4 Summary of projects and submitted material

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I have mapped a range of practices, concepts, and interventions that form a broad context for this practice-based inquiry in chapter 03*Survey of the field. The current chapter now offers an overview of the long-term collaborative projects I have carried out ("Projects"), the pamphlets, essays, and articles I have (co-)published ("Published, Fixed") and the event-based activities, such as teaching, workshops, presentations, discussions, and think-ins ("Discursive, Unfixed").

This inquiry consists of a string of related practical experiments I performed during my artistic career between 1998 and 2020. The projects attempt to rethink acts of publication, distribution, and consumption. They articulate enclosures, exclusions, and oppressions originated by dominant power structures. They experiment with developing different models that facilitate an emancipatory, intersectional feminist, and to some extent decolonial knowledge formation. As such, they can be described as counter-political projects that are held against dominant approaches to the range of practices outlined above.

One characteristic of these experiments is that most of them are collaborative. They often developed as responses to specific problems. These vastly different instances cannot be understood within a conventional publishing framework. Instead, they fall into the expanded category of knowledge practices.

A pivotal common approach to these experiments is that making works "about politics" was not the overt intention. Instead, the aim was to find operational models to work counter-politically – through the practice itself. Hence my artistic concern is not to illustrate a political position, but to actively engage in political experiments in publishing and ecologies of knowledge.

The projects discussed below fall in a wide range of contexts. What they have in common is that they can all be seen in relation to institutions – with some being commissioned by, others being situated in, institutions (with or without an official mandate). A third group operates "exstitutionally", a term coined by Constant, Brussels, indicating a transversal collective working environment that is often inoperable within mainstream institutions. Lastly, most of these experiments are projected long-term. They develop over time to test out various agile approaches. If one approach is not working, it is adapted and applied again from a different angle. That is the reason why the following list is so comprehensive.


Contents

Projects

In the following, I give a brief summary over the five practice projects, each described in more detail on the individual project pages.

AND Publishing – with Rosalie Schweiker and multiple collaborators
(2009 – ongoing)

⟶  see project 1: AND Publishing

AND Publishing webpage.

AND is a collaborative publishing activity based in London. Initiated in 2009, it seeks to develop infrastructures of publishing departing from three questions: Why publish, how, and for whom? Observing that the existing institutional infrastructures keep replicating the exclusionary mechanisms and hierarchies dominating the university, AND started, without a mandate, at Byam Shaw School of Art in North London as an indie-university press, publishing works of students, staff, and alumni in an equitable and non-hierarchical manner. In addition to exploring the immediacy and social possibilities of print on demand and new modes of distribution, AND also investigates the social agency of cultural piracy. AND is also invested in radical and feminist pedagogy, building informal support structures by sharing a studio, providing resources, advice, access to skills, means of production and distribution. AND re-distributes budgets, commissions work, and (re-)publishes difficult to find material. AND was co-founded by Lynn Harris and Eva Weinmayr. Andrea Francke worked temporarily with AND, and Rosalie Schweiker joined in 2015. AND's 10-year long practice forms the basis and context for the artistic projects submitted for this PhD.


Library of Inclusions and Omissions
(2016–ongoing)

⟶  see project 2: Library of Inclusions and Omissions

Library of Omissions and Inclusions

The Library of Inclusions and Omissions (LIO) is a practice-based experiment in critical knowledge infrastructures. Through an open call for contribution, it sets up a reference library that is curated by the community using it. So far, roughly 100 contributions are on the shelves. The collection is available to the public via temporary reading rooms. The library gathers feminist, intersectional, and postcolonial materials which are not, or only sparsely available in institutional collections or databases, too flimsy in format or otherwise not validated by publishing houses or institutions such as libraries. Can such a curatorial concept help to give voice to yet to be discovered, suppressed, or otherwise not acknowledged material? Can this turn a library from a repository of knowledge into a space of social and intellectual encounters? The project's framework is initiated by Eva Weinmayr and developed through the input of many contributors.


The Piracy Project – with Andrea Francke and multiple collaborators
(2010–2015)

⟶  see project 3: The Piracy Project

Street vendor, Lima Peru, 2010. Photo: Andrea Franke.

