Books and Magazines


Karl Marx spent three consecutive summers in the spa town of Karlsbad (now Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic) in 1874, 1875 and 1876. Egon Erwin Kisch’s 1946 text Karl Marx in Karlsbad reconstructs these three stays. When Marx arrived in Karlsbad to take the waters for the first time, he was suffering, tired, tense, overworked and overly nervous, in other words, he was burnout. Years of political and theoretical work under agonising hardship and constant oppression had left Marx with pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, inflammation of the nerves in his head, a carbuncle, a lung abscess and sciatica. Marx’s recovery in Karlsbad, surrounded by princes, ministers, aristocrats, chamber singers, adventurers, spies, and courtesans, is a story full of amusing anecdotes and surprises.  E.E. Kisch, described by Anna Seghers as a “detective,” investigated this lesser known period of Marx’s life and resolved some mysteries of international importance. For the first time fully translated, the essay is introduced by its editor, Sezgin Boynik, presenting Kisch within the context of interwar leftist avant-garde internationalism. The afterword by Sam Dolbear and Hannah Proctor revisits the emotional life of Marx and his daughter Eleonor during their visits to Karlsbad, without insulating them from the forces of history. Dolbear and Proctor are both writers and researchers, who have previously worked together on an essay on revolutionary childhood, as co-editors of a series of pamphlets on Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, and on dreams, sleep, work, puppets, play, and proletarian children’s theatre. Designed by Ott Kagovere, the book features etchings and photographs of Karlsbad from the 19th century, as well as a colour reproduction of Christian Schad’s portrait of Kisch with tattoos. Softcover, 150 x 215mm, 80 pp Edition of 1000 Rab-Rab, May 2025

e.e. kisch – Karl marx in karlsbad

Borderline Visible begins as a journey from Lausanne to Izmir in 2022 by two artist friends, one of whom experiences health problems halfway and has to stop. As the other continues towards Turkey, suddenly alone, the narration grows into a moving and troubled psychogeography as it shifts between “we” and “I”, present and past, piecing-together value and meaning from the very human ruins of aspiration, history, and language. Ant Hampton’s careful, at times miraculous, process of reconnection gradually lights up a constellation: voices and earthquakes, the Sephardic diaspora, tourism and forced movement, breakdowns and dementia, the end of the Ottoman Empire, swifts and swallows, Eliot’s The Waste Land and an urgent insight into hidden atrocities at the edge of Europe being funded from its centre.77 min, 232 pages, 16,7x24cmVoice & sound, english version: Ant Hampton Time Based Editions, 2023  Music:Fever, A Warm Poison by Oren Ambarchi. From the album In The Pendulum's Embrace (2007)Corridor Between Days by Perila (2022)Quixotism Parts 1 and 2, by Oren Ambarchi. From the album Quixotism (2014)   Borderline Visible is created by the artist Ant Hampton, who is also co-director of the Time Based Editions series. With a deep focus on liveness, his performance work since 1999 has often involved guiding people through unrehearsed situations using automated devices and a subtle use of instructions and narration.As with all Time Based Editions (about), an audio track combines narration, soundscape, and instructions that guide you over a given time through the book.The work is also experienced collectively as a live event for audiences, presented in theatre, film, sound art and music festivals, museums, book fairs and many other contexts. More info here.

