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:
 
Peter Kurzeck - Un hiver de neige
2018
French edition
The first volume of Peter Kurzeck's great autobiographical and poetic chronicle in 12 volumes: the opening of a colossal literary project which portrays the city of Frankfurt and Germany in the early 1980s. A must read, often compared to Proust, Joyce, and Döblin.
Stephen Barber - White Noise Ballrooms
2018
English edition
In a corrupt town of North England shortly before Thatcher, a group of kids sets a “white noise” insurgency to try and save the city. A disturbing and captivating novel.
Neolithic Childhood - Art in a False Present, c. 1930
2018
English edition
Based on the writings of Carl Einstein, this comprehensive, richly illustrated reader examines how the artistic avant-gardes reacted to the multiple crises of European modernity around 1930. Structured around a glossary, the publication gathers commissioned essays, texts by Einstein, and documentation on the namesake exhibition.
Mike Wilson - Rockabilly
2018
English edition
After a meteorite crashes into his yard, the daily life of Rockabilly and of his neighbors takes a strange turn… Mike Wilson's third novel combines social criticism and science fiction, depicting the dark corners of American suburbs at night.
Sebastian Egenhofer - Towards an Aesthetics of Production
2018
English edition
Throughout the twentieth century, critical art history often chose to ally itself with a restrictive brand of formalism. Therefore, critical analyses regularly reduced the artwork to its material and its social use. Based on this observation, historian Sebastian Egenhofer takes Deleuze's readings of philosophers as a starting point to renew the narrative of art history since the 1960s.
Yan Marchand - Martin Heidegger\'s Grouch
2018
English edition
Questioning the meaning of one's existence with Martin Heidegger (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Jérôme Meyer-Bisch - Lao-Tzu - Or the Way of the Dragon
2018
English edition
To find the way of Wisdom with Lao-Tzu (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Diaphanes - Merry Xenotism!
2018
bilingual edition (English / German)
Under the title of Merry Xenotism!, Diaphanes #4 directs its attention to everything foreign and different, to the other in the same and the same in the other. With contributions from art, literature, and discourse by Leonard Suryajaya, Slavs & Tartars, Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Yves Netzhammer, Jean-Luc Nancy, Tianzhuo Chen, Elena Dorfman, Maria Gabriela Llansol, A.K. Kaiza, Miguel Tamen, Lina Atfah, Michele Pedrazzi, Angelika Meier, Joseph Morder, Jordan Lee Schnee, Jochen Thermann, and many others.
Scripted Culture - Digitalization and the Cultural Public Sphere
2018
English edition
The cultural public sphere at the digital age.
The Present of the Future
2018
English edition
(last copies available!)
This publication investigates our present relation to the future and asks which means and strategies artists and scholars pursue today, to gain a new scope of action for shaping alternative futures. It brings together contributions by academic staff at the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich as well as selected artistic work by students.
Diaphanes - Time Probe Zero Synthesis
2018
bilingual edition (English / German)
In its third edition, Diaphanes probes the (im)possibilities of coming to visual and conceptual grips with the present, and brings together artistic, literary, and critical positions and perspectives on imperative contemporaneity and absolute nowness (with Manuel Franquelo, Dietmar Dath, Nicole Bachmann, Maël Renouard, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Gilles Rotzetter, Alexander Kluge, Lucy McKenzie, Markus Proschek, Philip Topolovac, Ko Murobushi, Stephen Barber, Elena Vogman, Marcus Quent, Wolfgang Plöger, Jso Maeder, Luc Meresma, Dieter Mersch, Penelope Umbrico, Christine Tauber).
Christian Marazzi - Le socialisme du capital
2017
French edition
The socialism of Capital: a collection of texts by economist Christian Marazzi on the new capitalist regime formed out of the 2008 crisis.
Nikolai Evreinov - The Storming of the Winter Palace
2017
English edition
A collective study on the theatrical reenactment of the storming of the Winter Palace by Soviet dramatist Nikolai Evreinov, on the occasion of the October Revolution's third anniversary. This staging of the beginning of the revolution, performed by 10.000 people, is documented thanks to an ensemble of texts, photographs, and drawings.
