Books published by No Place Press

Essays and reminiscences by one of the preeminent art historians of our time, spanning more than four decades.An Oblique Autobiography assembles a new collection of essays and reminiscences by one of the preeminent art historians of our time. Spanning more than four decades of Yve-Alain Bois's work as a scholar, journal editor, and occasional curator, this volume traces a deeply personal itinerary through an important era of art history, in which the discipline—in part occasioned by Bois's own journey from France to the United States—was significantly reformulated by new methodologies. Detailing Bois’s early relationships with figures such as Roland Barthes, Hubert Damisch, Lygia Clark, and Jacques Derrida, as well as his extended engagements with Rosalind Krauss, Ellsworth Kelly, and Martin Barré, these essays track Bois's intellectual commitments against the backdrop of an evolving academic field. With texts that range from academic journal articles to obituaries, written from 1976 to 2021, An Oblique Autobiography reveals the range of Bois’s authorial voice and offers a remarkable self-portrait of one of art history’s primary protagonists.

The final iteration of Rainer's dance rant A Truncated History of the Universe for Dummies, accompanied by texts offering a real-time account of Rainer's creative process.Choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer has long investigated the ways in which movement can be a political act in and of itself—on the stage, on the screen, or at the lectern. In Revisions, Rainer pushes her interest in embodied activism to a new arena: what she calls the "dance rant.” This volume includes the final iteration of Rainer's latest dance rant, entitled A Truncated History of the Universe for Dummies. This performance piece evolved in live presentations in Dublin, Stockholm, and New York before being expanded and adapted in written form here. In this now-completed work, Rainer mobilizes her rage and bafflement at contemporary political events through the guise of Apollo, Leader of the Muses.Revisions also includes a compilation of emails and diary entries that provide a real-time account of Rainer's process of creating and workshopping a dance. "Pedagogical Vaudeville 3” reveals Rainer's consistent interest in reworking and reconsidering material across multiple mediums, formats, and contexts, and offers an unique glimpse at the working methods of one of this century's preeminent dance artists.Bookended with an introduction by artist and scholar Gregg Bordowitz and an analysis of Rainer's AG Indexical with a Little Help from H. M. by dance historian Anna Staniczenko, these texts serve not only as a revision of the conventional understanding of five decades of Rainer's production, but also as a timely manual for performance as an act of resistance.

How Silicon Valley, the dark net, and digital culture have affected our relationship to knowledge, history, language, aesthetics, reading, and truth.In October 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Ross William Ulbricht was arrested at the Glen Park Public Branch Library in San Francisco, accused of being the "Dread Pirate Roberts” and mastermind of a dark net drug marketplace known as Silk Road. Ulbricht was an ardent libertarian who believed Silk Road—described by the New York Times as "the largest, most sophisticated criminal enterprise the internet has ever seen”—was battling the forces of big government. He was convicted two years later of money laundering, computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics and sentenced to life in prison.Art historian Pamela Lee reads this event as a fairy tale of disruption rather than an isolated episode in the history of the dark net, Silicon Valley, and the relationship between public libraries and digital culture. Lee argues that the notion of "disruptive” technology in contemporary culture has radically affected our relationship to knowledge, history, language, aesthetics, reading, and truth. Against the backdrop of her account of Ulbricht and his exploits, Lee provides original readings of five women artists—Gretchen Bender, Cecile B. Evans, Josephine Pryde, Carissa Rodriguez, and Martine Syms—who weigh in, either explicitly or inadvertently, on the nature of contemporary media and technology. Written as a work of experimental art criticism, The Glen Park Library is both a homage to the Bay Area and an excoriation of the ethos of Silicon Valley. As with all fairy tales, the book's ultimate subjects are much greater, however, and Lee casts a critical eye on collisions between privacy and publicity, knowledge and information, and the past and future that are enabled by the technocratic worldview.

Video and performance artist Anne Walsh's encounter with and multipart response to surrealist painter Leonora Carrington's novel The Hearing Trumpet.