ant hampton – borderline visible

Olavi Laiho’s aliterative anti-fascist text written in 1944 in Oulu prison just before his execution. First time publsihed in its original Finnish and in English translation. Introduction by Minna Henriksson.   Olavi Laiho (1907-1944) was a writer, political organiser, and communist agitator, who was first imprisoned in 1932 – a time when ‘communist laws’ were in effect in Finland – for producing political material and running an illegal printing press in his home. He opposed Finland’s WW2 era fighting alongside Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union, edited illegal journals, but also planned armed resistance and facilitated correspondence between the party’s leadership in Helsinki and the Soviet embassy in Stockholm. He managed to hide from the police from when the Continuation War broke in summer 1941 until 22nd of December 1942, when he was arrested while visiting his sister in the parish of Paimio. Laiho was sentenced to death for treason and high treason. He was executed on 2nd of September, being the last Finnish citizen to be executed in Finland.  Just a couple of weeks before his execution, Laiho wrote a remarkable essay ‘Katso Koota’ [Look at K], using only words starting with the letter K. It gives a vivid picture of the political situation of the time: the war is still ongoing, but it has become evident that Finland is on the losing side. Not knowing his execution date, Laiho eagerly awaits a new batch of books to arrive at the prison library, enjoying his coffee substitute and the sound of distant music ... ‘Katso Koota’ is an early example of Finnish modern alliterative writing, a lipogram, a literary technique in which every word must start with the same letter. Laiho’s ‘Katso Koota’ predates the French Oulipo (‘workshop of potential literature’) of the 1960s. Considering that he produced his ‘constrained writing’ under conditions of extreme political and cultural confinement, it can be considered a true form of avant-garde subversion.  Published for the first time based on the manuscript at the People’s Archives, the booklet includes its content translation, a short introduction by Minna Henriksson and two illustrations by Kaisa Junttila.  Designed by Otso Peräsaari, the book is printed in 200 copies and is produced in Kalastaman Seripaja silkscreen workshop and If By Magic risography print house. The publication is realised in the context of the Counter-Libraries exhibition at the Library of the Labour Movement, Helsinki.A5 Staplebound, Softcover, 16 pages (Silkscreen and risoprint) Rab-Rab, Helsinki, October, 2025

Olavi Laiho – Look at K

Second Edition, 2024, 2000 copies New expanded edition, originally published 2019 210 pp, paperback, umland editions  bilingual english/french"Éliane Radigue is considered one of the most innovative and influential contemporary composers from her early electronic music through to her acoustic work of the last 15 years. Influenced by musique concrète and shaped by regular sojourns in the United States where she discovered analogue synthesizers, her work unfolds an intensity which is at once subtle and monumental. Through her deep reflections on sound and listening, not only her music but also her working methods have come to shape a widely resonating set of new parameters for working with sound as musical material. “In the long interview that forms the body of this publication Radigue talks about her work, her reflections and underlying research as well as her historical context. The publication also contains an annotated list of works and Radigue’s programmatic text on “The Mysterious Power Of The Infinitesimal”.” Edited by Julia Eckhardt with texts by Éliane Radigue and Julia Eckhardt. With 62 black and white illustrations. Julia Eckhardt is a musician and curator in the field of the sonic arts. She is a founding member and artistic director of Q-O2 workspace in Brussels for which she conceptualised various thematic research projects. As a performer of composed and improvised music she has collaborated with numerous artists and extensively with Éliane Radigue. She has performed internationally and released a number of recordings. She has been lecturing about topics such as sound, gender and public space and is (co-)author of The Second Sound, Conversation On Gender and Music, Grounds For Possible Music, and The Middle Matter, Sound As Interstice. ---

Éliane Radigue & Julia Eckhardt – Intermediary Spaces

Stereolab are one of the most fascinating guitar groups of the past fifty years, a source of constant reinvention and illuminating contrasts, where political ideology meets the sweetest pop melodies and driving guitars rub along with space-age jazz. They are perhaps the greatest Anglo-French collaboration since Concorde—a hugely respected, highly influential group whose fan base grows larger by the year, stretching from chart-topping hip hop artists to underground indie stars. And yet their appeal remains elusive. What kind of music do Stereolab make? What’s their best album? Their greatest song? There are no easy answers. In writing this book, Ben Cardew spoke to more than fifty people from the Stereolab universe to trace the history of the band from the depths of 90s indie London to their all-conquering reunion tour of 2025. Using twenty of their songs as jumping-off points, he examines in loving detail what makes this most fascinating band work, unpicking the cultural references, stylistic contradictions, and brilliant ideas at the heart of the group. Space Age Batchelor Pad Music is designed for dedicated fans and interested newcomers alike, going deep into a band of infinite jest, excellent fancy, and spiralling contradiction. It’s a story of restless creativity and human endeavour spanning more than three decades of enigmatic artistic life.Softcover, 288pp Jawbone, March 2026

