Erika Lindstrom, Eva Birkenstock, John Kelsey, Jutta Koether, Reiko Tomii, Sarah Chow

This first volume in the Tate Gallery Liverpool Critical Forum series is derived from a conference held in conjunction with the display of Abstract Expressionist Painting from the USA, which was mounted at Tate Gallery Liverpool from March 1992 to January 1993. The display comprised 21 paintings by 13 artists, including Ad Reinhardt, Norman Lewis, Adolph Gottlieb, Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. The objectives of the conference, involving speakers from the international community of scholarship in the field, were: to elicit new observations, critical judgments and proposals from the knowledge base of abstract expressionism and perhaps to challenge some of its prevailing conventions; and to debate the role of the Tate Gallery Liverpool as a modifier of this field of knowledge.

Casco Issues is a magazine published by Casco - Office for Art, Design and Theory, which explores recurring issues that emerge from Casco's program. The twelfth edition of Casco Issues, Generous Structures, is a playful enquiry into "playfulness" as a value in critical cultural practice. It positions alternative notions of playing against the grain of neoliberal ideologies of "lifelong learning" and "work as play." By taking the idea of playing and the metaphor of the game as a starting point, the publication addresses what might be called a "ludic turn"--the impact of the notion of play and gaming methods in various research fields and cultural work. Most prominent in the Internet industries and interactive media landscapes, but also in theoretical reflections, historical research, and the work of artists and designers, we are experiencing an interest in play as an educational tool or model for participation. However, with the conscious exception of the game per se, the publication attempts to trace its current impact and critical capacity, and explores various notions as well as concrete modes of play including activities such as learning, sharing, and group work, in relation to space, art, and design. It is driven from a methodological interest in the structure of playing, in its dialectics of rules and possibilities, planning and non-planning, collectivity and individuality. A game, in this sense, is not only characterized by its rules--or, on the contrary, by the liberty of the playing individuals--but is rather a construction of conscious interaction, application and transgression. Co-published with Casco - Office for Art, Design and Theory Contributors Zayne Armstrong, Ei Arakawa, Bob Black, Augusto Boal, Ruth Buchanan, Binna Choi, common room, Paul Elliman, ifau & Jesko Fezer, Zachary Formwalt, Beatrice Gibson with Will Holder and John Tilbury, Kleines postfordistisches Drama, Mattin, Hwayeon Nam, Merijn Oudenampsen, Nam June Paik, Anne Querrien, David Reinfurt, Margit Rosen, Katerina Sed , Axel Wieder

Architecture and the Virtual is a study of architecture as it is reflected in the work of seven contemporary artists, working with the tools of our post-digital age. The book maps the convergence of virtual space and contemporary conceptual art and is an anthropological exploration of artists who deal with transformable space and work through analogue means of image production. Marta Jecu builds her inquiry around interviews with artists and curators in order to explore how these works create the experience of the virtual in architecture. Performativity and neo-conceptualism play important roles in this process and in the efficiency with which these works act in the social space.

Ecstatic alphabets/Heaps of language is a group exhibition on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, from May 6 to August 27, 2012. It brings together forty-four modern and contemporary artists and artists' groups working in all mediums including painting, sculptutre, film , video, audio, spoken word, and design, all of whom concentrate on the material qualities of written and spoken language--visual, arual, and beyond. This book--a volume in the continuing series, Bulletins of the serving library, published by Dexter Sinister--is that artist team's contribution to the exhibition.

Best-selling mangaka Hikaru Nakamura (Saint Young Men) makes her English language debut with this surreal comedy starring a 620-year-old water sprite, a man with a star for a head, a nun, and a samurai who runs a barber shop under Tokyo's Arakawa Bridge. Part 3 contains volumes 5 and 6 of the Japanese edition. “Nino, I promise that I can accept everything about you!” Rec calls out when he discovers Nino’s secret trove of cassette tapes. Rec and Nino are both clumsy when it comes to communication, which leads to situations both humorous and heartbreaking. Once in a while a sombre mood falls upon the river bank under the bridge... until the next absurd turn of events comes around.