Thematic Scotlands in Berlin tonight!

[imomus]

One day in 1999 I was visiting Berlin when I discovered a "thematic bookshop" being assembled in a tiled butcher's shop on Alte Schoenhauser Strasse. Hand-painted in the window was a sign outlining the themes we could expect when the place opened in July 1999: the city, politics, pop, economics, architecture, design, art and theory.



When I moved to Berlin in 2003, Pro QM -- the bookshop I'd seen -- looked like this. Even if I didn't have money to spend on the gorgeous books and magazines they stocked, just visiting felt like recharging your creative batteries. That thematic butcher's shop seemed to suggest a better, more elegant, more intelligent world. Now on Almastadtstrasse, just around the corner from the original site, Pro QM continues to ride high in my list of things to see in Berlin -- usually right at the top.



If you're in town tonight, there's another reason you might want to come to Pro QM. At 8.30pm I'll be doing a dramatized reading (which means putting on pantomime accents, basically) from my new book, The Book of Scotlands:

Solution 11-167. The Book of Scotlands by Momus (Sternberg)
Book presentation with the author
Saturday, 15 August 2009
20:30 - 23:30
Free
Pro qm, Almstadtstr. 48-50, Berlin, Germany
Phone: 03024728520
Email: info@pro-qm.de
Map



There's a nice symmetry to the fact that I've just been asked to write an article about Pro QM's ten-year history for the next edition of 032c magazine, so I'll be featuring them even as they feature me.

Oh, and there's apparently (I only learned about this by reading the small type on the Facebook event page) a "semi-official after-party" at Kim Bar afterwards, starting at 10pm and featuring DJs Nan-Hi Kim and Alex Bechberger. The party's been titled Don't Leave after my 1986 Brel cover. Berlin Unlike describes the Kim Bar (Brunnenstrasse 10) as "a very minimalistic Mitte bar, with a small DJ table and just about enough seating for a successful birthday party". Things might get tight: in the strange numerical language of Facebookese, the Pro QM event has 100 confirmed guests, 128 might attend, 321 are not attending, and from 428 we are still awaiting reply.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"Don't Leave After My 1986 Brel Cover"

shouldn't a "Please" precede that title?

:P

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not coming

[(Anonymous)]

I'm very sorry if it's obvious, but how can I order this online? I can't find a place from the Sternberg site that looks like it ships to individuals and not retailers.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Amazon.de (http://www.amazon.de/Solution-11-167-Book-Scotlands-Momus/dp/1933128550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1250337223&sr=8-1).

And thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry to ride the high horse here, but as an editor in the art book publishing industry--and former independent bookseller--I feel some obligation to point out that in the case of stores such as Pro QM, it's no longer enough to say "if I didn't have money to spend on the gorgeous books and magazines they stocked, just visiting felt like recharging your creative batteries." Such places, which increasingly operate as 'galleries' for books--you view them, take down the details, then order the book online--require more active support than that, and unless one is living on less than, I dunno, $100 a week, plenty of Pro Qm-ish titles that aren't art monographs ARE affordable. Perhaps we're so used to 'free content' (online) that the idea of paying money for a book now seems outlandish. Or just send 'em to Amazon.de. (I know this is known, but Amazon really is killing the book industry.) Sorry to grumble: it's great you're profiling the store for 032C.

[(Anonymous)]

The price range of books ProQM has usually stocked goes from 4 euro for a neat artsy book idea (all pages of a 120 page book filled with a few words of a poem) to well over 50 for specialised architecture knowledge or fine-printed design almanachs. It's lovely to browse through the latter, but with pricetags like these it's simply not possible to purchase one of such bookly pleasures.
I try to spend at least 10 euro at ProQM everytime I visit Berlin. The last time I was there I only got an issue of de:bug for a few euro, but I'll counter that by buying some Bruno Munari books the next time (9 euro each, right next to the Baudrillard collection, if memory serves me right).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

it's no longer enough to say "if I didn't have money to spend on the gorgeous books and magazines they stocked, just visiting felt like recharging your creative batteries." Such places, which increasingly operate as 'galleries' for books--you view them, take down the details, then order the book online--require more active support than that

I think you're turning this into a false dichotomy -- my point is that even if I can't afford books I go to Pro QM, because the store has made itself an attractive environment in which to hang out and browse. However, just wanting to be there and hithering hi to the store clearly does increase the likelihood that I'll buy something there. This is surely something that the likes of Amazon will never be able to rival. To suggest that this "hanging out" behaviour is somehow killing the trade is a bit odd, to my mind.

I've spent a ton of money at Pro QM over the years, and I hardly ever use Amazon for books. But what I'm saying is that often I visit Pro QM even knowing that I have no disposable income whatsoever. It's an "experience" rather than just a "vendor", and its survival depends on precisely that fact. That's why they've put such a big effort into making it a pleasant place to be.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe bookstores need to rejuvenate--just as sites like BLDGBlog and BibliOdyssey and Worldchanging get turned into books, and we've digital books and print-on-demand, perhaps we can use something like this (http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/08/identitat_the_gestalt_of_digital_identity.html) to create book/author sculptures and turn them into thematic exhibits.

[(Anonymous)]

break a leg momus.

