Your Action World

by David Byrne

In his latest book, writer, photographer, musician, and former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne has created an extraordinary document and critique of the times we live in. Your Action World parodies the "inspirational" promotional materialsincluding books, tapes, and corporate advertising - with which we are inundated daily. Byrne's impulse is to fight back, "to stem the tide of images and bullying texts that assault all of us, by building dikes and dams of my own images and texts. To understand the enemy I must become one with the enemy, I must be of one mind with the enemy. I must infect myself in order to be immunized." An intelligent, quirky document from one of our most innovative artistswith a cool debossed PVC cover and 4-color stickerYour Action World will be the cult hit of the season.

Genres: Art, Photography, Music

128 pages, Vinyl Bound

First published September 1, 1999

About the author

A cofounder of the musical group Talking Heads, David Byrne has also released several solo albums in addition to collaborating with such noted artists as Twyla Tharp, Robert Wilson, and Brian Eno. His art includes photography and installation works and has been published in five books. He lives in New York and he recently added some new bike racks of his own design around town, thanks to the Department of Transportation.

Photo © Catalina Kulczar-Marin

Reviews

[Amcii Cullum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always had a great respect for David Byrne, but had no idea he was into writing such artistically and mentally stimulating (in an IQ-test kind of manner.) Recommendation: Do not buy this book, used, on Amazon-You will want a brand-new copy; it's a treasure that you want to keep for a long time. He has written a book with his mindmapping, so to speak; basically it is an intelligently creative category theory-based tree-structure of so many hierarchies which most of us would never have thought of in that manner, especially in such a depthful, thoughtful way-which helped increase an appreciation for so many things in my life, plus the eclectic nature of the book was one that keeps me going back to look at it on a regular basis.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

David's Instagram before Instagram

[Toby Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very excellent strange coffee table book. Slaps your eyes with bizarro corporate self-help and apocalyptic inspirational messages and colors. Enjoyable printing and binding and presentation. This was one of the first weird/immersive books I came across and my initial thought was "woah, there are books like this?" so I have a soft spot for it. It definitely has had thought put into it, but after one day sitting down and reading it cover to cover, I felt just a little bit underwhelmed. So - I would suggest enjoying it but not looking too deep.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have spent many years working in corporations as I have, this illustrated book is for you. In addition to Byrne's accomplishments as a musician, his art school training comes to the forefront here. Byrne really understands the power of commercial art and decides to make his own version of it. It takes the motivational marketing speak of productivity and turns it upside down in both an insightful and hilarious way.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

weird but interesting

[Clark Knowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one weird ass book of photos and hallucinogenic marketing copy.