Dick Higgins’s Something Else Press Lives On…Its extraordinary list still makes many independent publishers swoon
affinities, 04/29/19
A few Something Else Press titles, some reprinted, some not…
As a kind of addendum to Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press: The Selected Writings of Dick Higgins, this is a (likely incomplete) list of Something Else Press reprints, facsimiles and highly adjacent publications published by independent publishers now/recently we compiled for the occasion of “Love Letter to the Future,” a conversation with publishers James Hoff (Primary Information), Damon Krakowski (Exact Change) and Lisa Pearson (siglio) on Tuesday, April 30, 2019 at Printed Matter in NYC.
Some of the titles below may also be out-of-print—do inquire with each press directly. And if something is missing, please get in contact so we can add it to this list: hello (at) sigliopress (dot) com.
Anecdoted Topography of Chance by Daniel Spoerri (redesigned and reissued)
Dada Almanac (translated from the German—the original SEP book was a facsimile of the German original)
Mammal’s Notebook: Collected Writings of Erik Satie (slated to be published by SEP, but never was)
A Valentine for Noël by Emmett Williams
A Bibliography of Something Else Press by Peter Frank
Essential Cowell: Selected Writings on Music by Henry Cowell, edited by Dick Higgins (SEP published New Musical Resources by Henry Cowell; this is a book Higgins was working on at the time of his death)
Found Poems by Bern Porter (redesigned)
A Book of The Big Book by Alison Knowles (documentary materials about Knowles’s The Big Book)
Fantastic Architecture edited by Wolf Vostell and Dick Higgins (facsimile)
An Anthology of Concrete Poetry edited by Emmett Williams (facsimile)
How to Make a Happening by Alan Kaprow (facsimile)
Great Bear pamphlets × 20 (facsimile)
Online at Primary Information: Camille’s Reports, Something Else Press Newsletters and Newscards
The Paper Snake by Ray Johnson (facsimile)
Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) by John Cage (redesign based on Great Bear pamphlet publication of Part III; new paperback pubs in September 2019)
Changes by Merce Cunningham (facsimile, pubs in June 2019)
Sweethearts by Emmett Williams (facsimile)
see also
✼ not stones, not stale bread:
The book object. Object as aim. Object as thing. “In committing himself to book-objects, Dick Higgins confronted object status . . . the objectification of the creative act and the rise of art as a commodity object.” Call It Something Else at the Reina Sofia through January 22, 2024, curated by Alice Centamore and Christian Xatrec.
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