ben cardew – space age batchelor music - the story of stereolab in 20 songs

The new issue is a celebration of words and their presence in the medium of drawing. In a time of fake news and populism, the word seems to have lost some ground and anti-intellectualism appears to be taking over. It’s more important than ever therefore to praise the written expression in all its forms – whether it’s been rearranged, cut, scribbled or even if it just looks like writing, all of which you can find here. In this issue we show some of Ed Ruscha’s word drawings, which earned him the status of one of the most influential post-war artists. Language similarly became a crucial tool for Sol LeWitt, who wrote out instructions to enable others to execute his drawings. For LeWitt, the idea of the artwork as expressed in words and functions is the essence of a conceptual work. You can read and, if you like, follow the instructions from LeWitt inside this issue of Fukt.  You can also discover the mystery of the undecipherable Voynich Manuscript, get lost in Paula Scher’s sensible typographic maps or Mark Lombardi’s political diagrams and immerse yourself in the Prinzhorn Collection’s remarkable artworks – a collection produced by psychiatric patients. Read interviews with our featured artists such as Stefan Marx, Annie Vought and Suzanne Treister to learn why Marx hates Sundays so much, how Vought makes use of social media in her work, where the idea for Treister’s time travelling avatar came from and much more. Artists: Ed Ruscha, Paula Scher, Simon Evans TM, Sketchbook Project, Irma Blank, Nina Papaconstantinou, Mirtha Dermisache, Ariane Spanier, Suzanne Treister, Karl Holmqvist, Pavel Pepperstein, Ingwill Gjelsvik, Marco Raparelli, Nadine Fecht, Shantell Martin, Katrin Ströbel, Xu Bing, Paula Troxler, Mark Lombardi, Stefan Brüggemann, Sol LeWitt, Pae White, Malgorzata Zurada, Philip Loersch, Stefan Marx, Prinzhorn Collection, Roni Horn, Peter Phobia, Annie Vought, Henri Chopin, Petra Schulze-Wollgast, Thomas Broomé, Meg Hitchcock, The Voynich Manuscript  Softcover, 224pp FUKT Magazine, 2018, reprint 2022

The Words Issue - Written Drawings – Fukt Magazine No. 17

Snagged on red thread is a long poem of protest, power and complicity. Jazmine Linklater articulates how the apparatus of Empire is encoded in the structures we live in: militarised sights set on schoolyards, bargaining arms deals with teenagers, surveilling civic squares, co-opting institutions. And yet Snagged on red thread is compelled to march, to embroider, to bear witness. • ‘What is it to only know the word sweetheart in the language of people being killed in your name? How do we comprehend the paltriness of our gestures against genocide? The speaker of Jazmine Linklater’s Snagged on red thread moves within the intimacies of complicity, not excluding themselves from the we whose taxes fund genocide, or succumbing to individualising games of guilt or absolution. The poem rather weaves then with now – how the “war on terror” normalised the murder of Arabs in the “Western” imaginary for generations. It snags constantly on irresolution, not attempting to tie anything up, but always manages to locate the right enemy.’ – Mira Mattar ‘Snagged on red thread is committed to the act of witnessing, and to witnessing the act of witnessing: “Am I giving the looking / the room demands right?” Linklater tries on, then discards, different ways of looking, none of which are adequate to the horrors the poem describes. In this way it displays an exemplary impatience, with itself, and with those responsible for suffering. How else do you carry on living day-to-day right now? This distraught, tender, vigilant poem responds with answers only too large or too small, and as such it strikes me as truthful: “Try to think geopolitically,” it tells itself, “scoop the ladybird up / with a flyer.”’ – Oli Hazzard Staplebound, 28pp Monitor Books, November 2025

jazmine linklater – snagged on a red thread