Cel

Our cast metal logotype. Made by us with @tolerablejames in Nottingham. We haven’t posted for a while, but we’ve been working on a few projects behind closed doors. We hope to bring you some updates soon. Casting images by @tolerablejames

A couple of notes before we head home for xmas: If anyone wants to grab a last minute gift, the last date to order is this Thursday, the 18th. We’ll chuck in a candy cane with every order too. Past-Future Commons by Brodie Weir has sold out, thank you everyone for the incredible response to the publication. There are a couple of copies at Housemans in Kings Cross but after they’re gone, they’re gone. We will be looking into doing a re-print at some point next year, but bare with us. That’s all! 🫶

We’re extremely pleased to announce the release of Past-Future Commons by Brodie Weir. The publication is a tool to understand the legal history of the commons and land ownership in Britain, looking at how the history of resistance and alternative relations to land and environmental resources can be re-assessed, used, and learnt from to help guide us in a future of environmental uncertainty. It is a project of Futuring, a pragmatic analysis and exploration of what we can do and how it has been done before. It is an action of intellectual positivity. Weir explores the English revolution and the legacy of early radical political dissenters ‘The Diggers’ all the way through to contemporary struggles and resistances across the world. It rethinks the nature of nation state borders and the potential for a post human, legal personhood; distributed to rivers, beavers and ecosystems. It attempts to understand and learn from others in a radical solidarity; offering viewpoints, methods and techniques of enacting and dealing with change in our unstable world, working towards a co-operative future. Intricately designed and beautifully printed, this publication envelops writing, diagrams and archival material to create both a proposal and an artefact of practical and transformative change. Past-Future Commons is a publication written by Brodie Weir as an outcome of his research fellowship with Future Days festival 2025, in Lisbon. Available through the link in our bio. £7 Three-colour risograph. A4. 30 Pages, including a fold out diagram. Printed in the UK by @pagemasters.co 2025.

Our next publication. Past-Future Commons by Brodie Weir. Out next week.

A collection of stickers by Cel. Available online now.

💡EXHIBITOR SPOTLIGHT💡 @celcelcel.co.uk Cel is defined by a singular unit interacting with a larger whole. It is an independent publisher based in South London focused on releasing a mix of fiction and interdisciplinary artist publications. Cel aims to make books that evade easy categorisation, with each publication being unique in form and presentation, working directly with artists and writers from the beginning to the end of a publication. The end results have included wide ranging topics, such as Chinese restaurant representation in science fiction, critique of art institutions, photography and memory, drugs and myth, scat and trance music.

We’re thrilled to announce the final publication in our Good Thieves series ‘Set You Free’ by Holly Warcup. This beguiling thing. A flip book, on a key ring, made from a single scatophillia pornographic photo repeated, with the words from N-Trance’s 1995 hit song, ‘Set you free’ hollowed of it’s anthemic music. Through the publications disjointed and raving temporality, bodies become extended, externalised and twisted in a media landscape of endless archives and pleasure continually replaying from a haunted past. N-Trance’s euphoric words when printed become strange, mournful and dry. “I want this night to last forever.” A plea for nostalgia, memories that never disappear, songs that never finish. The words say “Oh Yeah, Oh Yeah, Oh Yeah. Oh Yeah.” Fetishes lose their touch with desire, they are not representations of an endlessly unknowable interiority, but instead a trained techno ache, like Pavlov’s dogs panting to sound systems. In this booklet culture is rendered as an act of endlessly picking over our own detritus, the study of scatology. An obsession and revulsion with consumption and decomposition. The image of pornography repeats, the words droll on in a detached repetition, meaning only begins to accumulate in the flip books speed. A repeating waste again and again. Mirroring the repetition of electronic music; the colours, text and image materialise in a mesh of colour and dissipation, mirroring the builds and drops of a sugary sweet trance song in all its beautiful consumerism. It is hard to tell, maybe this all about just eating shit. Bound by a key ring it wants to attach to you, to cling to your body, to extend your body. Holly’s publication is not an object of purity, it offers an ambiguous look into what constitutes a contemporary desire and begs the question, how do we set a body free? Available now on our website, link in bio. Images blurred for instagram. ‘Set You Free’ by Holly Warcup - £8 Three colour risograph. Eyelet bound. Split ring included. 5x5cm. 100 Pages. Printed in the UK. 2025.

