Starting in the mid-1990s, Joachim Koester developed an oeuvre that could be described as a complex web in which journalistic and historical research fuses with personal and fictive narratives. He belongs to an artists generation whose practices are based on what Hal Foster once described as the archival approach. Balancing the thin line between documentary and fiction, Koesters films, photos, and installations reexamine and activate forgotten histories, failed utopias, and the obsolete. In his work, bygone counter-cultural movements reemerge in the same way that geographical and spiritual journeys are retraced. Joachim Koester: Of Spirits and Empty Spaces is published to accompany five independent, complementary exhibitions of the work of Joachim Koester, at Institut dArt Contemporain, Villeurbanne; List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; S.M.A.K., Ghent; and Centre dArt Contemporain, Genève.

Danish artist Joachim Koester's new book, Bringing Something Back, centres on a series of "meditation tapes". The "tapes" explored the various twilight zones between waking and sleeping, and what can be brought back from such semi-darkened mental states in an exhibition context.Operating on the one hand as a catalogue, the book also sets out to expand this exploration in its own right.A visual essay, compiled by art historian, writer and curator Yann Chateigné, runs through the book and combines Koester's own works with a selection of archival pictures that visually extends the discourse of the "tapes", texts and artworks.Features an interview with an interview between Yann Chateigné and Joachim Koester.Exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall 26. January 2018 -- 18. March 2018

Joachim Koester's installations, mostly in public institutions, manipulate interior spaces.

For us to perceive any of the worlds that exist beside our own, not only do we have to covet them but we need to have sufficient energy to seize them. In this revolutionary book, Carlos Castaneda offers readers the key to this energetic conditioning for the first time, revealing a series of body positions and physical movements that enabled various sorcerers, and their apprentices, to navigate their own sorceric journeys. By sharing this centuries-old wisdom, Carlos Castaneda makes it possible for readers to travel to some of these other realms, which are as real, unique, absolute, and engulfing as our own world. Castaneda offers both a philosophical history of magical passes and an innovative, easy-to-understand instructional format, complete with more than 450 computer-generated illustrations. Written with humor, clarity, and authority, Magical Passes further illuminates the true meaning of sorcery and magic.

Humanity's place in the natural order is under scrutiny as never before, held in a precarious balance between visible and invisible forces: from the microscopic threat of a virus to the monumental power of climate change. Drawing on indigenous traditions from the Amazon rainforest; alternative perspectives on Western scientific rationalism; and new thinking around plant intelligence, philosophy and cultural theory, The Botanical Mind Online investigates the significance of the plant kingdom to human life, consciousness and spirituality across cultures and through time. It positions the plant as both a universal symbol found in almost every civilisation and religion across the globe, and the most fundamental but misunderstood form of life on our planet. This new online project has been developed in response to the COVID-19 crisis and the closure of our galleries due to the pandemic. 'The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and The Cosmic Tree' was originally conceived as a trans-generational group exhibition, but has been postponed. In the meantime, we have launched this complimentary online programme of new artist commissions, podcasts, films, texts, images and audio, expanding on and enriching the ideas and issues informing the show over at botanicalmind.online ... During this period of enforced stillness, our behaviour might be seen to resonate with plants: like them we are now fixed in one place, subject to new rhythms of time, contemplation, personal growth and transformation. Millions of years ago plants chose to forego mobility in favour of a life rooted in place, embedded in a particular context or environment. The life of a plant is one of constant, sensitive response to its environment - a process of growth, problem-solving, nourishment and transformation, played out at speeds and scales very different to our own. In this moment of global crisis and change there has perhaps never been a better moment to reflect on and learn from them.--https://camdenartcentre.org/the-botanical-mind-online/

British poet G.K. Chestertons apocalyptic anarchist classicThe Man

Edited by Jenelle Porter. Text by Jenelle Porter, Edwin Denby, Shirley Clarke, Yvonne Rainer, Charles Atlas, et al.

1 Ruins of Utopia -- 2 Reinventing propaganda films -- 3 Archives of commodities -- 4 Digital Utopia in the post-internet age

Time contemporary art has explored such diverse registers of temporality as wasting and waiting, regression and repetition, deja vu and seriality, idleness and unrealized potential, non-consummation and counter-productivity, the belated and the premature, the disjointed and the out of synch - all of which go against sequential time and index slips in chronological experience. While theorists have proposed radical perspectives such as the 'anachronistic' or 'heterochronic' reading of history, artists have opened up the field of time to the extent that they very notion of the contemporary is brought into question. - Back cover

What are the processes that enable archives to become productive? Conventional archives tend to be defined through the content-specific accumulation of material, which conforms to an existing order or narrative. They rarely transform their structure. In contrast to this model of archival practice and preservation, the conflictual archive has an open framework in which it actively transforms itself, allowing for the creation of new and surprising relationships. Illustrating how spaces of knowledge can be devised, developed, and designed, this archive reveals itself as a space in which documents and testimonies open up a stage for productive dispute and struggle. Exploring nontraditional archives, such as those of Harald Szeemann, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Sitterwerk, and the publishing house Merve, The Archive as a Productive Space of Conflict offers new perspectives on archival practice, interrogating whether archives need spatial permanence, and, if so, which design framework should be applied for the archive to take on more than a singular form of existence. The research project is a collaboration between the Karlsruhe University of Art and Design and the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève). Copublished with Karlsruhe University of Art and Design and the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève) Contributors Stuart Bailey, Bassam El Baroni, Thomas Bayrle, Jeremy Beaudry, Beatrice von Bismarck, Beatriz Colomina, Céline Condorelli, Mathieu Copeland, Dexter Sinister, Joseph Grima, Nav Haq, Sandi Hilal, Nikolaus Hirsch, Thomas Jefferson, Christoph Keller, Alexander Kluge, Joachim Koester, Armin Linke, Julia Moritz, Rabih Mroué, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Seth Price, Walid Raad, Alice Rawsthorn, Patricia Reed, David Reinfurt, Claire de Ribaupierre, Eyal Weizman, et al.