Becket

Some Paul Thek Books (Part II), 2025/2026 1-3. Paul Thek and Edwin Klein, “Document 3”. Paul Thek and Edwin Klein made “A Document” in 1969, published by the Stedelijk Museum. In 1973 they made (but never published) “Document 2” and “Document 3”. Pages from Thek’s notebooks were photographed with objects and materials laid over them, and then (only in 2005) printed and bound into an artist book. 4-6. Paul Thek and Edwin Klein, “Document 2”. 7-9. Paul Thek catalog to accompany exhibition at PACE Gallery, 2013. Photo of Thek by Peter Hujar. Happy hemelvaart 😇

Some Paul Thek Books, 2025/2026 I haven’t posted any books in awhile—I was a bit busy with other stuff, including moving house and studio. So I had nowhere to photograph the books, and mostly they were boxed up anyway. But the move is more or less complete, and I never stopped collecting them, so here are a few to catch up over the last year (featuring Paul Thek). I had to leave the old table behind, so I’m just working on a raw piece of ply for the moment, so the color is a little more neutral. 1-4. Paul Thek, “Ark, Pyramid, Easter” 1973. An artist book made for an exhibition at Kunstmuseum Luzern. The book is mostly these sepia colored drawings, interspersed with documentation shots, mostly taken by Edwin Klein. 5. Paul Thek, a catalog for an exhibition at Castello di Rivara in 1992. With text by Mike Kelley a.o. Curated by Daniel Buchholz. 6. Paul Thek, “Paintings, Works on Paper and Notebooks: 1970-1988” at the Arts Club of Chicago, 1998. 7. My new digs.

I enjoyed looking back on this text I wrote for @iirisriihimaki show at @kohtataidehalli now up on Kohta’s website. It feels like a text about many different wheels, some big and some small, all spinning around without measure. Or maybe just an eternal mannequin challenge as a way to think about painting. I hope it conveys some of the quiet disregulation in these images, their movement in place.

On January 17, 2026, we performed “gone, there” at @gauli_zitter for the finissage of “fort, da.” With the incredible @melissamabesoone and @natasja.mabesoone (et moi on the double phones). Each time I perform this piece, I translate one section of the text into a language spoken in that city, changing the text to suit the memories of the translator. Many thanks to @nolwennvuillier for lending her voice and experiences to the text. Thank you so much to @graysc.de for these beautiful images of the performance!

It’s the last week to see “fort, da” at @gauli_zitter with @polwahtse @fconnor.studio @i_a_okon This show has been a really beautiful experience working with Philip Poppek and @pierobis from GZ and the wonderful artists in the show. We will close with a performance of the text “Presence”, a booklet published in 2023 that was the conceptual blueprint for this exhibition. Please come take one last look ! Photos by @graysc.de

RADICAL PETS continues with Chapter 6: “AT THE GREEN LIGHT, AT THE PATIENT’S DEMAND” written by BECKET MWN. * * * Last week, “Emma” returned to the animal shelter looking for Mike — and maybe something like closure? But she was yet to find either. In Chapter 6, the penultimate chapter, there are new openings everywhere, and some of them need bandages. . . * * * RADICAL PETS is a new work of experimental, co-authored fiction commissioned by SAN SERRIFFE. BECKET MWN is an Amsterdam-based writer and artist. His work often begins with a close reading of a specific image or event, taken primarily from mass-media culture. These take form as spoken and printed text, audio, sculpture, and exhibitions. He mostly writes to figure things out. He also writes art criticism under the name Becket Flannery as an editor at the Netherlands-based platform Tangents. Listen to RADICAL PETS now via san-serriffe.com, starting (if you haven’t already) with the first chapter, written by NADIA DE VRIES. Tune in over the coming weeks to hear the final chapter by MIA YOU. RADICAL PETS is narrated by LIMO HAIR and features music composed by RUUTU POISS. For more information, visit san-serriffe.com. This project was made possible with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund @bbbecket @ripnadiadevries @piersgavastoned @daisylafarge @elviaagain @melrose_tay @quelpart @studioharing @limo.hair @elisabeth_klement @ruutupoiss

We are very much looking forward to our next readings with @sannahelenaberger @cm.celinemathieu @bbbecket Texte zum Nachdenken #24 with Sanna Helena Berger, Céline Mathieu and Becket MWN Thursday, 05.06.2025 18:00 Westfälischer Kunstverein Münster (All readings in English) Texte zum Nachdenken is invited by @westfaelischerkunstverein , thank you @theresaroessler #westfälischerkunstverein #sannahelenaberger #célinemathieu #becketmwn #textezumnachdenken #benediktbock #sarahlehnerer @schlendrian_pfeiffer @sarahlehnerer