The Piracy Project started in collaboration with artist Andrea Francke as a reaction to the imminent closure of Byam Shaw School of Art Library in London. Through an open call for pirated books to populate the self-governed art school library and through researching pirate book markets in Peru, China, and Turkey, The Piracy Project gathered a collection of around 150 copied, emulated, appropriated and modified books from across the world. Their copying approaches vary widely, from playful strategies of reproduction, modification, and reinterpretation of existing works to circumventing enclosures such as censorship or market monopolies, to acts of piracy generated by commercial interests. This collection of books serves as the starting point to explore the common understanding of authorship, originality, and the implications policy and legal developments have had on intellectual property and copyright. Through temporary reading rooms, workshops, lectures, discussions, and debates, The Piracy Project explores the philosophical, legal, and social implications of cultural piracy and creative modes of dissemination.
The project is a collaboration with artist Andrea Francke and flourished through book contributions and criticality of a wide range of contributors.

Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy? three-day mobilization and workbook – with feminist pedagogy working group, HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg
(2015–16)

⟶  see project 4: Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy?

Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy?, HDK-Valand, October 14–16, 2016.

Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy? is a collective investigation into intersectional feminist and queer pedagogies, that led to the organization of a three-day international mobilization at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, in October 2016. The working group was formed due to the desire to articulate and create a space for queer and feminist perspectives on learning and teaching inside and outside of the art academy. The feminist pedagogies working group consisted of students, staff, and administrators at the art academy. Its aims included: to provide a space to discuss the highs and lows in our own learning and teaching; to study and review university policies and institutional habits; to jointly read relevant texts and set up an online shadow library on feminist intersectional decolonial pedagogies. This took place in bi-weekly lunchtime meetings that were open to the whole academy.

In a second step, the group worked towards organizing an international conference (mobilization) to fundamentally rethink how knowledge is produced, transmitted, and disseminated. We were interested in finding strategies to adjust the Eurocentric canon and its exclusions, to question institutional habits and procedures, and to create an understanding of equality that is not blind to difference. The mobilization itself was a practice-based investigation experimenting with non-normative use of the classroom, time and temporalities, languages, and paying attention to the empirical body. The core working group consisted of Kanchan Burathoki, Rose Borthwick, Gabo Camnitzer (2015), MC Coble, Andreas Engman, and Eva Weinmayr.


Boxing and Unboxing, Research Residency, Marabouparken konsthall, Stockholm – with Rosalie Schweiker
(April–August 2018)

⟶  see project 5: Boxing and Unboxing

Unboxing, AND Research Residency, Marabouparken konsthall, Stockholm April–August 2018

Boxing and Unboxing is a collaborative project to learn how to "box" and "unbox" taking place in the context of AND Publishing's six-month research residency at Marabouparken konsthall in Stockholm in 2018. It started with a set of questions: Where do we put the many things we are doing that don't fit into boxes? What are the problems with categorization? Why do we not want a unified face? How can we subvert the social pressure to produce faces? Why would we go on a residency when we struggle to pay rent at home? Where can we store our boxes? Who gives in? Who compromises? Who accommodates? Who cares? Do we need a new, less tired, and exclusive language to talk about all this? And how do you document laughter?

Together with curator Jenny Richards, AND organized a two-week boxing training for self-identifying women that were free and open for all abilities, ages (16+), shapes and religions. We were curious to learn about non-verbal negotiation, care, anger, dialogue, transgression, and defense. It was an experiment to explore whether sparring, when defined as physical play and not geared towards victory or defeat, could help to rehearse ways to relate to each other in other areas.

This project was developed by Rosalie Schweiker and Eva Weinmayr (AND Publishing), with curator Jenny Richards (Marabuparken konsthall).



Published (Fixed)

Against Immunization: Boxing as a Technique for Commoning (exhibition, score),
at Open Scores – How to Program the Commons, Panke Gallery Berlin, September 21 – October 12, 2019

Unboxing Calendar-conflicts.jpg

With this exhibited score I propose to rethink the concept of the commons in a counterintuitive fashion. If we conceive of boxing not as a concept related to masculinity and violence or the survival of the fittest, but as a moment of intense negotiation of border space, contagion, and border linking, then it might serve as a technique to unlearn the building blocks of possessive individualism and the figure of the "proper.”

