Wirklichkeit Books

Wirklichkeit Books, founded in 2019 in Berlin, publishes books to find words,images and actions for a new actuality. The catalogue includes titles by artists and writers side by side with historic positions relating to poetry, play, language and art. Publishing is understood as an experimental and joyful act that engages with the travel of ideas and is seen as a way of creating Wirklichkeit.

Marion von Osten, Material Marion von Osten 1: MoneyNations, Wirklichkeit Books, 2024, © Marion von Osten

MoneyNations was an exhibition, a webzine, a radio, a conference, a video archive, a printed publication, an infrastructure, a counterpublic, an ongoing discussion, a transnational network of friends. Initiated by Marion von Osten (1963 – 2020) as curator at the Shedhalle Zurich, the project evolved from an urgency to act against the hegemonic forces of “the West” within the radically changing condition of post-Cold War Europe. MoneyNations addressed – and intervened in – the interrelatedness between racist border policies and media representations, exploitative economic relations, and identity-forming processes. The applied methods of critique and organizing, transversing between art, theory, and activism, are made accessible in this volume through images, correspondences, and other ephemera, revealing their political potential for the present.

Includes a conversation between Sezgin Boynik (Rab-Rab Press), Ferdiansyah Thajib (KUNCI Study Forum & Collective), Eleanor Ivory Weber & Camilla Wills (Divided Publishing) and the editors.

[+]

Wirklichkeit Books, Manufacturing Consent in Germany: A Syllabus, Wirklichkeit Books, 2023, © Wirklichkeit Books

Manufacturing Consent in Germany is a collection of freely accessible materials that provide a structural understanding of the increasingly repressive climate within Germany. Central to this is the nationalized politics of Holocaust remembrance, which has been effectively instrumentalized, as is clear from the various articles, lectures, press releases, and podcasts, by the right-wing in Germany. The extent of this form of disciplining has been particularly palpable in the days since the massacres by Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023 and the ensuing collective punishment of Gaza by the Israeli army. While the majority of civilian protests against the war crimes of the Israeli army were banned in Germany with the explanation that they were anti-Semitic – a ban that was enforced with frightening police violence –, German cultural institutions largely remained silent about the human rights violations committed in Gaza. The articles linked in the Syllabus are from the last years and, while addressing these anti-democratic tendencies, are the product of inspiring and transnational discursive spaces that thrive in the face of them. We want to oppose the German press’ depiction of anti-Semitism as a phenomenon of the Arab-migrant milieu by recognizing that the so-called “denazification” project after 1945 remains unaccomplished; it is the German majority society which is saturated with anti-Semitic continuities.

With this compilation we hope to stimulate reflection and promote a discussion on how to oppose this current repression; we believe that opposing it is necessary for the struggle against racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic violence and towards a dignified life for the Palestinian people. Our hearts and thoughts are with all killed, dispossessed, abducted and displaced people and their loved ones.

[+]

Wirklichkeit Books, Publishing as a Way of Creating Wirklichkeit (Series, since 2019), Wirklichkeit Books, 2024, © Wirklichkeit Books

Publishing as a Way of Creating Wirklichkeit (PWCW) is an occasional serial publication that contextualizes and informs about past and future Wirklichkeit Books titles. The Din A5-sized 8-page printed matter is distributed through personal encounter and can be found in affiliated book shops.

[+]