Showing all 9 results
7.
ANNIES DESCÔTEAUX
Matières premières (Raw Materials)Format: 140 x 105 mm; 114 pages
ISBN: 978-2-9814330-6-0
Edition of 250, including 25 numbered copies with an intervention by the artist
French-English translation by Simon Brown— Publisher’s note —
“Through short poetic texts that are both humorous and insightful, Annie Descôteaux speaks to her ever-evolving art practice and relationship with the physical world, while also incisively critiquing the institution. The voice that emerges here rings true and clear, and hangs in the air long after the book is closed.”
Matières premières opens with three citations from women — Anne Truitt, Anni Albers, and The Slits — resolutely setting the tone for this first book by visual artist Annie Descôteaux. Somewhere between confession and denial, rebellion and comedy, these brief poetic texts embody unabashed ecofeminist meditations on the place of the artist within the institution, and indeed within everyday life. For Descôteaux, art is an inner experience inextricably tied to the secret lives of things themselves: “I (…) draw strength from the kingdom of objects / the kingdom of colours.”
Through art-making, Descôteaux sets out to find the origins of feminine empowerment, and nature itself replies with bouquets of colour, particles of beauty, and alchemical paradoxes. She addresses the ivory tower of academia with elegance and levity: “I’ll never have the Sculptor’s ambition / Are my intentions too basic?” A quiet strength emerges from this exercise in vulnerability, one that Descôteaux takes on fully, and makes her own.
As Descôteaux herself puts it, “my goal was to candidly document the deep ambivalence I’ve felt since finishing my MFA. It’s a collection of doubts and beliefs, but also the story of a long journey with pitfalls at every turn, where empowerment is only just off the path, somewhere in the bushes.”
With Matières premières, Annie Descôteaux succeeds in constructing a series of texts that lets us see and consider the world that lies “through the looking-glass”, that is, just beyond the prism of disobedience inherent to the very art-making she practises.
X.
LE FRUIT VERT and DELPHINE DORA
À La BecqueJune 2020
Format : 18,5cm x 18,5cm (Saddle Stitch binding)
Inserted in a hand printed paper bag (29cm x 21,5cm) ; 12 pages
Edition of 150, hand numbered, includes a hyperlink to download seven improvisations (keyboards, voice, synthesizers and objets; 38 minutes).
Language : FrenchÀ La Becque is a semi-digital sonorous publication documenting the meeting of three musicians during their brief stay at La Becque, an artist residency in La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland). Both a digital album and artist book, the publication comprises 12 pages printed on a risograph, and includes a hyperlink to download seven improvisations (keyboards, voice, synthesizers and objects; 38 minutes).
To listen : https://lefruitvertetdelphinedora.bandcamp.com/
6.
SOPHIE JODOIN
Les confessionsJune 2019
Format : 140 x 105 mm; 98 pages
ISBN : 978-2-9814330-5-3
Edition of 400, including 25 numbered copies with an intervention by the author.
In French (titles and credits). The book contains no text.
Les confessions is a recent project that reflects Sophie Jodoin’s ongoing preoccupation with the interaction of language with images. While books act as raw material for the work, language functions as its mode of articulation. Through a series of feminine surnames, Les confessions chronicles a plural (her)story. As both declarations and silent testimonies, these multiple voices form a collective portrait, a rewriting of women’s social and political bodies where the reader is invited to fill in the voids.
5.
ÉMILIE MOUCHOUS
D’un érotisme botanique (A Botany of Eros)May 2018
Format: 140 x 105 mm; 56 pages
ISBN: 978-2-9814330-4-6
Edition of 250, including 25 numbered copies with four-leaf clover.
French-English translation by Simon BrownA Botany of Eros is both a sonic artwork and a poetic coming-of-age story where the author phlegmatically looks to the plant world to explore her own psyche. Mouchous’s writing is one of metamorphosis, articulating the desire to dialogue in real time with our plant relatives. This debut book also includes a downloadable 18-minute sound piece (voice and synthesizers).
4.
ANNE-F JACQUES
Roches rencontrées (Stones Met)May 2018
Format: 140 x 105 mm; 58 pages
ISBN: 978-2-9814330-3-9
Edition of 250, including 25 numbered copies with a drawing by the author.
French-English translation by Jen Leigh FisherStones Met is an inventory of the objects and materials artist Anne-F Jacques uses in her sonic and kinetic assemblages. Through their weights and textures, and her accounts of meeting them, Jacques retraces a small part of their biographies, inviting the reader into a veritable microcosm of obstinate objects. This debut book also includes a selection of recent drawings from the artist’s notebooks.
3.
ALEXANDRE St-ONGE
Nude de chose de mêmeJanuary 2017
Format: 140 x 105 mm; 78 pages
ISBN: 978-2-9814330-2-2
Edition of 200, including 25 numbered copies with handwritten intervention by the author. Second edition (2019) of 100 copies.
French / EnglishNude de chose de même is both a book of hermetic poetry and a sonic artwork. After triggering an outpouring of words through a sound improvisation, the author rearranges and reappropriates them with his voice. Out of the shadows of process emerges a dialogue between desubjectified subjects and impossible objects. A download of the accompanying sound pieces (13 tracks, 26 minutes) is included.
2.
SIMON BROWN
Mollesse dureDecember 2014
Format: 140 x 105 mm; 54 pages
ISBN: 978-2-9814330-1-5
Edition of 250, including 25 numbered copies with an intervention by the author. Second edition (2019) of 100 copies.
In French onlyMollesse dure is an action narrative. There is an activity, and the conditions necessary for the activity to take place. There are non-conditions, a breather that observes, an inside and an outside, too many guests arriving, family and freedom (both decorative). There is softness and hardness, and (in this particular case) the transition from one state to another.
1.
DAÏCHI SAÏTO
Moving the Sleeping Images of Things Towards the LightDecember 2013
Format: 140 x 105 mm; 88 pages
ISBN: 978-2-9814330-0-8
Edition of 300, including 40 numbered copies with a section from 16 mm film All That Rises. Second edition (2015) of 200 copies.
English-French translation by Patrick Poulin.With this cahier-like book, Daïchi Saïto proposes a personal reflection on language and images that doesn’t attempt to theorize practice, but rather recounts it. Saïto doesn’t present himself as an expert, but rather a simple observer of that which occurs. Moving the Sleeping Images of Things Towards the Light is a debut publication for Saïto, primarily a filmmaker and cofounder of Montréal film collective Double Negative. The preface is signed by André Habib, experimental film expert and professor of Film Studies at Université de Montréal. The original text in English is included.
0.
LE LAPS’ CATALOGUE
6 books (regular editions)Moving the Sleeping Images of Things Towards the Light, Daïchi Saïto
Mollesse dure, Simon Brown – In French only
Nude de chose de même, Alexandre St-Onge
Roches rencontrées (Stones Met), Anne-F Jacques
D’un érotisme botanique (A Botany of Eros), Émilie Mouchous
Les confessions, Sophie Jodoin – In French (titles and credits)