[(Anonymous)]

What is the book behind yours in the picture, and why does it have a similar format?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's an Architectural Association (http://www.stoutbooks.com/cgi-bin/stoutbooks.cgi/78155) publication, and Zak Kyes, who designed my cover, is the in-house designer for the AA and did this cover too. Like any designer, he has favourite motifs that crop up over and over.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

[(Anonymous)]

I apologise: I've so often heard that refrain from people who never support the bookshops they claim to love, but I'm glad I misunderstood. I was also partly responding to your pointing an enquirer towards Amazon.de for Book of Scotlands. But the closure of bookshops worldwide suggests that Amazon is more than capable of rivalling the bookstore 'experience' factor, and as I mentioned, a common sight in bookstores today is the customer with phone or pen in hand, recording the details to buy on Amazon later. It's that, not the "hanging out", that I'm arguing is killing off bookshops. Of course many factors are at play here: the dismantling of the net book agreement years back, the economic downturn and its acceleration of technological shifts in publishing (Kindle, e-book, print on demand), free content online, broader educational trends, etc. And some aspects of this are exciting (isn't an airport novel better off in electronic-only form?). What hovers over this whole debate is the trend towards what's termed "disintermediation": the dismantling of the intermediary party, such as book distributor, and bookshop, and--potentially--publisher, in the production and sale of books. And that's a hard one to foreguess.

I hope your reading went well.

things are changing

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

Its tough these days.
In NY Kim's video (and music and book store).... closed this years.
It's a huge blow. They had an incredible collection of hard to find, rare, international... films and video... thats, will be no longer up for browsing. Same with their music section. Lots of hard to find stuff.... gone.

I have no idea how things will shape up... will a resurgence of some sort create a equliblrum... to maintain a real world experience for things like books, videos, music...etc... or will they drift away... and something else take their place?

Re: things are changing

[(Anonymous)]

I thought they'd moved to a really small place around 1st or 2nd?

That's what the guy who worked there told me when I visited around Christmas, or did that one close too?

Re: things are changing

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

http://italianpropertyconsultant.co.uk/2009/02/08/kims-video-salemi-sicily/

I moved to NY and one of the exciting things was living in the same city as Kim's.... now I have to move to Italy I guess to get the same rush again.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I was also partly responding to your pointing an enquirer towards Amazon.de for Book of Scotlands.

Well, for someone outside Berlin, living in a town without a bookstore like Pro QM, Amazon.de is the only way to procure the book at the moment.

I think "disintermediation" is a somewhat 90s term. One thing we've seen this decade is that things that can be digitized tend to lose their value, whereas things that can't tend to gain in fetishistic aura. Despite things like the Kindle, books -- the kind of lushly-produced, carefully-designed books sold at Pro QM, anyway -- seem to me to be, if anything, gaining in aura. And, despite (or rather because of) the plethora of products available on the internet, to have a curated and carefully targeted store like Pro QM makes a lot of sense. It becomes a sensibility.

When I asked the founders yesterday if they were doing okay, and if there'd be another ten years of Pro QM, they gave a very definite YES to both questions.

[nina-blomquist.livejournal.com]

may i just point out that within Germany, every bookshop, not matter how small, should be able to order books published by Sternberg Press within a week's range. with a book that is not bought used, the price should be the same (minus the shipping cost) as amazon's.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hello Nina, thanks so much for last night, and your window displays!

Unfortunately, there's a gap between "should be able to order books published by Sternberg Press" and "will actually order books published by Sternberg Press". Though I guess they will if asked.

[nina-blomquist.livejournal.com]

It was a great evening! Thanks to you!

[(Anonymous)]

(Sorry to drag an old post on): I can't tell from his or her post where your prospective reader lives--kind of a key point in my objection, obviously--but in the U.S. I would have pointed them to RAM rather than Amazon.de. If the person's in Germany, as you're implying, where I imagine Sternberg has no distribution, then of course Amazon's easiest. It's a shame Sternberg doesn't obviate the issue itself by making it easier to buy from their site, as your reader was evidently willing to do.

As for 'disintermediation', it's true the term begins in the last decade, but its implications remained nascent until this one--at least in publishing--with the advent of viable print on demand and the Kindle. The actual sales of art publications right now (and I see weekly data) indicate that the art book's gain in aura--which I agree may be the case--doesn't translate to sales, and only means that art publications will become (even) more of a luxury product, and consequently will rise in price. This process is already underway. I can easily envisage a future in which stores such as Pro QM will feature lo-fi zines and luxury monographs and almost nothing in between! And there's no question the Kindle's a success, so a large chunk of the bookbuying public (myself not included) would disagree that digitization devalues--as would, for example, Kenneth Goldsmith of Ubuweb, so it's not only the buyer of airport novels that feels this way. And as I say, the Kindle serves perfectly the type of text which doesn't require 'dwelling on'.

As I mentioned previously, it's impossible to disentangle the accelerated changes in publishing from the downturn; who knows what lies ahead when things recover.

I completely agree that a well 'curated' store is of greater use than ever, and that's great Pro QM feels so optimistic about the future. If such a venture can survive anywhere, it would be in Berlin. I'm writing from New York, where things look more precarious.

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

peekasso (http://peekasso.tumblr.com/post/163023960/just-momus)

[(Anonymous)]

Im curious.What language did you talk in?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

English. The book is published in English, by a Berlin-based publishing house run by a Luxembourgeois. At least half of Pro QM's stock is in the English language.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks. I went to see Inglourious Basterds yesterday and the way language is negotiated (French,German,English,Italian) is quite interesting. I imagined you would read from the book in English but then talk in between in German. It's easier to just talk all in English but do you ever feel slightly odd or embarrassed to be talking solely in English? I know its the accepted international language etc. (I say this as an Englishman who doesn't speak any other language)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually in Pro QM it felt natural, because Pro QM is very much part of the cosmopolitan creative class Berlin which uses English as its lingua franca. Which isn't the same as saying these are native English speakers; English is how Berliners from Iceland speak to Berliners from Japan, and so on.