Activity

by Christoph Keller (Editor), Cecilia Alemani (Contributor), Fia Backström (Contributor)

Mediated by Pedro Barateiro and Ricardo Valentim, "Activity" is a collaboratively created artists' book authored by multiple individuals. The artists engaged in ongoing discussions around the issues of collaboration, accountability, and democracy for over three years. The format of an artist's book was chosen as the vehicle for mapping their activity. Because the impetus for the project was based so much in conversations, they decided to employ "the dialogue" itself as the "medium," transforming this project from a mere publication into something more. 
With projects ranging from image-based conversations to the production of social experiences, chain-letter style conversation networks to outsourced interviews and email conversations, "Activity" gives total agency to the authors by providing them with a unique venue to demonstrate how their own personal practices relate to its themes.
Barateiro and Valentim's withdrawal from their positions as the book's authors enabled the shared authorship of all the participants. Unlike the typical artist's book, which usually functions as an extension of an individual artist's practice, "Activity" instead represents a collective artistic experience, effectively rethinking the artist's book today.
This publication is part of the series of artists' projects edited by Christoph Keller.

420 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 2011

About the author

Christoph Keller—novelist, playwright, memoirist—is the Executive Assistant of the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust. With Jan Heller Levi, he co-edited We’re On: A June Jordan Reader, and has worked with foreign publishers on translations of Jordan’s work and books into German, French, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, and Basque. Keller also edited a Bengali/English selection of poems entitled Only Our Hearts Will Argue Hard. Keller’s 2019 novel, The Ground Beneath Our Feet, won the Alemannic Literary Award; his memoir Jeder Krüppel ein Superheld (Every Cripple A Superhero) was published in Switzerland by Limmat Verlag in 2020.