Epidemic Subjects - Radical Ontology
2017
English edition
Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of the “girl,” this series of essays brings together a team of contributors to forge a radically inclusive definition of subjectivity in modern philosophy.
Claus Pias - Computer Game Worlds
2017
English edition
Why do computer games exist? A historical and epistemological study of the computer game.
Ute Holl - The Moses Complex - Freud, Schoenberg, Straub/Huillet
2017
English edition
With this essay, Ute Holl analyzes in detail and deep historical context major works by Freud, Schoenberg, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, all inspired by the figure of Moses. The author offers a dynamic and comprehensive political and cultural theory of migration and violence.
Gertrud Koch - Breaking Bad, Breaking Out, Breaking Even
2017
English edition
This study offers a reflexion on the complex temporality in the series Breaking Bad. The author develop her theories through examples coming from the show's various visual elements and masterful temporal and narrative structuring.
Reiner Schürmann - Des hégémonies brisées
2017
French edition
The posthumous publication of the German philosopher: a major work on the collapse of Western philosophy and on the necessity to rethink the past to build the future.
No New Kind of Duck - Would I know how to say what I do?
2017
English edition
How to talk about his art as an artist? A series of discussions with Jan Verwoert and artists and composers of the Graduate School at the Berlin University of the Arts. In parallel, the book presents a careful selection of original artistic contributions by the participants.
Diaphanes - Fatal Conjunctions
2017
bilingual edition (English / German)
This 2nd issue is dedicated thematically to the conjunctive binding of individuals within groups, collectives and swarms in the interplay between art and society, utopia and theater (with Artur Żmijewski, Mohamed Bourouissa, Jelili Atiku, Aernout Mik, Alexander García Düttmann, Mário Gomes, Eric Baudelaire, Agnieszka Kurant, Beni Bischof, Public Movement, Ann Cotten, Diane Williams, Stephen Barber, Clémentine Deliss, Milo Rau).
Diaphanes
2017
bilingual edition (English / German)
Diaphanes is a new bilingual English-German quarterly magazine with a focus on contemporary art, critical discourse, and multilingual fiction. This first issue features a special section dedicated to the work of Pierre Guyotat, including excerpts, an interview with Donatien Grau and drawings by Paul McCarthy. Also in this issue: Mike Wilson; Ute Holl; Haus Am Gern; Aya Momose; Mário Gomes; Marcus Quent; Julien Maret; Jason Swartz; Julian Röder; Peter Ott; Tyler Coburn; Francisco Sierras Malerei; Yves Netzhammer; Giovanna Marmo; Luc Meresma…
Nathalie Novi - Dr. Freud, Fish Whisperer
2017
English edition
Discovering the id, ego, and superego with Dr. Freud (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Anne-Margot Ramstein - Albert Einstein\'s Bright Ideas
2017
English edition
The young Albert Einstein has a very important job: he must deliver electricity to the big Oktoberfest celebration in Munich. As he hurries from one merry-go-round to another, nothing seems to be going as planned. With his sister, Maja, Heinrich the dog, and Niels Bohr, a qualified dwarf-thrower, can he win a battle against the laws of the universe? The key just may lie in the question of whether a dumpling can fly faster than light (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Vincent Sorel - Diogenes the Dog-Man
2017
English edition
Diogenes as a dog (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Visualizing Portuguese Power - The Political Use of Images in Portugal and its Overseas Empire (16th–18th Century)
2016
English edition
This publication offers new insights into the broad and differentiated spectrum of functions images could assume in political contexts in those areas dominated by the Portuguese in early modern times. How were objects and artifacts staged and handled to generate new layers of meaning and visualize political ideas and concepts? And what were the respective reasons, means, and effects of the visualization of Portuguese power and politics?
Judith Butler - Dépossession
2016
French edition
Taking the form of a dialogue between the philosopher Judith Butler and the anthropologist Athena Athanasiou, this thought-provoking book seeks to elaborate our understanding of dispossession outside of the conventional logic of possession, a hallmark of capitalism, liberalism, and humanism.
