ICI Berlin Press

We would like to sincerely thank Marcela Santander for her review of the ICI Berlin Press publication ‘Stella do Patrocínio. Falatório / Chatter’ in Práticas da História, n.º 21 (2025): 407–413. Written in Portuguese, the beginning of @masantander ’s review translates into English as: ‘Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1941, Stella do Patrocínio was a Black woman who was arrested at age 21 and compulsorily committed to the Pedro II Psychiatric Center; she was later transferred, in 1966, to the Juliano Moreira Colony, where she remained until her death in 1992, at age 51. Like Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Patrícia Ruth, Dir-ce Maia, and so many other Brazilians whose life trajectories were shaped by compulsory hospitalization, Stella was ensnared by a psychiatric-police apparatus that operated to exclude lives deemed undesirable, particularly those racialized and from the working classes. Her life story cannot, therefore, be separated from the history of the colony itself, inaugurated in 1924 as part of a hygienist project to modernize the Brazilian state (p. 272), inspired by the European model of agricultural colonies and sustained by an articulation of medical, legal, pedagogical, and police knowledge, in a country marked by more than three centuries of slavery.’ ‘Stells do Patrocínio: Falatório/Chatter’ is available as a black-and-white paperback for 17.50€ and as a full-colour hardcover for 45€. The Open Access version of the book is completely free and includes unique video and audio material, all of which can be accessed via the ICI Berlin Press website (link in bio). Link in bio. @iracemadulley @marlon___miguel @masantander #stelladopatrcínio #falatório #chatter #psychiatry #review

This is the second video in our short three-part video series with the editors of ‘Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking’, who reflect on the nature of collective artistic practices and how this subject is explored in their Worlding Public Cultures chapbook. Stay tuned for the next clip! 'Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking' was co-edited by Eva Bentcheva, Annie Jael Kwan and Ming Tiampo for Worlding Public Cultures in partnership with Asia Forum. @alikati @ming_tiampo @asia_forum 🟢 “I think how you've just anchored collectives also within Asia, Annie, that's been extremely important for our book. Ming, because you're an art historian as well, I wanted to ask you, how does that content of our book actually shift our understanding of art history? What would you say? Thanks for that question, Eva. I think what it does is it really challenges the way that we think about how we write art history in terms of the individual and in terms of how we historicise individual artists, but it also encourages us to think a little bit more deeply about what is the role of art in society. So from the perspective of the great artist, which was a concept that was developed during the Renaissance with Vasari's ‘Lives of the Artists’, it is a project that really challenges the ways in which we think through how we imagine the history of art, not as a history of individuals, but really as a history of individuals that are located within larger collectives, larger communities. And it also then helps us to think through and open up the question of what is the role of art in society today. It helps us to point to the ethical, political responsibility of art as a world-making exercise, not just for the one, but for the many.” 🟢 Thinking Collectives is available for 14.50€. The Open Access version is also available for free via our website: /catalogue/doi/10.37050/wpc-co-01 #iciberlinpress #worldingpubliccultures #collectivism #thinkingcollectives #globalAsias

🟢HOT OFF THE PRESS! 🟢 ICI Berlin Press is thrilled to announce the publication of the latest book in our Cultural Inquiry series, ‘Performing Embodiment: Choreographies of Affect, Language, and Social Norms’, Ed. by Alberica Bazzoni and Federica Buongiorno. Combining the notions of performativity and embodiment, this book situates the body in the realm of processes, movement, and poiesis, seeking to generate alternative configurations to mind–body dualism. Focused on language, literature, dance, affect, gender, sport, and disability, the contributions to this volume emphasize doing over being: the body does and is done; it is engaged in a movement of co-constitution with the world. It is in doing that bodies produce knowledge and shared or contested social meaning. Such a relational process is best described through the notion of choreographies — patterns of movement which capture the embodied dynamic of passivity and activity, design and improvisation, inner and outer states, and which fittingly describe the modalities through which social norms discipline bodies, or are challenged by them. The book is available as a paperback for 16.50€ and as a hardcover for 45€. You can also download it for free as a PDF via Open Access at our website (link in bio).  @albe_abu @federicabuongiorno Cover design by Studio Bens. Photograph by Claudia Peppel, ‘Stairs’, 2025 @cepeppel @studiobens #embodiment #phenomenology #performativity #mindbodydualism #choreography