Some brief housekeeping notes: The Cliché briefly appears in the new issue of @moussemagazine in a write up on @ruorumou by Amy Jones. The feature explores the themes of Ruoru’s practice and recent works, including their show at De Ateliers, and situates our publication within this context. You can grab a copy from most magazine shops to read more. We have a table at the @icalondon book fair on 13-14 September. It’s free entry, so would be great to see some of you while we’re there! We have a few copies of The Cliché on the communal table at @pagemasters.co zine fair. It takes place on the 6-7th September at Arthub Studios in Newcross, do not miss out !

(W)HOLE, The Cliché, How to Read, Exhibition, Chain of Images, and Past-Future Commons all stocked at @suchas_gallery . If anyone’s in Tokyo, the gallery is in Setagaya City, and their shop is filled with tonnes of great publications. Many thanks to @4sic4 - @jeauyce and ed for helping to orchestrate Cel’s first international stockist 🗣️📖🫂

Congratulations to @ruorumou on her incredible show at @deateliers . Above are some photos of Ruoru’s work, but the whole show is great too; we highly recommended going down if you’re in Amsterdam. If you’re there, we still have some copies of Ruoru’s publication for sale at the entrance!

Past-Future Commons is a publication written by Brodie Weir during a research fellowship with @futuredays.io festival, which took place last week in Lisbon. The theme of the publication is about the legal history of the commons and land ownership in Britain, looking at how the history of resistance and alternative relations to land and environmental resources can be re-assessed, used and learnt to help guide in a future of environmental uncertainty. It is a project of Futuring, a pragmatic analysis and exploration of what we can actually do and how it has been done before. It is an action of intellectual positivity. This publication was made specifically to coincide with the second edition of the Future Days festival, who’s theme this year was ‘towards a symbiotic future’. In which the writers and thinkers from across the globe came together to remap the relationship between the human and the non human in planning, law and forecasting. On day one of the festival, Brodie hosted a reading table, where attendees and co-participants were invited into ongoing discussions surrounding the topics of the book. Alongside the publication, we designed the additional ephemera for the table, including prints, and the ‘Watershed kin-Folkland contracts’ that could be futured, filled in, and then stamped. We were honoured to be involved in the production and design of this publication, and there’s still some work left to be done. Before publishing the book, we are working with Brodie to expand on the original points of the project and reflect on lessons learnt from the festival itself. We would like to thank the great people at @pagemasters.co for the incredible job they did printing, specifically the fold out section which is the centre piece of the publication and very difficult to print, so much love and appreciation to you! We will announce dates and more information about this publication in a little bit. However, before we can release Brodie’s gem of a publication, we have the final instalment of the Good Thieves series with Holly Warcup which is coming very soon! Expect announcements incoming! For now enjoy the photos from the festival and congrats to Brodie.

We are pleased to present ‘Chain of Images’ by Oliver Parry Newman as the fourth edition in our Good Thieves series.  A 44 page, 14cmx14cm booklet in which OPN presents a re-representation of Walter Benjamin’s infamously unfinished book ‘On Hashish’: a volume described by the writer as a collection of protocols on drug experiments. OPN appropriates one of these protocols, ‘Hashish in Marseilles’, and attempts to extrapolate these pages of their images and sensations, retroactively reanimating them with a wide range of drawings that follow a meandering dream logic, as he unearths someone else’s memories. The result is an archeological exquisite corpse between himself, W.Benjamin and the alien chemical hashish. Becoming a fairytale-like chain of images, it exposes an alternative and submerged transmission of meaning through time and chemicals in direct opposition to the texts preoccupation with myth. Within this is the quiet critique of the texts early 20th century bourgeois bias’, littered with outdated views on poverty, labour, and physiognomy. In the publication we find childlike images, people rendered as animals, wonky clocks and people with monsters in their head. If one were not paying attention it could be seen as off kilter doodles, but instead this quiet critique of the original text bares the stains of beauty and lightness found in the prose, whilst also translating it into something new. These images for W.Benjamin come from hash, but for OPN the intoxication is the substance of language itself and it’s beguiling ability to present an image, a feeling or meaning within someone with the same effect as a stimulant. To use a phrase from the passage - the publication could be seen as an example of ‘canonical magic’ the passing and changing of meaning through constant reinterpretation of work by different individuals to create new substance. Available now on our website. One colour risograph. Chicago screw bound. 2 transclear inserts, 3 risograph inserts. Hand stamped cover and back. Printed in the UK. 2025.