Collage Culture cover

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PUBLISHED BY

JRP|Ringier
Kunstverlag AG
Letzigraben 134
CH-8047 Zürich

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EVENTS / EXHIBITIONS:

October 2011
Oct. 13 – Paris, Colette (Book Launch)
Oct. 15 – Berlin, Motto (Reading)
Oct. 17 – London, Shoreditch House (Reading and discussion moderated by Francesca Gavin)

November 2011
Nov. 4 – Pasadena, Art Center (Reading and discussion moderated by Tim Durfee)
Nov. 4 – Los Angeles, The Smell (PPM Fest)
Nov. 17 – New York, Printed Matter (Reading + Exhibition)
Nov. 28 – Los Angeles, Family (Reading + Exhibition)

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The creative act is no longer the act creation: instead it's the choosing, collecting, ordering, cutting and pasting of the extant; it's about having favorites and displaying them, commenting on them, using them as parts. Our musicians, designers, writers and bloggers are collage artists now, trained in assemblage, their signatures embedded in their subtle acts of choice. But what does it feel like to live in a decade so in love with that past that it cuts it up and uses it as wallpaper?

How did we get here?

Will we get out, and should we want to?

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JRP|Ringier books are available internationally at selected bookstores and from the following distribution partners:

Switzerland
www.ava.ch

France
www.lespressesdureel.com

Germany and Austria
www.vice-versa-vertrieb.de

UK and other European countries
www.cornerhouse.org/books

USA, Canada, Asia, and Australia
www.artbook.com

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The book is available for online purchase here but ask your local bookstore first!

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Sandwiched between the two essays, Roettinger presents 16 pages of original work he made—in collaboration with artist / programmer Chandler McWilliams—by translating 25 compositional rules into a computer application that generates collages.

Collage No. 1
Rules: 1, 9, 10, 11, 13, 17, 18, 20, 22, 25

Collage No. 10
Rules: 6, 11, 13, 16, 22

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RULES FOR COMPOSITION 1–10

1 — Use 20%, 50%, 60%, or 70% white space
2 — All elements must touch each other
3 — Use one image multiple times, at varying scales
4 — Use a white background
5 — Compose twelve lines, all of different lengths and widths
6 — Fill the background with a pattern
7 — Fill the background with an image
8 — Include a line between one and eight points in thickness
9 — Scale image at 200%
10 — Scale image at 20%

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AUTHOR BIOS

AARON ROSE is an artist, curator, film director and writer. Throughout the 1990s he was owner of the Alleged Gallery in New York. In 2003 he co-curated the museum exhibition Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art & Street Culture, which toured the world through 2009. Rose was also director of the documentary feature film Beautiful Losers, which began its theatrical run in 2008. In 2011 he co-curated Art In The Streets (with Jeffrey Deitch), a large-scale exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles. His writings have been published in Vice, Index, i-D, Dazed and Confused, Purple, Self Service, Flash Art and he is co-editor of ANP Quarterly, a free arts magazine.

MANDY KAHN is a columnist for Foam and is writer-in-residence for The Series, a live monthly event in Los Angeles, for which she writes poetry, prose and experimental theater to accompany works of contemporary dance, performance art and music. Her poetry is anthologized in From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900–2002, edited by Ishmael Reed, and she's been a guest columnist for The Los Angeles Times and a contributor to Glamour. Mandy holds a B.A. in English from U.C. Berkeley, where she taught a student-led course on media literacy, and also taught English 101 at the University of Montana. She lives in Echo Park.

BRIAN ROETTINGER is an LA-based graphic designer. Since 2004, he has worked under the moniker Hand Held Heart. The majority of his work is in the form of album packaging and publications made in close collaboration with artists and architects. In 2009 he was nominated for a Grammy for his design of No Age's album Nouns. From 2004 to 2010 Roettinger acted as the design director for the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He is the co-author of Touchable Sound: A collection of 7-inch records from the USA (Sound Screen Design, 2010). He maintains a pale complexion, a cheery disposition, a diet that allows for the faintest similitude of a night's sleep, and a passionate, vacuum-like sixth sense for understanding the ideas, sounds, and formal/conceptual languages of tomorrow.

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Colette, Paris

Why has the 21st century become an era of collage, in which creative works are made by combining elements from the former century?

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Why have musicians, writers and designers fallen in love with the past, busying themselves with borrowing instead of creating their art from scratch?

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A limited edition box set is available in an edition of 100. The set contains:

1 — Book
2 — Soundtrack LP with score by No Age
3 — Press sheet poster
4 — Compositional rules poster
5 — Postcard - 4 x 6 in.
6 — Postcard - 5 x 7 in.
7 — Cassette tape recording of the authors in discussion
8 — Two buttons
9 — The book's collage-making application software on CD
10 — Individual portraits of Aaron Rose, Mandy Kahn and Brian Roettinger by Autumn de Wilde

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The box set edition and LP soundtrack are currently available from Motto!

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Family, Los Angeles