In this short three-part video series, the editors of ‘Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking’ reflect on the nature of collective artistic practices and how this subject is explored in their Worlding Public Cultures chapbook. Stay tuned for the next clip! 'Thinking Collectives / Collective Thinking' was co-edited by Eva Bentcheva, Annie Jael Kwan and Ming Tiampo for Worlding Public Cultures in partnership with Asia Forum. @alikati @ming_tiampo @asia_forum 🟢 “It's been such a pleasure to work with both of you on this, and especially reflecting on the nature of collectives through the book. I think thinking about collectives, humans have always been relational. We've never really been able to thrive or survive alone, but in recent years, we've been forced to remember that. During COVID-19, multiple systems fared with us, and it was mutual aid and reciprocity that carried communities through, and that wasn't a new thing. It was something that we had to remember. At the moment, we're living through deepening social injustices, entrenched power imbalances, and a climate in crisis. It's becoming undeniable we're heading towards multiple converging crises, and we have to learn, or relearn urgently how to coexist. Collectives are doing that kind of work of holding the needs of the individual alongside the needs of the group, while keeping sight of what the group might offer the wider world, and that's hard, intentional work, and the collectives in this publication, they're based in Asia or in the Asia diaspora, and at the same time, they are deeply local, as well as being profoundly transnational. They've had to become fluent, and flexible, and adaptive, and it's precisely that way of being that creates resilience, and a kind of relational attunement, and that offers us some of the most genuine insight, and indeed, hope for where we find ourselves now.” 🟢 Thinking Collectives is available for 14.50€. The Open Access version is also available for free via our website: /catalogue/doi/10.37050/wpc-co-01 #iciberlinpress #worldingpubliccultures #collectivism #thinkingcollectives #globalAsias

🟢 Recommended Weekend Reading: Some books not only remain relevant, but becoming increasingly prescient in relation to heinous developments in socio-political current affairs and the impacts of the present moment on our earth. ‘War-torn Ecologies, An-Archic Fragments: Reflections from the Middle East’ identifies a conceptual intersection between war, affect, and ecology from the Middle East. It creates a counter archive of texts by ethnographers and artists, and enables divergent worlds to share a conversation through the crevices of mass violence across species. Delving into vital encounters with mulberry trees, wild medicinal plants, jinns, and goats, as well as bleaker experiences with toxic war materials like landmines, this volume expands an ecological sensorium that works through displacement, memory, endurance, and praxis. The volume’s editor, Umut Yıldırım, is an assistant professor of anthropology at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland. ‘War-torn Ecologies, An-Archic Fragments: Reflections from the Middle East’, ed. by Umut Yıldırım (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2023). The volume of collected essays is part of our “Cultural Inquiry” series, ci-27, and includes texts by: François Vergès, Umut Yıldırım, Marwa Arsanios, Kali Rubaii, Nadine Hattom, Jumana Emil Abboud, and Munira Khayyat. It is available for sale in hardback (36€), paperback (19€), or Open Access download at our website (link in bio). Cover design by Studio Bens based on a paper collage by @cepeppel ‘Out of Nowhere’, 2016, paper and acrylic paint, 13.3 x 22.3 cm. #iciberlinpress #culturalinquiry #war #aecology #middleeast

Lil’ throwback to our volume ‘The Work of World Literature’, ed. by Francesco Giusti (@muzzledsphinx ) and Benjamin Lewis Robinson The contentious discourse around world literature tends to stress the ‘world’ in the phrase. This volume, in contrast, asks what it means to approach world literature by inflecting the question of the literary. Debates for, against, and around ‘world literature’ have brought renewed attention to the worldly aspects of the literary enterprise. Literature is studied with regard to its sociopolitical and cultural references, contexts and conditions of production, circulation, distribution, and translation. But what becomes of the literary when one speaks of world literature? Responding to Derek Attridge’s theory of how literature ‘works’, the contributions in this volume explore in diverse ways and with attention to a variety of literary practices what it might mean to speak of ‘the work of world literature’. The volume shows how attention to literariness complicates the ethical and political conundrums at the centre of debates about world literature. We published the book in 2021. It’s available via our website for 14.50 € (paperback) and 31.50 € (hardcover; ; and also available for free via Open Access at our website. Cover design by Studio Bens with a work by Claudia Peppel @cepeppel . #theworkofworldliterature #openaccesspublishing #iciberlinpress #2021 #literature

Today marks a very special book presentation of 'Falatório/Chatter’ at the Paço Imperial Museum (@pacoimperial_rj ) in Rio de Janeiro. @pacoimperial_rj is the very place where Stella's Falatório/Chatter was first exhibited in 1988–89. It is now being presented again in the exhibition that will open this Saturday 4 April as part of the museum's 40-year anniversary celebrations. Today, an amazing group of people are gathering to talk about the book and Stella do Patrocínio, including one of the book's editors, @marlon___miguel . Edited by Marlon Miguel and Iracema Dulley, 'Falatório/Chatter’ is a bi-lingual English and Portuguese volume that delves into the life and work of Stella do Patrocínio (1941–1992), who was confined in Rio de Janeiro’s Colônia Juliano Moreira psychiatric asylum from the age of twenty-one until her death. It is available via ICI Berlin Press in a black-and-white paperback for 17.50€ and as a full-colour hardcover for 45€. The Open Access version of the book is completely free and includes unique video and audio material, all of which can be accessed via the ICI Berlin Press website (link in bio). #stelladopatrcínio #falatório #chatter #psychiatry #racism #resistance #institutionalviolence #orality #ethicallistening #antipsychiatry #marlonmiguel #iracemadulley

