Book presentation at Stedelijk Book Club
Press! Print! Publish! Ian Whittlesea & Pádraic E. Moore discuss The Egyptian Postures with Margriet Schavemaker
Venue: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Netherlands
The Egyptian Postures
Dr. Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish
The Egyptian Postures is a guide to the most advanced Mazdaznan exercises that Johannes Itten taught his students at the Bauhaus. Often performed while singing or humming the postures were intended to activate glands and re-channel internal energies, stirring the blood in ways that contributed to the perpetual evolution of humanity. They were also said to induce auto-illumination, the participant’s body generating an intense light from within.
This edition of Dr. Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish’s original instructions has been newly edited and illustrated by Ian Whittlesea with images of actor Ery Nzaramba demonstrating the postures and an in-depth essay by Pádraic E. Moore that explores the relationships between esoteric movements, their racial theories and early modernism's embrace and eventual dismissal of the occult, Mazdaznan and Itten.
ISBN 9780993372858
144 Pages
Casebound in gold cloth with red foil and red page edges
Colour endpapers
Black & white text, with twelve photographs and 31 line drawings
Printed in Europe by SYL Barcelona
Edition of 1000 copies
Published by The Everyday Press, London
Ian Whittlesea (1967, United Kingdom) is an artist based in London. In 2004 he began practicing judo and five years later, after gaining his black belt, published a translated facsimile of Yves Klein's book Les Fondements du Judo. His newly illustrated edition of Mazdaznan Health & Breath Culture was published in 2012 and Becoming Invisible in 2014. These texts, along with The Egyptian Postures, have been collectively described as 'instruction manuals for transcendental exercise'. In 2017 he staged Becoming Invisible an esoteric son et lumière and mass hallucination of colour in the Bascule Chamber of Tower Bridge as part of Art Night London.
Pádraic E. Moore (1982, Ireland) is a writer, curator, and art historian based in Brussels. His research focus on the influence of esoteric philosophies upon the literary and visual arts and considers how occult organisations, such as the Theosophical Society, offered a vital catalyst for change in late 19th and early 20th century art. Recent projects include: Drawing Down the Moon as part of As Above, So Below at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2017); I Went to the Woods: The Artist as Wanderer, a group exhibition at Glucksman Gallery, Cork (2016); Music for Chameleons, a project for Parcours: Art Basel, (2016); Now is forever lasting constant in the mind, a project for Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, (2016); Ψ (Psi), a project for Fokidos Gallery, Athens (2015).
The Everyday Press was founded in 2007 by artist Arnaud Desjardin to publish the work of visual artists as printed matter.
