Beyond Kiosk - Modes of Multiplication offers the opportunity to see and consult some examples of the most remarkable independent art publications. Near to 800 works have been chosen and gathered together by the German designer, editor and curator Christoph Keller. Founder and former director of Revolver Publishing, Christoph Keller today directs the “Christoph Keller Editions” series, published by JRP | Ringier Zurich. The works presented in Beyond Kiosk were chosen from a wider selection that constitutes an itinerant archive. This collection, titled Kiosk, is in a state of perpetual evolution and currently includes more than 6000 copies of artists’ books, periodicals, video and audio supports linked to contemporary art. These documents are available for consultation and are thus a precious resource for students, conference delegates, artists and the general public. Kiosk has been on the road since 2001 and has already been exhibited in more than 20 institutions throughout the world, including the ICA in London, the Witte de With in Rotterdam, Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt and the Artists’ Space in New York. The archive has been included in the permanent collection of the Berlin State Library since the end of 2008.

 
In January 2008, Christoph Keller created a condensed version of the Kiosk archive. This project is called Beyond Kiosk and includes over 800 publications from more than 250 publishers. In contrast to the enormous Kiosk archive (which includes everything produced in the field of independent art publishing) the condensed version known as Beyond Kiosk is carefully selected and requires a lot of curatorial effort. Beyond Kiosk thus contains the most important publications in the field of independent publishing from the last decade. The selection is carried out according to criteria which relate the intellectual and/or artistic content of the publication to its graphic transcription. This new form of archive accentuates the possibility of alternative means of publication and distribution and presents a reflection on the ideas, motivations and strategies that motivate art projects (whether developed in printed form or otherwise).

Beyond Kiosk is presented in a new form for each exhibition, the arrangement of the exhibition space being confided to a different artist or designer each time. In the case of Mudam, the Italian designer Martino Gamper was invited to come up with the presentation layout. Gamper recently came to notice for his project 100 Chairs in 100 Days (which was presented in 2007 at the London Design Museum) but also through his participation in Manifesta 7 in 2008.


 
Mudam is presenting another project in relation to the Beyond Kiosk exhibition. It is called Double Pages and consists of a series of photographs of open books. Its curators (Christophe Keller, Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié and Catherine de Smet) offer a glimpse of graphic creation through the vision of graphic designers involved in independent publishing by highlighting the role that the graphic artist plays in the visual organisation of a book and in the wider sense of the editorial dynamic involved in its development. They therefore invited fifty international graphic designers to each choose two publications of contemporary art that they found interesting in terms of graphic conception. These graphic designers then photographed a double page from each work for the exhibition, the resulting image arising not only from the initial choice (such and such a book or catalogue of whichever artist, conceived by whichever designer) but also the tell-tale visual approach adopted.

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