b_books – Miss Read

b_books

b_books is a bookstore and publishing collective in Berlin-Kreuzberg. It was founded in 1996 by a group of people involved in political activism, theory, film, and art. b_books runs a bookstore, venue, and publishing house specializing in political philosophy, art and film, and queer feminist and decolonial theory. Alongside the bookshop and publishing activities, b_books has organized and hosted events under the title montagsPRAXIS since the 1990s. The publishing house started in 1998 with publications by Toni Negri, Linda Singer, Maurizio Lazzarato, and Harun Farocki, and later translations of Paul B. Preciado, Jacques Rancière, and Chris Kraus were added, as well as series on urban theory (metrozones), politics and art criticism (PoLYpeN). Recently, the series RE FUSE was founded by Çiğdem Inan. The program includes the publication of the German translation of Cruel Optimism by Lauren Berlant as well as the forthcoming German translation of We Must Learn to Sit Down Together and Talk About A Little Culture by Sylvia Wynter.
Between prefix and love (post-love): An interview with Tim Stüttgen
Tim Stüttgen, Katia Sepulveda & Amy Rush, Between prefix and love (post-love): An interview with Tim Stüttgen, b_books, 2026, © Tim Stüttgen, Katia Sepulveda & Amy Rush

This book presents the latest interview with Tim Stüttgen, a key figure in contemporary debates on sexuality and body politics. Conceived as an open dialogue with the post-porn movement, the conversation unfolds as a space for exploration between critical theory and artistic practice.
Far from formulating a closed hypothesis about what love is or what post-love might be, the questions arise from a desire to experience these notions through encounter and conversation. Stüttgen was the first collaborator on this performative journey. Published for the first time, this interview offers a gateway into Tim Stüttgen’s thinking and raises new questions about love, desire, and their political possibilities.

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Working in the Planetary Surplus: Letters and songs about abundance and being superfluous
Alice Creischer, Working in the Planetary Surplus: Letters and songs about abundance and being superfluous, b_books, 2025, © Alice Creischer

Fiddle-dee-dee, says the monster, the present situation calls for decisions. If you at least lived on the periphery, where not everything is buttered up, where you can’t close your eyes to the empty stomachs bustling through the mountains of garbage, you little foam crown of overproduction! But here you don’t even dare to enter the basement of your own house to say “how d’you do” to the construction workers who sleep there in bunk beds in order to continue­­ building the investment, pouring hundreds of senseless tons of concrete onto steel grids day after day—and waiting for their unpaid wages.

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In the Making In the Desert of Modernity: Colonial Planning and After
Marion von Osten, In the Making In the Desert of Modernity: Colonial Planning and After, b_books, 2023, © Marion von Osten

In the Making: In the Desert of Modernity: Colonial Planning and After. A Research-Based Practice is about the working method of the artist and exhibition maker Marion von Osten (1963-2020). Through the genesis of one of her major exhibitions, In the Desert of Modernity: Colonial Planning and After, and other related exhibitions, Marion von Osten recounts modes of research, forms of collaboration, research trips, and encounters. Was the book ColonialModern. Aesthetics of the Past, Rebellions for the Future (ed. by Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, Marion von Osten) dedicated to the exhibition itself, which deals with the connection between architecture, urban planning, and colonialism, Marion von Osten's In the Making traces the conceptual and design settings of exhibition making and reveals connections in order to reconnect them where necessary. Almost as if incidentally and yet quite centrally, In the Making establishes walking, talking, listening, meeting, relating asessential components of inquiry-not only in a postcolonial context, but especially there. Addressing spatial politics, power relations, and social struggles at the time of colonialism, liberation struggles, and decolonization in North Africa, In the Making welcomes unexpected encounters and opens pathways to parainstitutional and feminist exhibition making.

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