A table reading of a new text I’ve been working on at @gdl_525 on April 25. I’ve been thinking a lot about prices, the way they seem to signify an almost metaphysical state of social and cosmic order. Prices seem to offer diagnostic access to the “health” of the economy, not as a system for distributing resources, but as the secularized “Royal Remains” (in the words of Eric Santner) of the pre-modern state. This “second body” is a kind of spiritual “twin” of the body politic, and has developed along a neoliberal form (economy) and a fascist form (ethnos), and more recently the intertwining of the two, but in either case its vitality seems to come at the expense of the population: the power to let die. When it is “sick”, this twin body demands sacrifices, prescribed by our equivalent of court doctors. This play was about buying a fish. The (profane) remains of the performance (including script) are part of the exhibition “Greed” at @gdl_525 through May 11. Heel erg bedankt to my readers @huubkooijman_ @annieygoodner @ripnadiadevries @smother.val @iirisriihimaki And many thanks to @ringo_noko and @front_p_age for the invitation.

A book, Spring 2025. David Hammons, “Global Fax Festival.” Hammons hung fax machines from the ceiling of the Crystal Palace in Madrid which printed out faxes sent from around the world. The sheets would fall to the floor where they slowly accumulated. Besides a small book (2-3, 11), this set includes ephemera (4,5) and a set of faxes sent during the show (6,7,8,9,10). Hammons also invited musician Butch Morris to perform in the exhibition (11,12).

"Presence", Becket MWN, designed by David Bennewith, Videonale e.V. Bonn and IMAI–Inter Media Art Institute, Düsseldorf, 2023, 16 page booklet, 4.75x6.5” What was the occasion for this publication? The publication was made for an exhibition organized by the German video art archive IMAI (Inter Media Art Institute) in Düsseldorf. The exhibition, "Video Digest," was a mix of archival material that looked at video magazines made by artists, and new commissions, such as my pamphlet. The exhibition was held at an artist-run space in Cologne called Werkstatt Moltkerei, which has been going since the 1990s. What was the process of gathering materials? I wanted to respond somehow to the material in the video archive, as well as the space of the exhibition. Both had a strong history in the 1990s of media critique, including artist collectives like Van Gogh TV. For Documenta IX in 1992, Van Gogh TV set up a series of broadcasting stations around Europe for a project collectively called "Piazza Virtuale," one of the sites being the Werkstatt Moltkerei. This moment was all about hacking and upsetting the direction of flow of information in the network, opening up communication systems, and deconstructing media narratives, so I wanted to do something involving media critique. I wanted the subject of my text to start somewhere kind of narrow: the technique of using double exposure in film to make it look like an actor is talking with a double of themself, usually a twin. The text is then an expansion of this, how it might be a model for a certain kind of digital subject, or entangle past, present, and future, or the way it re-routes human affect through a network. So at first it was watching a lot of movies with twins, and deciding which ones to focus on: Dead Ringers by David Cronenberg, The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan, Us by Jordan Peele, and the 2023 Dead Ringers remake with Rachel Weisz.

Some Books, Winter 2025 1-3. Willem Oorebeek, “bigger, higher, leader!” at S.M.A.K., 2006. Third slide is a work that was in an exhibition organized by @tim.mathijsen and @tirzakater at @paktamsterdam 4-5. Sara MacKillop, “12/4”. I was introduced to MacKillop’s books by @finalhotdesert who are opening her exhibition “Meanwhile…” on March 14. With assist from @__gestures at the Chequers mini book fair. 6-7. A really beautiful book of sculptures by Maud Cotter and texts by Simon Cutts. Thanks to @room_and_book 6-8. Simon Pentleton and Josephine Soughan, “Michael Clark: Dancing To The Fall” from @theeverydaypressbunkerbasement . A translation into print format of a camcorder video taken by the authors of a Michael Clark performance.

Some books, Winter 2025. 1 “Eva Hesse” by Lucy Lippard. The original NYU Press edition. 2. Agnes Martin at the Stedelijk Museum, 1977. 3 Agnes Martin, “Paintings and Drawings 1957-1975”, The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1977. 4-5. Allan Kaprow, “Pose”, 1970. An edition of seven loose pages in an envelope that document Happenings around Berkeley. 6-7. Allan Kaprow, “On Time”. 8-10. Jason Dodge and Dorothea Lasky, “As soon as the invented language enters us something else will vibrate in our skin”.