Being Born
Kienbaum Artists’ books edited by Jochen Kienbaum
Publisher: Snoeck
I don't remember but...
Ingrid Calame interviewed more than 20 people, among them children, adolescents, adults, friends and colleagues, female as well as male, in her volume »Being Born« about what they knew about their own birth. These naturally immensely personal conversations are accompanied by details of frottages with pigment on Mylar, which the artist created in 2014 in a cistern at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Lacoste, France, and in 2015 at the Zeche Zollverein in Essen, Germany. All these schematic and seemingly shadowy works in color direct our gaze, as it were, from the inside out. As if flooded with sunlight, indefinable traces and bumps appear in some of the images, cogs, grooves and metal ridges in others. This is precisely how the stories are presented to the readers: on the one hand, stories of precipitate deliveries, on the other hand legends of almost mythical measure. This initially sounds rather touching, and also quite scary; yet again, this is interrupted by the humor, which permeates most of these familial stories.
Text: Interviews by Ingrid Calame with Rhea Anastas, Esther Anastas Simpson, James Benning, Kate Bland, Olivia Booth, Willa Calame Roberts, Nancy Davidson, Gabrielle Ferrer, Steven Hull, Dewey Johnson, Dolly Johnson, Erik Johnson, Remy Kushner, Thomas Lawson, Iris Maczollek, Laura Miller, Julia Paull, Beverly Reed, David Reed, Shelby Roberts, Mira Schor, Ford Stone, Fred Tomaselli, Amy Wheeler, Joe Wolek
Hardback: 96 pages with 55 color plates
13” x 9 ½” x ¾”
ISBN 978-3-86442-159-4
Available at
Walther König Bookstore, Germany LINK
John Rule Art Book, UK, Scandanavia, Eastern and South Europe LINK