In the exhibition "Open Scores – How to program the Commons", curated by Creating Commons (Shusha Niederberger, Cornelia Sollfrank, Felix Stalder). Panke Gallery Berlin, September 21 – October 12, 2019. With Dušan Barok (monoskop.org), Marcell Mars & Tomislav Medak (memoryoftheworld.org), Sebastian Lütgert & Jan Gerber (0xdb.org), Sean Dockray (aaaaarg.fail), Ruth Catlow & Marc Garrett (furtherfield.org), Michael Murtaugh, Femke Snelting & Peter Westenberg (Constant), Laurence Rassel (erg.be), Stefanie Wuschitz (Mz* Baltazar’s Lab), Panayotis Antoniadis (nethood.org), Mario Purakthofer (www.dock18.ch), Alessandro Ludovico (neural.it), Eva Weinmayr (andpublishing.org), Kenneth Goldsmith (ubu.com), Zeljko Blace (#QUEERingNETWORKing), Sakrowski (curatingyoutube.net), Spideralex, Tactical Tech, Creating Commons, Alison Knowles.

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See research platform: Creating Commons
See website: Panke Gallery



Micropolitics of Publishing (video interview), September 15, 2018

Eva Weinmayr–Creating Commons interview.jpg

In this podcast Cornelia Sollfrank talks with Eva Weinmayr about AND Publishing's contingent and contextual publishing practice, about collectivity and tactics for escape regimes of authorship and ownership, and the relationship between an expanded understanding of publishing and feminist pedagogy.

The interview was conducted in the context of the research meeting "Tools and Infrastructures" at House of Electronic Arts (HeK), Basel, September 13–16, 2018, as part of "Creating Commons", a research project by Shusha Niederberger, Cornelia Sollfrank and Felix Stalder at the Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zürich University of the Arts, (2017–20).

Watch podcast 🔊
See research platform: Creating Commons


Boxing and Unboxing (calendar)

AND-Unboxing calendar 2018.jpg

A spiral-bound calendar, edited and produced by AND Publishing (Rosalie Schweiker and Eva Weinmayr), contains collages produced by the participants of the boxing classes. It includes a step by step guide of warming up exercises and an introduction to basic boxing techniques. Jokes, motivational quotes and exercises are also included next to a text by Ar Parmacek in her role as an observant participant. In contrast to a book on the shelf, a calendar on the wall is a publication genre that accompanies the reader day by day and, therefore, embeds its topics and visuals into the everyday life of the reader: a year of daily boxing and unboxing.

Look inside the calendar


Confronting Authorship, Constructing Practices – How copyright destroys collective practice (book chapter)

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This chapter investigates the coercive relationship between authorship and copyright from the perspective of intersectional feminist knowledge practices. Examining three artistic strategies (Richard Prince, Cady Noland, The Piracy Project) that try to challenge the close ties between copyright and authorship – with very different outcomes – I map the blockages and contradictions that an understanding of authorship grounded in possessive individualism creates for critical art, education, and collective knowledge practices.

Trying to politicize individual authorship I investigate its construction by legal, economic, and institutional frameworks and subsequently ask how this chapter would circulate in current systems of dissemination, validation, and authorization if I did not assign my name to it – if it went un-authored, so to speak.

In Whose Book is it Anyway? A View from Elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and Creativity, edited by Janis Jefferies and Sarah Kember, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019.

Download book chapterPdf.jpg
See the full book on Open Book Publisher website

More Verb, Less Noun – Publishing as Collective Practice (printed interview)

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In this interview, Eva Weinmayr and Jinglun Zhu discuss modes of production and dissemination of underground publications, the politics of authorship and reproduction, and publishing in relation to collaborative knowledge practices. The conversation also offers insights on modes of collectivity in higher education and methods for archiving ephemeral materials.

In CCS Recollection 1: The Netletter, edited by Evan Calder Williams, Centre for Curatorial Studies CCS Bard, Annandale/New York, 2019

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One publishes to find comrades (book chapter)

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This book chapter examines how collective techniques of publishing can initiate a social process where printed publications, posters or zines are not necessarily an end product that attempt to convince someone of something, but rather as a method for "working towards establishing conditions for the co-production of meaning." (Shukaitis, 2014)

Originally published in The Visual Event, an education in appearances, edited by Oliver Klimpel, Leipzig, Spector Books, 2014.
Republished in It's a book, Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, 2017
Republished in Publishing Manifestos, edited by Michalis Pichler, Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 2018.

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UND statt ODER – die Anatomie von UND (interview)

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In this interview, Annette Gilbert, Rosalie Schweiker and Eva Weinmayr discuss the multiple roles AND publishing takes on (artist, researcher, educator, curator, collector, librarian, host, organizer, and activist), and reflect on the dilemmas, contradictions and joys such a contextual, contingent, informal, supportive and precarious practice involves. The interview is published in an anthology about contemporary artists' publishing.

In Publish! Publizieren als künstlerische Praxis, Kunstforum International, issue 256, September 2018 (German language).

Download interviewPdf.jpg


Rethinking where the thinking happens (public interview)

Study day interview Sarah Kember Rethinking where the thinking happens-lowres.jpg

In this public conversation Eva Weinmayr asks Sarah Kember, co-founder and director of Goldsmiths Press, London about her plans to set up a new experimental academic press at Goldsmiths, and the problems and opportunities of open access publishing.

This conversation was recorded and transcribed, and took place on July 8, 2015 at Chelsea College of Art and Design during "Study Day – Why Publish?", the University Gallery and Archives, a joint research project by Joyce Cronin (Afterall), Karen Di Franco (Chelsea Space) and Eva Weinmayr (AND Publishing). Funded by Curriculum Development, Student Enterprise and Employability (SEE), University of the Arts, London.

Published by AND Publishing, London, 2015, republished in Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy?, edited by Feminist Pedagogy Workgroup (Kanchan Burathoki, Rose Borthwick, MC Coble, Andreas Engman, Gabo Camnitzer, Eva Weinmayr), HDK-Valand, Gothenburg, 2016.

Read online: AND Publishing, London, 2015
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Radical publishing practice requires radical librarianship (twitter thread)

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This publication was published live via a twitter thread during my presentation at the symposium "Artists as Publishers as Artists". Experimenting with citational practice and the act of sharing bibliographies, the thread published the references used, (videos, images and texts) for the audience to later revisit.

Part of the panel "Publishing to Mobilize Knowledge", this presentation discusses the relationship between practices of production, circulation, and consumption of radical, critical, artistic publishing. What are the institutional infrastructures and routines (libraries, archives, bookstores, etc.) of naming and framing, of selecting and cataloging, and how do these routines privilege, or exclude knowledges that don't fit into the established categories?

At "Artists as Publishers as Artists", KHM University of Media Arts, Cologne, July 6, 2018. Panel: "Publishing to Mobilize Knowledge" with Clara Balaguer, Yvette Mutumba, Eva Weinmayr. Organized by Agustina Andreoletti, Lilian Haberer, Karin Lingnau, Konstantin Butz.

See Twitter thread

Dear Hannah (pamphlet)

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Written in epistolary form, this short text shares concerns related to my participation in the 57th Venice Biennale. It reflects on issues of co-option, collective and community-based work, artistic ambition, and the limits of what is exhibitable in the context of an international art biennale. The text has been circulated as an email letter and printed pamphlet.

Published on the occasion of "The Utopia of Access", exhibition, Pavilion of Artistic Research, 57th Venice Biennale, 2017. Curated by Jan Kaila and Henk Slager.

Download pamphletPdf.jpg


Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy? workbook

Let's Mobilize workbook assembly.png

This workbook was edited produced and disseminated by the Feminist Pedagogy workgroup at HDK-Valand Academy in Gothenburg (Rose Borthwick, Kanchan Burathoki, Gabo Camnitzer, MC Coble, Andreas Engman, Eva Weinmayr). In connection with the three-day international event "Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy?, its aim was to invite students and staff into a critical discussion on topics of queer, decolonial intersectional and feminist pedagogies in the arts. It contains contributions by Rudy Loewe, Jenny Tunedal, Johanna Gustavsson and Zafire Vrba, Annette Krauss, Charlotte Cooper, Bedfellows, Sarah Kember and Eva Weinmayr, Red Ladder Theatre, Andrea Phillips, Sara Ahmed, Alison Bechdel, Kajsa Eriksson, Kajsa Widegren, Dean Spade, Sophie Vögele (art.school.differences), Eve Tuck and K.Wayne Yang, Rosalie Schweiker, See Red Womens Workshop, Isabell Lorey, Lisa Godon, Martin McCabe, Mick Wilson, Hajar Alsaidan.

