meier - Oh Yeah - Yello 40
2022
English edition
Edition Patrick Frey
A celebration of the 40 years of career of electropop pioneers.
Benjamin Mouliets - Mikami Kan (book + CD)
2021
French edition
Lenka lente
The biography of the singer and performer Mikami Kan, figure of the Japanese underground scene, with two unreleased concerts on CD.
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