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And Warren Niesłuchowski Was There: Guest, Host, Ghost

Softcover, 272 pages, 5.7 x 7.87 inches
Black-and-white illustrations
Cabinet Books and
the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2020
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Warren Niesłuchowski (1946–2019), one of the most charismatic and eccentric figures in the art world, was many things at once: an exhilarating conversationalist, a polymath, an attentive companion of artists, a polyglot translator, a networker without status, a walking bibliography, and a dandy, to name a few. And from 2003 till the end of his life, he had no home of his own, instead traveling from city to city to live as the guest of others, coming and going on his own inexplicable schedule. He lived—as he himself used to say, echoing Derrida and Duchamp—the life of a “guest, host, ghost.”

This book focuses on Niesłuchowski’s homeless years, and feature his email correspondence with close friends, many of whom are remarkable artists and intellectuals in their own right; a number of artworks made about, or in partnership with, Niesłuchowski; and documentation of his travels. The emails are full of erudition, congeniality, and translinguistic twists, but are also marked by the emotional burden of being perpetually on the road. They bear witness to his role as a generous companion to others and to the inheritance of someone who was an ontological nomad by birth and by choice, permanently looking for what he called “an adoption by an imaginary family.”

With correspondence and contributions from:
Adam Szymczyk
Agnieszka Taborska and Marcin Giżycki
Albrecht Pischel
Alexander Nagel and Amelia Saul
Amanda Trager and Erik Moskowitz
Andre Mirabelli and Jackie Pine
Andrzej Przywara
Barry Curtis and Claire Pajaczkowska
Barry Schwabsky and Carol Szymanski
Bettina Funcke
Bruno Pajaczkowski
Chloe Piene
Cristina Gómez Barrio and Wolfgang Mayer
Dominik Lejman
Elka Krajewska
Hannah Hurtzig
Jeff Preiss
Joan Jonas
Joanna Klass
Joanna Mytkowska
Joanna Warsza
Kasia Korczak and Payam Sharifi
Katarzyna Szotkowska-Beylin
Katy Bentall
Krzysztof Wodiczko
Lisa Blas and Thierry de Duve
Mary Niesłuchowska
Michael Taussig
Milada Ślizińska
Raymond Pettibon
Rebecca Quaytman
Richard Wentworth
Roger Malbert
Seton Smith
Simon Leung
Sina Najafi
Yvette Mattern
Zuzanna Janin

More information available here.