Joseph Vogl - De l\'indécision
2016
French edition
An “anti-history” of the indecision in which Joseph Vogl probes the literary figures of Oreste, Wallenstein, Joseph K., Bartleby, or the man without qualities.
Yves Netzhammer - Concave Thoughts - 357 Digital Drawings
2016
English edition
An entry point into the Swiss artist's imagery through a collection of 357 digital drawings in black & white.
Vision in Motion - Streams of Sensation and Configurations of Time
2016
English edition
An impressive collection of essays offering a critical examination of representations of vision in motion—from early illustrations of plants to the avant-gardes, from gesture to cinema, from decapitation to dance, from David Hume to Bergson and Deleuze.
Annabelle Buxton - Wittgenstein\'s Rhinoceros
2016
English edition
1914. Europe is at war. The experts on deciphering code and secret writing are wild with excitement: What in the world can be the meaning of those incomprehensible notes scribbled by secret agent Ludwig Wittgenstein? The young scholar himself is unable to help them—he is hunting a wild beast, a figure of dubious existence… (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Laurent Moreau - Professor Kant\'s Incredible Day
2016
English edition
What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? What's for dinner? More than two hundred years ago, on a day that takes quite a peculiar course, Professor Kant is working hard to give an answer to all these questions. Not only the morning papers, but also a slightly perfumed letter get in his way however. As a result, he even forgets to go out on his regular digestive walk—and everything goes off the rails… (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Social Media - New Masses
2016
English edition
The emergence of the new digital technologies and social media has transformed the very concept of the mass gathering. The present volume brings together a collection of studies that analyze this transformation and seize the opportunity to reevaluate the cultural and medial historiography of the masses.
Colin Crouch - L\'étrange survie du néolibéralisme
2016
French edition
The new impact of corporations on both the state and the market as the new paradigm of neoliberalism.
Elisabeth Bronfen - Mad Men, Death and the American Dream
2016
English edition
Elisabeth Bronfen gives a clever analysis on one of the most influential show of the 21th century, arguing that, beyond the retro-revival, Mad Men builds a comment on the state of the US nation and on the mirage of the American Dream.
Alexander Kluge - Le raid aérien sur Halberstadt le 8 avril 1945
2016
French edition
Filmmaker and writer Alexander Kluge combines fiction and reality to deliver one of the most striking testimonies that have been written about the bombing of German cities by the Allies.
Cybernetics - The Macy Conferences – 1946-1953 – The Complete Transactions
2016
English edition
Between 1946 and 1953, the Macy Conferences brought together a diverse and interdisciplinary community of researchers who together developed the basics of the new science of cybernetics. This publication contains the complete transcription and protocols of all contributions of one of the most important event in the contemporary history of science.
François Schwoebel - Mister Descartes and his Evil Genius
2016
English edition
On a long, cold winter night, more than three hundred years ago, Mister Descartes is suddenly beset by profound doubts: Can I trust my senses, or am I fooled by illusions? Is there an Evil Genius behind all things? What if the outside world is only a dream? Is my own existence nothing but the product of my imagination? (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Clémence Pollet - Hannah Arendt\'s Little Theater
2016
English edition
Hannah Arendt is not at all keen to build an edifice of ideas or to develop abstract concepts. Rather, she gets on to the stage herself! To enter the scene of her little theater means to take matters into her own hands, take responsibility, to act. In short: Thinking is acting! Whereas the bureaucrats can conceive of only one thing: to build a world out of paper (an illustrated philosophy book for children).
Tom McCarthy - Recessional - Or, the Time of the Hammer
2016
English edition
British novelist Tom McCarthy questions the specific obsession with time in modern and contemporary literature, examining the works of Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, Maurice Blanchot, Thomas Mann, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. The essay is followed by a conversation with the author in which he discusses his own practice of writing.
Reiner Schürmann - Origins
2016
English edition
The semi-autobiographical account of the life of a young German in the 1960s, between Germany, Israel, and The United States. First translation of philosopher Reiner Schürmann's only literary work, originally published in French in 1976.
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