Books published by APE

Contributions by Elvia Wilk, Graham Harman and Adrian MackenzieIn 1959, the American engineer Paul Baran was charged by the RAND Corporation with the task of designing a telecommunications network resilient enough to survive a nuclear attack. A year later Baran published his proposed solution: a network of distributed nodes without a centralized core. He argued that a distributed network would be indestructible because the connections between its nodes were redundant; multiple connections safeguard a system from total destruction if individual nodes are damaged. A decade later, Baran's distributed relay node architecture formed the conceptual framework for the first system of inter-networked computers, which would become the basis for today's decentralized wireless internet. - Elvia Wilk

019 was never going to remain the only place we worked in. From the start, it's been a laboratory that swings us into unknown directions, constantly sharpening our sense of improvisation and reinvention on the spot. For three years, from 2013 onwards, we made that old welding factory at Dok Noord in Ghent the focal point of our activities. People even started to identify the entirety of our collective, Smoke & Dust, with what was basically only the name of its nineteenth project. We became 019. The whole project turned us upside down. But in doing so, we became aware as well. We understood that the act of occupying and taking possession of the site was not the goal of our work at all. From the inside out, starting with a wooden construction in its interior and up to the billboard at an outside wall and a series of flagpoles on the roof, we gradually developed the place into an assembly of undergrounds for public and artistic encounter, an emerging space for collaboration that was grounded on the premise that all media at our disposal were common grounds to be rediscovered. That's when the work began. That's when things began to move, for real. That's when we realized-artists, architects, designers and the like-we had all turned into scenographers, regardless of our discipline: co-authors of a scene that was constructed out of margins and constraints, participants in a game of give and take that we endlessly play around a display we like to recycle. In the end, that's how 019, our handling of its space through appropriation and dispossession, became the site of a moving practice, a collaborative way of working ready to be moved, reproduced and reinvented elsewhere.

"The Cabinet of Traces" is a collection of 73 traces that were left behind by various artists in residency at Air Antwerp from 2012 onwards. The traces presented in this publication form a diverse collection of objects, drawings, little art works, letters, and clothes. Likewise a catalogue of an ethnographic collection, this publication provides all standard technical details with each trace: material, dimensions, title and the artist who created it. Each trace bears its own story. "The Cabinet of Traces" remembers these stories, while feeding new ones. Memories are constructions and the traces in the publi-cation form the basis from which these memories can be created. "The Cabinet of Traces" is a tool that feeds the imagination. It will be passed on to future artists in residency in order to evoke a reaction. New artists will extend the collection.

Dutch artist Jan Hoek engages with the nasty, funny, painful or touching things that happen when photographing people. His work reflects the often tricky ethics involved in the relationship between the photographer and model. Hoek saw the Masai people photographed time and again in the same way: jumping in a natural setting while wearing traditional clothing and jewellery. Nowadays, however, more Masai are living in towns with all the modern conveniences that entails, like mobile phones, cars and trendy sneakers. For this photo series, he gathered seven urban Masai in an attempt to find a new way to photograph them. The resulting portraits are both personal and absurd.