Catalogs

Shortlist #52: Unknown Commerce

Shortlist #52: Unknown Commerce

Boo-Hooray is proud to present Unknown Commerce, our 52nd shortlist compiling rare and vintage Joy Division records and merchandise, alongside some of the most scandalous uses and abuses of Peter Saville’s Unknown Pleasures design in pop culture. The graphic representation of a dying star lifted from the 1977 Cambridge Encyclopedia on Astronomy marked an early peak for Saville’s collaboration with Tony Wilson in particular, and Factory Records in general. Alongside the band’s often spare and moody sound, it was a manifesto of minimalism done punk.

Ben Morea: Full Circle, 1964-Present

Ben Morea: Full Circle, 1964-Present

For more than five decades, Ben Morea has been a key figure at the intersection of art and activism. Although his anarchist provocations are well documented, his artwork has only recently started to be recognized for its place in post-war painting. “Full Circle” is organized around the recurring symbol of the circle in Morea’s body of work.

The exhibition features some of the artist’s earliest paintings from the 1960s, as well as selections from more recent String Theory, Tantric, and his current Animist series spanning the 1990s to today. Accompanying the paintings is a full run of Morea’s anarchist periodical Black Mask, reflecting his contributions to 1960s counterculture and political radicalism.

“Ben Morea: Full Circle, 1964–Present” underscores the continuity in Morea’s artistic explorations and the enduring relevance of political interventions in the cultural sphere.

Curated by Daylon Orr.

Catalog #19: Situationism

Catalog #19: Situationism

Boo-Hooray is pleased to present our nineteenth catalog, dedicated to Situationism.

Active between 1957–1972, the Situationist International (SI) was a group of avant-garde artists and theorists who set out to disrupt the hegemony of capitalism and consumerism in postwar Europe by reimagining the systems that govern everyday life. Heavily influenced by Marx’s critique of capitalism, the Situationists were concerned with breaking free from the routines and social norms imposed by capitalist society. The ultimate goal of the Situtationists was to encourage the proletariat to step into their role as active subjects, rather than passive objects of history. Central to this project is the notion of the spectacle, which builds upon Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism. The spectacle, commonly understood as the alluring images of mass media, conceals and distracts us from the oppressive nature of capitalism. Guy Debord writes in his highly influential book The Society of the Spectacle (1967) that “the spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” 

Catalog #18: Free Jazz New York Jazz

Catalog #18: Free Jazz New York Jazz

Boo-Hooray is pleased to present our 18th catalog, dedicated to the New Black Music of the 1960s, more widely known as “free jazz.”

Usually defined by its improvisatory mode or amelodic form, the New Black Music actually troubles the opposition between improvisation and composition, taking, instead, improvisation as the rigorous deconstruction of composition and melody, as traditionally understood. During the late-1950s, and throughout the 1960s, the transformations in (free) jazz reflected Black life and politics: musicians and writers such as Milford Graves and Amiri Baraka posited jazz as a distinctly African art form, bringing into opposition the dominant Western musical stricture, its key terms and orientations (i.e. tone, melody, tempo), finding through and beyond them energy, movement, thought, timbre, texture, rhythms, overtones and microtones, multiphonics, tone clusters—the musicians’ sound released into a new limitation.