Diaphanes

Diaphanes has been active as a publisher since 2001, with its headquarters in Zurich and a project space in Berlin. Editorial care and sophisticated design are the main coordinates of a multilingual book production oriented to enduring relevance in the interconnection of discourse and fiction, art and the humanities, literature and philosophy. As open to the new as to the forgotten, Diaphanes wishes to offer a lively place of publication outside the dominant mainstream, and to give productive resonance to a wide variety of forms of knowledge and expression. With a classical print production and an innovative online palette, Diaphanes addresses an open and critical reading public, for whom books remain an indispensable tool of intellectual interchange. An available backlist of over 500 titles in German, English, and French, together with an annual program of around 50 new publications in worldwide distribution, make Diaphanes one of the most prominent independent publishers.

Diaphanes is also, since 2017, the name of a quarterly English-, German-, multi-language magazine with a focus on contemporary art, critical discourse, and multilingual fiction.
 
Zurich / Berlin
 
166 titles
Series:
 
Pierre Guyotat - La parole visible
2024
French edition
forthcoming
Architect Patrick Bouchain's reading of the work and his friendship with Pierre Guyotat, as well as an analysis by Bouchain and numerous members of Guyotat's creative community of the power of the alliance between vision and word, image and poem, in the author's work.
Reiner Schürmann - The Place of the Symbolic - Essays on Art and Politics
2024
English edition
The Place of the Symbolic brings together Reiner Schürmann's essays on the nexus between art and politics.
Joseph Mitchell - Le Merveilleux saloon de McSorley - Récits New-yorkais
2024
French edition
Collection of portraits published between 1938 and 1955 in the New Yorker by one of the pioneer of New Journalism: a literary painting of a New York that no longer exists.
Ambivalent work*s - Queer perspectives and art history
2024
English edition
An exploration of queerness in visual and material culture with regard to the specific conditions of the making and experience of art in different cultural, sociopolitical, and historical contexts.
Eckardt Lindner - Inorganic Life - On Post-Vitalism
2024
English edition
A theory of passive vitalism.
Revolving Documents - Narrations of Beginnings, Recent Methods and Cross-Mappings of Performance Art
2024
English edition
currently out of stock
Challenging dominant histories of the genre, this book focuses on translocal and transcultural connections, and seeks to generate, expand knowledge on different narrations of the beginnings of Performance Art.
Reiner Schürmann - Ways of Releasement - Writings on God, Eckhart, and Zen
2024
English edition
A collection of early texts by Reiner Schürmann, on religion, Zen, language, Eckhart and Heidegger.
Pierre Guyotat - Pierre Guyotat et l\'Algérie
2024
French edition
A collective work to highlight the unique perspective of Pierre Guyotat, one of the greatest authors of the French language and a major figure in the memory of the Algerian conflict, on the war of independence and post-independence Algeria.
On Withdrawal - Scenes of Refusal, Disappearance and Resilience in Art and Cultural Practices
2023
English edition
What forms does withdrawal—meaning either that which withdraws itself or which is being withdrawn—take in artistic and cultural practices? What movement(s) does it create or follow in specific contexts, and with what theoretical, material, and political consequences? The contributors of this book address these questions in a variety of writing practices, each focusing on specific scenes.
Diaphanes - Matrices porteuses
2023
texts in English and French
Diaphanes #11 explores practices of human and non-human substitution, plays with the myths and visions of motherhood and procreation, gathers artistic and theoretical positions on reproduction and communication, gender and genus, addressing and conception.
Jean-Luc Nancy - Thinking With - Jean-Luc Nancy
2023
texts in English, German, French
A collection of about thirty texts to resume the passionate conversation that Jean-Luc Nancy was engaged in throughout his life, with philosophers and artists from all over the world.
Thierry de Duve - Hommes, encore un effort… - Anthropogenèse, christianisme, sexuation
2023
French edition
In this essay, Thierry de Duve leaves the aesthetics and history of the art to approach, under the religious prism, two anthropological questions that the mutation of the symbolic order in progress makes pressing: the difference of the sexes and the future of the politics of emancipation.
Antonin Artaud - A Sinister Assassin - Last Writings, Ivry-sur-Seine, September 1947–March 1948
2023
English edition
Edited, translated and with an introduction by Stephen Barber, A Sinister Assassin illuminates Artaud's last, most intensive and terminal work for the first time.
NO Rhetoric(s) - Versions and Subversions of Resistance in Contemporary Global Art
2023
English edition
An incisive examination of the intersection of global art and political resistance.
Laurent Mannoni - Movements of Air - The Photographs from Étienne-Jules Marey’s Wind Tunnels
2023
English edition
The book "Movements of Air" reprints the breathtaking pictures of Étienne-Jules Marey, that he took between 1899 and 1901 during his scientific experiments with moving air and smoke, and complements them with two essays of Georges Didi-Huberman and Laurent Mannoni. 
Liliana Gómez - Archive Matter - A Camera in the Laboratory of the Modern
2023
English edition
A journey through the United Fruit Company's photo archive and its documentation of corporate expansion into the Caribbean.
Inventory and Hinge - Entangled Fields of Research in the Arts – Institute for Contemporary Art Research 2001–2022
2023
English edition
