Publications

Edited by Dr. Dehlia Hannah, this double volume situates the three exhibitions of Towards No Earthly Pole in a contemporary critical framework, through essays by the curators and leading scholars from the fields of philosophy, film studies, polar research, and art history, as well as excerpts from important works of literature and natural history. We would like to thank all of the authors, including Dr. Amanda Boetzkes, Dr. Shane McCorristine, Dr. Nadim Samman, and Dr. Scott MacKenzie and Dr. Anna Westerstahl Stenport for their perceptive and highly informative contributions. The book also includes a conversation between the artist, Dr. Hannah, and climatologist Dr. Konrad Steffen. We are grateful to Dr. Hannah for her writing, editing, and overall conceptualization of the book project. We thank the curators Francesca Benini (MASI Lugano), Anna Katherine Brodbeck (Dallas Museum of Art), and Katrin Weilenmann (Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau) for the enlightening texts they have contributed to this catalogue as well as for their excellent work in organizing and installing the respective exhibitions. Special thanks are due to the entire Studio Julian Charrière for their commitment. Mousse Publishing in Milan has supported us in realizing this publication; in particular, Ilaria Bombelli has done an excellent job coordinating the project, and Marcello Jacopo Biffi has been responsible for the captivating design of the catalogue.

Authors: Madeleine Schuppli, Tobia Bezzola, Augustín Arteaga, Francesca Benini, Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Katrin Weilenmann, Dehlia Hannah, Julian Charrière. Konrad Steffen, Amanda Boetzkes, Nadim Samman, Shane McCorristine, Scott MacKenzie, Anna Westerstahl Stenport

Editor: Dr. Dehlia Hannah

Design: Mousse Publishers, Milan

2020

Publisher: Aargauer Kunsthaus, Museo d`Arte della Svizzera italiana, Dallas Museum of Art,

English (main), German

288 pages, 171 x 285 mm

ISBN : 9788867494347

The publication Second Suns investigates the post-nuclear landscapes and architecture of the Bikini Atoll (Marshall Islands) and Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). Visual content comprises four major photo series, sculptural and video works, and expedition documentation, featuring compelling images of ruined concrete bunkers, sunken battleships, apocalyptic sunsets and decaying infrastructure while contributions by leading thinkers provide historic, geographic and intellectual context. Second Suns offers readers access to notorious geographical zones shrouded in fantasy and tragedy and provides the most comprehensive visual engagement with each site published to date.

Authors: David Breskin, Ele Carpenter, Carson Chan, Eric Ellingsen, Peter Galison, Dehlia Hannah, Richard Rhodes, Nadim Samman, Charles Stankievech

Editor: Nadim Samman

Design: Bijan Dawallu

English 2018 288 pages, two softcover, 24,00 x 32,00 cm

Publisher: Hatje Cantz

ISBN : 9783775744775

Straddling the genres of travelogue and critical essay, As We Used to Float explores Bikini Atoll as a space of fantasy and trauma. Situated in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean, between 1946 and 1958 ist ‚paradise’ islands were subjected to twenty-three of the most powerful explosions in history – during Operation Crossroads, the United States nuclear testing program. Since then, their fate has been largely ignored. While toggling between a personal account of a sea journey, above and below water, and a critical investigation of postcolonial geography , As We Used to Float develops broader reflections on place and subjectivity. These spring from a series of narrative immersions, variously taking on the psychological and astehtic parameters of ultra-deep scuba diving, the decaying ‚Ghost Fleet’ of World War II battleships, irradiated coconuts, and more As We Used to Float is a sea-story for our time.

This book is published in conjunction with Julian Charrière's solo exhibition As We Used to Float - GASAG Kunstpreis 2018, curated by Guido Fassbinder at Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art, Photography and architecture.
There is a short version of the publication enclosed.

