Peer Brax (1 results)

[Hamburg: Quer-Verlag], 1966. Single broadsheet, printed to recto, measuring 68 × 13.5 cm, rolled and housed in red paper-covered card tube, measuring 15.2 × 4 cm, tan printed label affixed. Minor wear; very good. Very rare book object from the debut publication by Uwe Wandrey (born 1939), a series of "nun cans" (Nonnendosen), which contain paper scrolls with poems about nuns. At the same time, it was the first publication by the publishing house he had founded. The German word "quer" did not yet carry the connotation of 'queer' at that time; rather, it stood politically and socially for "standing crosswise" or for thinking that does not simply go with the flow but runs crosswise. The present work begins: "Manche Nonne trägt im Knie unterm Rock ein Genie" ("Some nuns carry a genius under their skirt and in their knees"). Each stanza of the poem is divided by an illustration of a nude nun. The orange tube form suggests a can of irritant, or tear gas. This metaphor is underscored by the title, which translates as "irritant gas" (or "tear gas"). Wandrey is better known for his iconic 1968 volume of agitational slogans bound in bent metal and titled "Kampfreime" (Fighting rhymes). With its sharp protruding edge, the book was actually intended to be used as a weapon. The form chosen by Wandrey for this book object is strongly reminiscent of the work of the Italian avant-garde artist Piero Manzoni, a pioneer of conceptual art. Beginning in 1959, he created continuous lines on paper, which he then rolled up and placed inside labeled cardboard tubes. Similar book objects then became part of book art experiments in the Fluxus editions of the 1960s. For Concrete Poetry, the scroll also offered the opportunity to free typography from the fixed layout of the book page and to work with the relationship between gradual unrolling on the one hand and the large, fully unrolled overall image on the other. (See: Thomas Kellein, Fröhliche Wissenschaft: Das Archiv Sohm, Stuttgart 1987, nos. 85, 146, 207, 247.) As of April 2026, OCLC lists only one copy in North America and only three additional copies worldwide.