Book Specifications:
Limited Edition Sculptural Novel:
The sculptural novel is a handbound hardback book that contains three handmade pop-ups with artwork by Stefan Razutis. The hardcover is made from the paper scraps from binding books to emulate the littered pavements of Ilium in pandemonium. The book also contains five other illustrations accompanying Al Razutis' prose poem. The slipcase has been skillfully constructed by Hannah Mort, including the delicate embroidery that mysteriously reads, I.E.
104 pages printed on recycled paper
18.5 cm x 24.5 cm x 2 cm
Section Sewn
Includes 3 handmade pop-ups and 5 illustrations.
Inside a handmade black slipcase with white embroidery.
Print run of 35 only.
ISBN: 978-1-0686635-7-4
£184.00
Release date: 20th September, 2024
Credits:
Book and pop-up design: Lucy Wilkinson
Editor: Lucy Wilkinson
Artwork: Stefan Razutis
Slipcase: Hannah Mort
Book construction/production: Lucy Wilkinson
Standard Paperback:
To emulate the sculptural novel, the standard edition contains 8 beautifully printed illustrations by Stefan Razutis to accompany Al's Razutis' experimental prose poem. This edition is without the pop-up mechanisms found in the Limited Edition Sculptural Novel. Pre-order is highly reccomended for this edition.
108 pages printed on recycled paper
13 cm x 21 cm x 1 cm
Perfect Bound
Includes artwork.
Print run of 250 only.
ISBN: 978-1-0686635-6-7
£25.00 (£20.00 pre-order discounted price)
Release date: TBA (available for pre-order)
Credits:
Book design: Lucy Wilkinson
Editor: Lucy Wilkinson
Artwork: Stefan Razutis
Printed and bound at TJ Books.
For press enquiries please email deathofworkers@gmail.com for an advance information sheet. Review copies available upon request.

Ilium Express, Al Razutis

£20.00

A Sculptural Prose Poem Novel

After our first collaboration with the publication “Yes” “You” “Can”, a selection of essays spanning fifty years of Al Razutis’ career, shaped by his avant-gardism and ‘agonism’. The collection reveals how such activity and world-view become an art, a social force of protest, and a legacy for next generations.

This is continued in his experimental, dystopic pop-up novel/prose poem, I.E. or Ilium Express, which was written between 1970-78: “This sleep-walkers hallucinogenic dystopia of a place named ‘Ilium’ is based on my impressions and hallucinatory projections as an immigrant child walking down streets, playing in parks, observing humans turning into creatures and wildly imagining the rest in the Los Angeles of the 1950’s. While this is not a biography it contains the imprints of one.”

I.E. takes place in a single day in a town named “Ilium” where a bus, the Ilium Express has arrived just after mid-day, and Private Pagorsky exits to a scene of dystopic pandemonium where everything is in a state of dying or waiting to die and where proper grammar is in abandonment. Written in the language of Ilium, the L.A. of Al Razutis' childhood, made up from memory. English, as a second borrowed language, full of grunts and groans from drunks on the street, non-sequiturs and invented phrases, become atonal music playing from a boom box somewhere in this frightening noise-scape.

The prose poem is accompanied with illustrations by Stefan Razutis.
Al Razutis has an informative and interactive website found here, where you can browse so many projects, films and writings.

Gravity wins, Entropy rules: Catherine MacTavish, Al Razutis, Sidney Gordon. Edited & Designed by Felix Rapp. This DIY publication is an accessory to the exhibition by the same name of Al Razutis’ holographic assemblages curated by Felix Rapp at UNIT/PITT from March 2-April 30, 2024. In Curator and Editor Felix Rapp’s introduction, he opens the conversation around the contemporary status of holography within the art world and society at large, alongside a candid description of his experience first meeting Al at his home on Saturna Island and being shown his collection of holographic works stored in this unlikely location. An essay titled “What is a Hologram?” by Catharine MacTavish, describes her time experimenting within the Visual Alchemy holographic studio formerly located under the Granville Street Bridge in Vancouver, and explores how holograms can confront us with the illusory and imaginal nature of existence. A titular essay by Al Razutis—in his signature writing style—discussing the roles of light, electromagnetic radiation, and fields of energy within holography, alongside storied historical accounts of several individual artworks. Finally, “Looking Through a Two-Way Lens: A reflection on ‘Vancouver’s’ lively underground cine-culture, 1960-present” written by Sidney Gordon (co-founder of local film screening collective XINEMA) discusses the success of Razutis’ experimental films and “no-barrier screenings” in the late 1960’s-70’s in Vancouver. You can view images from the exhibition and film screening presented by XINEMA and UNIT/PITT here.

"Yes" "You" "Can": Selected Writings by Al Razutis (2020, death of workers whilst building skyscrapers).

Information on the distribution of some of Al Razutis' films here at Lightcone (Paris, France)

'Al Razutis: Three Decades of Rage': An Interview with Al Razutis in Inside the Pleasure Dome: Fringe Film in Canada by Mike Hoolbroom (2011)

Al Razutis, 'The Politics of Structuralism: Kirk Tougas and Tom Braidwood', in Al razutis annd Tony Reif, section on 'Critical Perspectives on Vancouver Avant-Garde Cinema 1970-83', Centre for Canadian Contemporary Art, Vancouver: art and artists 1931-1983 (Vancouver, BC, 1983)

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Ilium Express, Al Razutis

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Biography

Further reading: