John Akomfrah - A Space of Empathy

Archive Books 2023 ISBN 9783949973444 Acqn 34046

Hb 22x28cm 120pp col ills £37

An overview of John Akomfrah's work, with contributions by Julia Grosse and Nelly Y. Pinkrah, an
interview with the artist, along with a foreword by Sebastian Baden. Published on the occasion of
the eponymous exhibition at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in 2023-2024. John Akomfrah (born
1957) is a British artist, writer, film director, screenwriter, theorist and curator. His works are
characterised by their investigations into memory, post-colonialism, cultural identity, temporality
and aesthetics and often explores the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. Akomfrah was a
founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982
alongside the artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul, who he still collaborates with today.

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As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories (Reader)
Archive Books 2023 ISBN 9783949973451 Acqn 34045
Pb 16x24cm 396pp col ills £27.50

This reader, published with the eponymous exhibition at Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt,
interweaves essays, conversations, and poetry tracing the multiplicity of worldviews, histories,
and archives that have existed within an area of Central and Eastern Europe, Central and North
Asia, and beyond. Through reappraisals and novel frameworks, it seeks to parse cosmological,
cultural, and political histories in this geographical area. The reader includes themes such as the
geographies of Jadidism, understandings of Indigeneity in different contexts in the world, a
reconsideration of Muslim subjectivities that defied control and uniformization by the Russian
Empire, and much more.

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Milena Bonilla - The Hour Before Sunset
Archive Books 2023 ISBN 9789895348091 Acqn 34044
Pb 13x19cm 244pp col ills £16.50

Artist Milena Bonilla took correspondence written by revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg from
prison in 1917 as a starting point to conceive an exhibition in which she explored the potential of
the archive and historical interpretation for the creation of collective memory. In the exhibition,
political and affective resonances were combined with botanical knowledge and imagery. This
book comprises a critical reflection by the exhibition's curator, Juan Luis Toboso, a conversation
between Bonilla and curator Isabeli Santiago, an essay by researcher Vivian Ziherl, the
reproduction of Luxemburg's original letter, and visual documentation of the presentation.

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DNCB - A History of Irritation
Archive Books 2023 ISBN 9783949973222 Acqn 34078
Pb 20x30cm 42pp col ills £16.50

Part visual essay, oral history and artist book, DNCB - A History of Irritation is a companion to the
multi-channel installation DNCB by Oliver Husain and Kerstin Schroedinger. The book plays with
contrasting paper formats and materials, using glossy colourful video stills and distorted archival
imagery to achieve a similar effect to the film, video and audio tracks in the installation. It gives
more room to the informative and deeply touching interviews the artists did with AIDS activists
and long-term survivors, and collects the archival research on DNCB for the first time in a
publication. DNCB stands for Dinitrochlorobenzene. It is used in the development of analogue
colour film. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, the substance was also employed as a
treatment in alternative AIDS clinics around the USA and Canada.

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