An overview of the research projects performed over the last two decades at the Institute for Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR) of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).
Antonin Artaud - The Human Face and Other Writings on His Drawings
2022
bilingual edition (English / French)
Three extraordinary texts—pitched between writing and image—that project Artaud's ferocious engagement with the act of drawing.
Yves Netzhammer - Convex Thoughts - 293 Digital Drawings
2022
English edition
293 new digital drawings by the Swiss artist.
Ronny Hardliz - Non-Construction - Architectural Gestures in Artistic Research
2022
English edition
By defining a concept of architecture based on the tactile experience and not on construction, this book allows us to explore both discursive practice as the study of architectural art and the integration of architectural art as a discourse of spatial practice.
Zoran Terzić - Idiocracy - The Culture of the New Idiot
2022
English edition
Zoran Terzić's wide-ranging and sharply detailed essay takes up the cultural-historical figure of the idiot and follows its numerous appearances throughout intellectual history in an examination of the art of idiocy that extends outside the hypertrophic present.
Liquidity, Flows, Circulation - The Cultural Logic of Environmentalization
2022
English edition
The hypothesis of a genuine cultural logic of environmentalization, at the intersection of art, media and cultural studies as well as economic theory.
Nicolas Evreïnoff - The Steps of Nemesis - A Dramatic Chronicle in Six Scenes from Party Life in the USSR (1936–1938)
2022
English edition
The theatricalization of the Soviet Union through the reenactment as theater of the Stalinist show trials by the playwright Nikolai Evreinov (1879-1953).
Reiner Schürmann - Modern Philosophies of the Will
2022
English edition
Through Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, this seminar traces the development of the relation between the will and the law as self-given.
Reiner Schürmann - Le principe d\'anarchie - Heidegger et la question de l\'agir
2022
French edition
The relation between being and acting and the principle of anarchy in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger.
Antonin Artaud - Radio Works - 1946-48
2021
bilingual edition (English / French)
The translated transcripts of two radio broadcasts by Artaud: To have done with the judgement of god (1947-48) and Madness and Black Magic (1946). Correspondences from that period are also included.
Antonin Artaud - Here Lies preceded by The Indian Culture
2021
bilingual edition (English / French)
Two of Antonin Artaud's foremost poetic works from the last period of his life.
Hybrid Ecologies
2021
English edition
A series of interdisciplinary contributions around the political and social dimensions of ecology and its implications in the humanities and social sciences, artistic practices and design.
Jean-Luc Nancy - Rencontre
2021
French edition
A dialogue between the philosopher and the art historian around the encounter.
Diaphanes - Punk Philology
2021
texts in English and French
A punk philology (with Simon Critchley, Emanuele Coccia, Dennis Cooper, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Kim Gordon, Donatien Grau, Richard Hell, Paul McCarthy...).
Bernard Stiegler - Philosophies singulières - Conversation avec Michaël Crevoisier
2021
French edition
Mehdi Belhaj Kacem and Bernard Stiegler talk about what links them to philosophy.
Raphaëlle Milone - Papillon de verre
2021
French edition
Raphaëlle Milone's first novel, a dive into the heart of desires, acclaimed by Simon Liberati as well as by Jean-Luc Nancy.
Donatien Grau - Literature is a Voyage of Discovery - Tom Bishop in Conversation with Donatien Grau
2021
English edition
Tom Bishop traces his career and intellectual path through conversations with Donatien Grau.
Sylvère Lotringer - I Was more American than the Americans - Sylvère Lotringer in conversation with Donatien Grau
2021
English edition
Sylvère Lotringer traces his career and intellectual path through conversations with Donatien Grau.
Donatien Grau - La littérature est un voyage de découverte - 
Tom Bishop en conversation avec Donatien Grau
2021
French edition
Tom Bishop traces his career and intellectual path through conversations with Donatien Grau.
Sylvère Lotringer - J\'étais plus américain que les Américains - Sylvère Lotringer en conversation avec Donatien Grau
2021
French edition
Sylvère Lotringer traces his career and intellectual path through conversations with Donatien Grau.
Refaire le monde
2021
English edition
currently out of stock
A documentation of new values and new worlds and a guide to them.
Reiner Schürmann - Reading Marx - On Transcendental Materialism
2021
English edition
Schürmann's lecture on Marx emphasizes the philosophical axis of the German theoretician's work and reads it as a transcendental materialism.
Performing Human Rights - Contested Amnesia and Aesthetic Practices in the Global South
2021
English edition
Aesthetic practices and human rights in the global south.
Connect and Divide - The Practice Turn in Media Studies
2021
English edition
The publication studies four aspects of the practice turn in media studies: Media history from a praxeological perspective, the practice turn in religion and media studies, the connecting and dividing lines of media theories concerning gender and post-colonial agencies, and a historical and theoretical examination of the current relationship of media theory and practice theory.
Wu Yi - The Sea as Mirror - Essayings in and against Philosophy as History
2021
English edition
The deep political and moral ambiguity attributed to the maritimeelement in Western philosophical and literary imaginaries.
Brian Alkire - The Last Mask - Hamann\'s Theater of the Grotesque
2021
English edition
A philological and theoretical rereading of the late work of Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788).
filters:


 top of page