In the 1980s, there was a marked surge of interest in philosophical, aesthetic, and emancipatory theory.

West Berlin’s Merve Verlag served as a hub for intellectual and artistic exchange; publishers Heidi Paris and Peter Gente documented this network in numerous spontaneously taken photographs. The companion booklet to the exhibition gathers recollections of this milieu and the work of the former Merve collective, essays on art and theory, contributions on noise music in Southeast Asia, and interviews addressing the politics of publishing in the United States and Germany.