Join us at stanza for a launch of Writings — a collection of essays by visual artist Jakob Kolding published by At Last Books — there will be drinks!

Footnotes, indexes and image sections form an intentionally distinct parallel text, creating a dynamic and layered experience, a moiré pattern of readings rich with references as they weave in and out. Echoing Kolding’s visual art practice, the essays feature excerpts and collaged elements from literature, visual art and music—writings constructed by use, re-use and re-contextualisation of carefully chosen source material. Widely varied sources are put forward to pursue and explore the book’s recurring themes, central among which is exploring possibilities (or impossibilities) of critiquing a dominant system—to which there appears to be no outside position—from within.

Writings establish conversations between a wealth of voices. Writers include Ishmael Reed, Lydia Davis, Cecil Bødker, Clarice Lispector, John Cheever, Philip K. Dick, N.H. Pritchard, Eugene Lim, Hans Scherfig, Inger Christensen, Honoré de Balzac, Herman Melville, J.G. Ballard, Eva Figes, Georges Perec and Marguerite Duras. Musicians such as Boy George, Autechre, Scan 7, Else Marie Pade and Madonna make appearances as well as movies The invasion of the Body Snatchers and Minority Report and the Danish television classic Op på ørerne vi er kørende. The Habsburg Empire play a part as do artists Felix Gonzales-Torres, Christopher Wool, Dea Trier Mørch, Ghislaine Leung, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lee Lozano and Tehching Hsieh. To name but a few. In these meetings stories of money and ownership, work and non-work, authorship and authority, identities and identification are told and shared with the reader, as each reading suggests further readings.

Writings can be read as a meditation on the very methods and subjects that define Kolding’s practice in general, a journey through the looking-glass of influences and references. As such this is Kolding’s most personal work to date, exploring and exposing the methods and concerns at the heart of his work.