Authors**: Julian Charrière, Nadim Samman

Editor: Nadim Samman

Design: Bijan Dawallu

English

2018

152 pages, Softcover , 11,00 x 18,00 cm

Publisher: K. Verlag, Berlin, Germany

ISBN : 9783947858002

In April 1815 the volcano Mount Tambora, situated on Sumbawa Island in Indonesia, erupted into flames, ash and lava, its effects rippling around the globe. In the Canton of Valais, Switzerland, a neighboring glacier expanded through the summer of 1816 causing the Lac de Mauvoisin to overflow its banks. Julian Charrière's new works, An Invitation to Disappear, move, as Dehlia Hannah writes, along "the historical and geographical path between Tambora and the Alps, between 1818 and 2018," tracing the entangled threads of climate devastation, monocultural farming, and an imaginary in which apocalyptic ecological threats find poetic utterance in the aesthetic of the sublime. A series of installations of the works were installed at Kunsthalle Mainz, on the dam of Mauvoisin and at Musée de Bagnes, comprising dystopic installations and an absurdist film centered around the palm oil plantations that now carpet the flanks of Mount Tambora.

An Invitation to Disappear was published to coincide with exhibitions at the Mauvoisin Dam, the Museum of Bagnes in Le Châble, and Kunsthalle Mainz.

Authors**: Stefanie Böttcher, Dehlia Hannah

Editor: Nadim Samman

Design: Roger Willems

English/French

2018

108 pages with insert booklet and postcards, Softcover, 24,00 x 32,00 cm

Publisher: ROMA Publications, Amsterdam, Netherlands

ISBN : 9789492811264

An Invitation To Disappear is the debut LP by British electronic musician Inland aka Ed Davenport – and his first release for A-TON. Based on his soundtrack for a video installation by conceptual artist Julian Charrière, Davenport has recast the material and field recordings into eight tracks of rhythmically intricate electronics and spectral, ambient techno, inspired by Charrière’s visually striking, 76-minute tracking shot through a palm plantation toward a totemic soundsystem on full blast.
Both the album and original soundtrack were created in response to the 200th anniversary of the eruption of Indonesia’s Tambora volcano in 1815, which plunged the world into darkness and caused a series of extreme weather conditions. At the time, the natural climate change crisis resulted in numerous global famines and is known throughout the northern hemisphere as “The Year Without Summer”, with global communities forced to adapt to sudden radical changes in temperature and weather.

An Invitation To Disappear offers a contemporary parallel, leading viewers – and listeners – down a seemingly endless direct path of gridded palms from dawn to dusk; a bio-commercial monoculture where ancient jungle once flourished. Light flickers between rows of fruit-laden trees and a distant fire burns in the undergrowth where the border between natural image and computer simulation breaks down. At the same time, formerly incoherent rumblings of sub-frequencies begin to transform into the contours of rhythm. This is reflected sonically in eight perspectives on the lush, synthetic jungle, made of myriad buzzing fauna, morphing melody and colossal bassweight. All paths lead toward an apocalyptic dancefloor, though speeds vary widely; rhythms dissolve from straight to broken, synth tempos operate by their own internal clocks (and logic). Juxtaposing industrial agriculture with rave culture, the album explores the industrialization and refinement of nature, and the new strange forms emerging from the synthetic grids of both.

As Inland, Davenport has previously contributed soundtracks to other installations by the Swiss-born Charrière, whose artistic practice focuses on bridging environmental science and cultural history, often taking place in remote geophysical locations, including ice fields, volcanos and radioactive sites. The gallery version of An Invitation To Disappear premiered this past April at the Kunsthalle Mainz and was on display at the Berlinische Galerie as part of Charrière’s solo exhibition As We Used to Float, opening September 26, 2018.

The LP was premiered live together with the video installation during a special presentation in Berghain the same day for Berlin Art Week in 2018.

Tracklist

1 Tambora
2 Sandaken
3 Up River
4 Wirecam
5 Ever Since We Crawled Out
6 In Loco Parentis
7 Terraforming
8 Attalea

Producer: Ed Davenport

Publisher: EPM Music

Design: Yusuf Etiman

Mastering: Tim Xavier at Manmade Mastering, Berlin, Germany

Label: a - ton, Berlin, Germany

2018

The Publication For They That Sow the Wind has been released on the occasion of Charrière's first UK solo exhibition at Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art.

