Renowned art historian John C. Welchman provides the first in-depth study of more than 30 years of creative activity by the Royal Book Lodge (RBL), a nimble and richly innovative network of international artists. Chapters examine the history and contexts of the RBL’s pathbreaking work in photography, video, ceramics, writing, artist’s books, archiving and collecting, and exhibition-making. Welchman discusses the leading ideas and practices of the formation as they have played out in the diverse cultural and political geographies of RBL affiliates and initiatives: narratives of displacement and migration; constructs of biography and fiction; notions of remote control; experiences and contestations of violence; and the RBL’s signal collaborations with the protagonists and legacy of the Situationist International.  

ROYAL BOOK LODGE emerged in the late 1980s from a collaboration between artists Juli Susin and Véronique Bourgoin. Affiliates include Raisa Aid, Kai Althoff, Anne Lefebvre, Linda Bilda, André Butzer, matali crasset, Guðný Guðmundsdóttir, Beate Günther, Tobias Hauser, Andy Hope 1930, Dorota Jurczak, Jochen Lempert, Roberto Ohrt, Jonathan Meese, Birgit Megerle, Raymond Pettibon, Jason Rhoades, Julia Rublow, Lucia Sotnikova, and Gianfranco Sanguinetti, among others.

JOHN C. WELCHMAN (*1958) is Distinguished Professor of art history at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of numerous publications on modern and contemporary art, including Modernism Relocated (1995), Art After Appropriation (2001), Past Realization (2016), After the Wagnerian Bouillabaisse (2019) and Richard Jackson (2020).