A kind of fearlessness
ANGRY WOMEN (RE/SEARCH PUBLICATIONS, 1991)This copy of Angry Women belonged to Barbara Ess, the photographer and editor of Just Another Asshole, a legendary series of publications released between 1978 and 1987. If you haven’t heard of it, I encourage you to do a deep dive. Primary Information released a facsimile copy of issue Just Another Asshole #6 which featured contributions from Kathy Acker and Jenny Holzer. The name is also just so iconic! Anyway, this copy of Angry Women was gifted to me by Anne Turyn, the editor of an equally iconic periodical called Top Stories. She had purchased it at the Barbara Ess estate sale organised by the New York gallery White Columns. Anne and I got in touch when she very kindly contributed to Sophy Rickett’s book Pissing Women 1995, which I published, and we’ve become friends.
Angry Women is the bible. We’ve had it on the shelves of Climax since we started and it features so many iconic feminist figureheads like bell hooks, Kathy Acker, Lydia Lunch and more. As editors Andrea Juno and V. Vale write in the introduction, “Anger is an emotion which must be reclaimed and legitimised as Woman’s rightful, healthy expression – anger can be a source of power, strength and clarity as well as a creative force.”
BELL HOOKS, TALKING BACK : THINKING FEMINIST, YHINKING BLACK (SOUTH END PRESS, 1989)Just wow – this cover design is incredible. The red and the yellow inspired our new “Dial ‘C’” T-shirt. In this book, hooks explores her Southern Black origins, where the daring act of “talking back” meant speaking as an equal to an authority figure and – especially as a young girl – often invited punishment.
KATHY ACKER, REDOING CHILDHOOD (Kill Rock Stars, 1999)I’m a huge Kathy Acker fan – of her writing, but also her life and the way she lived it. I think she would’ve been somewhat insufferable in real life, but like most iconic cultural figures, their legacy is always the most magnetic element. This CD is a punk album that was released after she sadly died young. I love the design of the object so much, from the colour combination to the fact that the cover image was taken by Allen Ginsberg. Often when we are designing our Climax wearables we reference the colour palettes of different books and CDs; this CD became the colours for our woven labels.
COSEY FANNI TUTTI, A STUDY IN SCARLETThis is the item I’d try and grab if my house were on fire. It’s so rare! I bought it on eBay about 10 years ago, and it arrived wrapped up in a bin bag. This was the thing that really drove me to start Climax – finding objects with such cultural significance that I wanted to share them with the world. This VHS tape, Cosey Fanni Tutti’s A Study in Scarlet, is composed of three performances and one commissioned video piece made between 1983 and 1986. This original 1987 release was created using domestic VHS equipment and was limited to 160 copies, of which this is copy 42. It belonged to someone’s husband who sadly passed away, so she listed it on eBay.
EILEEN MYLES, COOL FOR YOU (SOFT SKULL PRESS, 2000)I just started reading this. Funnily enough, they get their mail sent to the copy centre across the street from Climax in NYC. I think they live locally in the East Village.
THE COSPLAYER (FUHOSHA, 2000) I found this book in Japan, like many of the most amazing books we come across. It’s a journal by the photographer Akihiro Matsumura that documents the distinctly Japanese pop culture phenomenon of cosplay, which rose to popularity in the 1990s (the term was coined in 1983). The images were mostly taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which is such an underrated era. Everyone loves the early 1990s but the late 1990s and early 2000s are just as fabulous. What’s always drawn me to fashion is a kind of fearlessness and self-expression, which everyone featured in this book has in abundance.
NOBUYOSHI ARAKI, DIANE ARBUS, NAN GOLDIN (SAMMLUNG GOETZ, 1997)I discovered this in a discount bin at Donlon Books when I was 18, and it changed my life. The curation of the three photographers together was so interesting to me, seeing both the tensions between their work, but how similar their themes are. They are, of course, from different generations. I think this tension is something we try and play with in the selection process at Climax – bringing different perspectives together but always with a common theme.
GUS VAN SANT, PINK (NAN TALESE, 1997) Drugstore Cowboy is one of my favourite movies. Pink is his first, and possibly only, novel – and it’s semi-autobiographical, which is fun. It tells the story of Spunky Davis (an amazing name), a middle-aged filmmaker, meeting shady characters in Hollywood. This is a former library copy, which is where all my personal copies end up coming from. We can’t sell them at Climax, so they come home with me. .