Author & Editor: Ziba Ardalan for Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London

Design: Moiré (Marc Kappeler, Ruth Amstutz, Dominik Huber, Simon Trüb)

English

2016

144 pages, Hardcover, 29,00 x 25,00 cm

Publisher: Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London, UK

ISBN : 9780957351899

Das Numen is a Berlin-based artists’ collective. Julian Charrière, Andreas Greiner, Markus Hoffmann, and Felix Kiessling studied with Olafur Eliasson and now work together to investigate experimental ways to study space and biological systems and the feelings associated with them. Blending art and science, they translate their exploration of natural phenomena in the urban context into aesthetic environments that sensitize the viewers to the world around them while also encouraging contemplation. The first book on Das Numen offers insight into the group’s diverse experiential universes. It combines impressions of their projects with essays that approach their work at various stages. The artists have conceived the publication as a space of experience that will be enriched by each reader’s associations.

Authors: Carson Chan, Paul Feigelfeld, Prof. Dr. Melanie Franke, Das Numen, Prof. Dr. Otto E. Rössler, Lukas Töpfer

Editor: Marie Egger

Design: Das Numen (Julian Charrière, Andreas Greiner, Markus Hoffmann & Felix Kiessling)

English

2015

104 pages, Hardcover, 21,00 x 27,00 cm

Publisher: DISTANZ Verlag, Berlin, Germany

ISBN : 9782954761005

Polygon is a series of photographs shot at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan. The photographs are made on analogue medium format film, and exposed to radiation before their development. Thus they both depict the site of nuclear radiation and bear the actual trace of radioactivity's effect. Charrière’s journey to the Polygon was inspired by J.G. Ballard’s short story “The Terminal Beach”. It oscillates between art, science and fiction and brings us to one of the most remote and inaccessible spheres – to the beginning of the nuclear age. It is a mystic place – a nuclear space – antithetic to human life, and showing the dystopic aesthetics of a future archaeology.

Authors: René Zechlin, Jana Franze

Editor: WILHELM-HACK-MUSEUM, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany

Design : Anja Lutz

German/ English

2014

79 pages, Hardcover, 24,00 x 32,00 cm

Publisher: THE GREEN BOX, Berlin, Germany

ISBN : 9783941644755

This publication accompanies the exhibition 'Somewhere – Julian Charrière' at Rudolf-Scharpf-Gallery, the project gallery of the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum.

What happens if a speckled gray pigeon is trapped and spray-painted in a miniature car wash, released as a colorful bird, and then streaks through public space? The art project initiated by Julian Charrière and Julius von Bismarck was first performed at the Venice Architecture Biennial and examines processes of perception in a playful yet conceptual manner. Viewers are forced to reflect on and re-invent their environment as well as the urban space, the pigeons acting as catalysts for the destabilization of observation.

For the book Some Pigeons Are More Equal Than Others, poets, philosophers and thinkers were confronted with portraits of the vibrantly colored birds and asked to enter into a fictional dialogue with the creatures. The result is an anthology of poetry and prose, creative writing and ideas – an urban manifesto evolving ideas on the role of public domains and the encounter with contemporary art today.

The glossy photographs of the pigeons are accompanied by notes, essays and illustrations as well as interviews and conversations among artists such as Ai Weiwei and Olafur Eliasson.

Authors: Julius von Bismarck, Julian Charrière, Eric Ellingsen

Editor: Julius von Bismarck, Julian Charrière, Eric Ellingsen, Cassandra Edlefsen Lasch

Design: Heimann & Schwantes, Berlin, Germany, 2015

English

2015

176 pages, Hardcover, 30,0 x 21, 5 cm

Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers, Zurich, Switzerland

ISBN: 9783037784655