Crash Test, The Molecular Turn, exhibition catalogue, MOCO Montpellier Contemporain, 2018. Curator: Nicolas Bourriaud. Texts: Nicolas Bourriaud, Stefanie Hessler, Noam Segal. Publisher: MOCO. Distributor: Les Presses du Réel. ISBN: 978-2-490123-01-8. English and French. 272 p. 17x24 cm. Design: Johanna Himmelsbach. Crash Test features a generation of young artists who have integrated the notion of Anthropocene in their making. Throughout the catalogue, the texts and artwork close-ups become a material with its own molecular will: attraction and repulsion lead the design. Printed on Chromolux 700 100g, the spreads are alternately mat or shiny, plastic or soft, questioning our relationship to nature.
One Thing After Another, Pope.L, exhibition catalogue, MOCO Montpellier Contemporain, 2019. Texts: Nicolas Bourriaud, Noam Segal. Publishers: MOCO and Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Distributor: Les Presses du Réel. ISBN: 978-2-490123-03-2. English and French. 96 p. 19,7x24,5 cm + a 2 m fold-out. Design: Johanna Himmelsbach. “I am very interested in how we organize the world. One way we organize the world is by placing one thing after another thing. This is a very useful practice. You can do many things with it. You can cook, write, speak, make music, science—you can even think with it. But not everything is one thing after another. Some things are simultaneous. One thing on top of another is a way of expressing the idea of simultaneity. If something is inside something else, is it on top of another or next to another or both? In this exhibition, I have willfully confused the inside and the outside of things. I did this to create a landscape of ‘nexts’. In this place a citizen has to make his or her or its own way in the space between and amongst ‘nexts’.” Pope.L in the exhibition booklet.
Indirect Suggestions, ISIA Urbino/Werkplaats Typografie Summer School Urbino, 2019. 8 posters 70x100 cm folded into a publication. Photography and design: Johanna Himmelsbach. Indirect suggestions is a succession of curtains, functioning as metaphors for the possibility of entering an inner space—a space that’s private even to you—through hypnosis. “You see that as a suggestion now. And how now should we change it, because we don’t need to have the waves rocking anymore—Something more still—Something more still. For example snow on the mountain top. It’s rather still there, isn’t it? It’s a quiet day, a beautiful sight, isn’t it?—Yes—Something very very beautiful. Those mountains prominences, the valleys and the lines of the mountains against the horizon. And the lovely hills. Now think about something else that is pleasing. What do you see?—It is something totally different—What do you see?—I see a book—You see a book. Hm hm.” Milton Erickson, founder of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis, demonstration interview filmed in November 1958.
Nuit et jour, jour et nuit. Bulletin annuel 2014, 2013. Editorial project by Sophie Châtellier, Johanna Himmelsbach, Jenna Kaës, Sofia Proisy Lesnik. 144 p. 11,5x18,5 cm. Printed on Offenbach Bible by Hato Press, London. Distribution: Peradam, New York. A diary including exact times of sunsets, sunrises, solar middays and midnights in Paris for the year 2014. «Soleil à l’horizon: les spectacles de désunion, de rupture paysagère, passages du noir au blanc, du blanc au noir, ont deux occurrences journalières. Alternativement naissance du jour ou tombée de la nuit. À ces deux illusions de rupture, vient s’ajouter une troisième : minuit : ni durée, ni limite, minuit marque sans cesse la fin des jours francs. Trois éléments décisifs de la séparation entre le jour et la nuit, l’avant-minuit et l’après-minuit ; binarité lumineuse et jours en enfilade, soumis au temps.»
Crash Test, The Molecular Turn, exhibition material, MOCO Montpellier Contemporain, 2018. Curator: Nicolas Bourriaud. 64 p. 12x32 cm. Interviews and design: Johanna Himmelsbach with Sophie Châtellier. Artists: Alisa Baremboym, Ivana Bašić, Bianca Bondi, Juliette Bonneviot, Jeanne Briand, Dora Budor, Johannes Büttner, Alice Channer, Caroline Corbasson, David Douard, Daiga Grantina, Roger Hiorns, Agnieszka Kurant, Sam Lewitt, Estrid Lutz et Emile Mold, Jared Madere, Enzo Mianes, Virginia Lee Montgomery, Marlie Mul, Aude Pariset, Thiago Rocha Pitta, Pamela Rosenkranz, Thomas Teurlai, Artie Vierkant, Phillip Zach.
Talk Show Festival, exhibition material including posters, MOCO Montpellier Contemporain, 2018. Foreword by Nicolas Bourriaud. 40 p. 13,5x25,2 cm + fold out calendar. Design: Johanna Himmelsbach. Talk Show festival was a summer-long cycle of films centered on artists’ words and speeches. Performances by young artists were recorded on the spot and broadcasted along with historic pieces in the MOCO Panacée auditorium.
Cookbook’19, exhibition newspaper, MOCO Montpellier Contemporain, 2019. 32 p. 29x39,5 cm. (+posters) including interviews with curators: Nicolas Bourriaud & Andrea Petrini. English and French. Interview and design: Johanna Himmelsbach. Cookbook brings together 25 chefs and 20 artists to reflect on the porousness between art and cuisine. With chefs: René Redzepi (noma), Rodolfo Guzman (Borago), Danny Bowien (Mission Chinese Food), Healthy Boy Band, Gilles Strassart, Mauro & Laura Colagreco (Mirazur)... and artists: Davide Balula, Elise Carron, Nicolas Daubanes, Charlie Malgat, Natsuko Uchino, Zoe Williams... Nicolas Bourriaud remembers a life-changing dinner: “I realised that cuisine could nourish my mind and my sensitivity just like arts and literature do, if it met these three criteria: it has to develop my taste, add to my culinary culture, and foster analytical tools. You always have work to do, in order not to stay at the doorstep of a cultural territory.”