Transitions: Queer Temporalities in Trans Video Blogs with Sarah Horn. Available to watch @iciberlin video section. #Iciberlin #iciberlinpress #transition #bookpresentation

You can find ICI Berlin Press’s books stocked in many bookstores throughout Berlin, as well as in Leipzig, London and Reykjavik! Please support your local bookstores whenever possible! @buchhandlungwaltherfranzkoenig @proqm @shesaidbooks @gropiusbau @hamburger_bahnhof @b_books_verlag @archive.souq @whitechapelgallery @kwinstitutefcontemporaryart @rotorbooks @bokumbok_ You can also buy our print-on-demand books via our website. And as a hybrid publisher, we also make all of our books and essays available for free via Open Access, which is accessible via our website (link in bio): /catalogue/welcome Be curious, get reading, and enjoy! 💚 #iciberlinpress #openaccess #bookshops #printondemand #nonprofitpublisher

The Sunday Read 💚 Today we’ll be cosying up on the sofa with one of ICI Berlin Press’s most popular monographs, David Kishik’s ‘Self Study: Notes on the Schizoid Position’, which was released in 2023. Jack Halberstam described this as “autophilosophy”, continuing “in this ornate and seductive book, is an attempt by the author to explain himself to himself, to study his own work in the absence of others to do it for him, and to tell his story to himself. Digging in to the schizoid position, David Kishik examines his blind spot and finds himself there. Weirdly compelling, I encourage you to read this book without needing to know why in advance. Here you will find a not-self, not finding truth and not telling us about it.” ‘Self Study’ lays bare Kishik’s life and work, and engages with psychoanalysis, philosophy, and cultural inquiry to trace loneliness across the history of thought, leading to today’s shut-in society and the autonomous subject of liberal capitalism. Paperback edition available for 12€, or Open Access version, both at ICI Berlin Press’ website (link in bio). #davidkishik #selfstudy #iciberlinpress #jackhalberstam #schizoidcondition

‘It's very hard, I think, to find the right words to define Stella do Patrocínio. And this book had the difficult task to, in a certain sense, let her words speak for her and for itself. But what can I say? I can say that Stella was born and raised in Rio, she liked a lot to travel, and then she was imprisoned to life in a psychiatry hospital after what seems to have been a psychotic episode. So Stella was the victim of a very violent, misogynous and racist society that used asylums as one of the main instruments of segregation. And she spent around 30 years in psychiatry hospitals and died in one of the most terrible across Brazil. And Stella was definitely not an exception. Even her mother had a similar fate and was also sent to the same institution years before. But what's interesting is that inside the asylum, she didn't stop talking. She spoke in this very particular way, a voice that I would describe as imbued with social critique and poetic force. And in the late 1980s, some artists had the sensibility to record it as a part of activities related to Brazilian anti-asylum movement. And I think this book is trying to recover the fragment archives of these spoken words, as well as other images of the institution patients in attempt to give the reader a bit of context of its emergence.’ Here, @marlon___miguel discusses the publication he edited with Iracema Dulley for ICI Berlin Press about the life of Stella do Patrocínio. The Open Access version of the book is completely free and includes unique video and audio material, all of which can be accessed via the ICI Berlin Press website (link in bio). The paperback is 17.50€ and the hardcover is is 45€. #stelladopatrcínio #falatório #chatter #psychiatry #racism #resistance #institutionalviolence #orality #ethicallistening #antipsychiatry

Many thanks to Janna Graham for her rigorous and thoughtful review of our volume 'Psychotherapy and Materialism: Essays by François Tosquelles and Jean Oury’, ed. by Marlon Miguel and Elena Vogman. You can read the full review @e_flux ! The book ‘Psychotherapy and Materialism’ offers the first English translation of two seminal texts by institutional psychotherapy co-inventors François Tosquelles, a Catalan psychiatrist and anarcho-syndicalist, and Jean Oury, founder of the La Borde clinic. The book is available in paperback for 10.50€, hardback for 27€, or via Open Access at ICI Berlin Press’ website (link in bio). Cover design: Studio Bens. Film stills from Hélène Álvarez Tosquelles and François Tosquelles, Société lozérienne d’hygiène mentale, Institut Jean Vigo — Cinémathèque de Perpignan, 1954–57. Courtesy Michel Tosquelles. #psychotherapyandmaterialism #iciberlinpress #openaccesspublishing #jeanoury #françoistosquelles #disalienation #saintalban #laborde #grouptherapies #psychoanalysis #education #socialwork #treatmentoftheinstitution #schizoanalysis