Gracing the cover jacket of Rachel Harrison's highly anticipated second monograph is an informal monument to the man who holds the Americas' namesake. The only hint to this memorial for the 15th century Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, is an apple resting on an outcropping of neon-green cement; of course the fact that the apple is not only artificial but has a bite taken out of it suggests otherwise to the discovery of these "Edenic" continents. This slight yet important fact raises the basic conceit of if i did it: the active disavowal of art's political function as a museological testament to the "progress" of social history. By tossing off this monumental propensity, Harrison builds "antimonuments;" not so much sculptures but lumpen aggregates of pop psychology. In addition to Vespucci, throughout the book, one finds that celebrities Johnny Depp and Tiger Woods are included in a pantheon with John Locke and 18th century Corsican revolutionary Pasquale Paoli, meanwhile Al Gore checks the temperature, Claude Levi-Strauss checks the door with a taxidermied hen and rooster and a bi-curious Alexander the Great is the master of ceremonies. The title, taken from O.J. Simpson's infamous "hypothetical" account of his murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Donald Goldman, groups this role call of high- and low- brow idols into a nonhierarchical tableau where cultural and political value are allotted only where one sees fit.

In her photography, videos and installations, Josephine Meckseper (born 1964) sets images of political activism-photographs of demonstrations, newspaper cuttings-against twinkling consumer goods and advertising motifs. This publication concentrates on a new series of works, such as the installation "Ten High" (2007) in which silver mannequins bear anti-war slogans

The appearance of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) in the early 1980s and its subsequent rapid spread around the world has left deep marks in society. The illness itself and its effects on society have also caused manifold responses by artists and activists in many countries. United by AIDS, published in conjunction with an extensive group show on the topic of loss, remembrance, activism and art in response to HIV/AIDS at Zurich's Migros Museum of Contemporary Art (Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst), sheds light on the multi-faceted and complex interrelation between art and HIV/AIDS from the 1980s to the present. It examines the blurred boundaries between art production and HIV/AIDS activism and showcases artists who played - and still play - leading roles in this discourse. Alongside images of artworks and brief texts on the represented artists, the book features voices from the past and present. Essays by Douglas Crimp, Alexander Garcia Duttmann, Raphael Gygax, Elsa Himmer, Ted Kerr, Elisabeth Lebovici ,and Nurja Ritter broaden the view of the international discourse on HIV/AIDS and society's confrontation with the disease.

Born in London in 1943, Stephen Willats is a pioneer of conceptual art and has, over the course of more than five decades, created a multi-faceted body of work. This new book, published in conjunction with Migros Museum of Contemporary Art in Zurich, focuses on two key aspects of Willats' art. Cybernetics, the control of dynamic systems, in which he has taken a keen interest, serves him as method, aesthetic vocabulary, as well as a formal model. Subcultures that promote non-conformism and self-determination constitute another focal point in his wide-ranging work. The book offers a new approach to Willats' art from multiple perspectives. A comprehensive selection of both earlier and more recent works, some of them published here for the first time, is complemented by essays. The authors investigate that particular creative sphere in between cybernetics, architecture, and subculture within which Willats questions normative, regulating power structures and aims to discover personal freedom and alternative thought patterns.

During the summer months of 2011, the Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst inaugurated a sculpture project on the grounds of the Froh Ussicht estate in Samstagern, Zurich. The project was inspired by Bomarzo, the famous Italian Renaissance garden populated with fantastical and monstrous sculptures and follies (i.e. buildings constructed primarily for the embellishment of a landscape). Artists Pablo Bronstein, Liz Craft, Ida Ekblad, Geoffrey Farmer, Kerstin Kartscher, Ragnar Kjartansson, Fabian Marti, Peter Regli and Thiago Rocha Pitta all devised their own fantastical narratives in response to Bomarzo. "The Garden of Forking Paths" enlarges upon this innovative exhibition with reproductions of installed works, and essays by some of the finest architecture and garden theorists and writers on the history of follies and the interaction between art and garden: Lars Bang Larsen, Michael Bracewell, Horst Bredekamp, Brian Dillon, Patrick Eyres, Heike Munder, Anthony Vidler and Catherine Wood.