It was disseminated locally via a public assembling day in the entrance hall of HDK-Valand, and in the form of a walkable book, and internationally through AND Publishing (London), and Printed Matter (NY).

Download Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy? workbookPdf.jpg


Library Underground – a reading list for a coming community (book chapter)

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Written in the form of an informal conversation between Eva Weinmayr and her inner voice, this book chapter discusses practices of radical librarianship and underground dissemination. It touches on a set of examples reaching from the informal distribution strategies of the Whole Earth Catalog to the radical librarian movement in California in the 70s (Celeste West, Sanford Berman) to contemporary shadow librarianship (aaaaarg, Memory of the World, The Piracy Project). Concerns and questions about the original scope of public libraries to provide access to knowledge "for every member of the community" (ALA, Library Bill of Rights 1939) seem to crop up throughout the conversation: Who is a library for? What kind of materials and topics are missing and how can we deal with the implicit biases in the organization and classification of knowledge?

In Publishing as Artistic Practice, edited by Annette Gilbert, 157–187. Berlin/New York: Sternberg Press, 2016.

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Library Underground – welcome to my tent (performative reading/video)

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This video presents a filmed performance lecture of the above book chapter that, in revised and updated form, was performed inside a trekking tent installed at HDK-Valand's main lecture hall. The audience listened to the voices speaking inside the tent and watched a live video transmission of the happenings inside that was projected onto the lecture hall screen. With Eva Weinmayr as Eva Weinmayr and Rose Borthwick as Inner Voice. Filmed and edited by Camilla Topuntoli. Video 32 min.

At the symposium "Photography in Print and Circulation," convened by Louise Wolthers (Hasselblad Foundation), Niclas Östlind, (HDK-Valand) /HDK-Valand, 2016.

Watch video 🔊


We don't want this to turn into an exhibit (book chapter)

Archivo Communo.jpg
Based on a presentation manuscript this chapter reflects on the ways the Piracy Project reading rooms can operate as a starting point for critical reflection (workshops), discourse (discussions) and policy debate. It reflects on the possibilities and limitations of (i) the project as exhibition, (ii) the project as a discursive device, (iii) the project situated in a community of practice. The workshop brought together practitioners and theoreticians with the aim to share strategies and experiences how to turn an archive from being a repository into a space of social, intellectual, and political encounter.

Workshop "Socialising Archives" during symposium "Archives of the Commons II – The Anomic Archive", Museo Nacional Reina Sofia in Madrid, 2018, chaired by Mabel Tapia.

In the book Archivos del Común II: El Archivo Anómico, (Spanish) edited by Fernanda Carvajal, Mela Dávila Freire, Mabel Tapia, designed by Lucía Bianchi and Ramiro Alvarez, published by Ediciones Pasafronteras - Red Conceptualismos del Sur, 2019.

Download book (Spanish, 98 MB)Pdf.jpg
Download presentation manuscript (English)Pdf.jpg


Borrowing, Poaching, Plagiarising, Pirating, Stealing, Gleaning, Referencing, Leaking, Copying, Imitating, Adapting, Faking, Paraphrasing, Quoting, Reproducing, Using, Counterfeiting, Repeating, Cloning, Translating, co-edited with Andrea Francke (book)

Piracy Project Reader–lowres.jpg

The title of this publication is a long list of terms that are broadly concerned with piracy, insofar as they reflect different relationships to somebody else's work. Each term will be explored in a chapter in the book. The first version (2014) includes a range of essays while other terms/chapters are still to be explored and written. As such the book is an ongoing and open-ended reader, to be developed over time. "This book is not finished. It is the start of a dialogue that will grow as we go along. Normally when you publish a book, it aims to be a resolved object, an endpoint of a process. Not this one. The thing is that there are two of us, and that has become one of the key determinants of how the project evolves. There are always two voices, and that allows us always to be open to different positions. I guess that's what I call a dialogue." (Excerpt from the introduction to the book).

The aim of this specific model of editorial work was to use publication not as an endpoint of a process, but to initiate or feed into a discourse that in turn feeds back into the book. This dialogical slow-growth approach was supported by the funding model. People bought shares in one of the terms that they wished to be explored in form of a future essay.

So far, the book contains essays and contributions by Dave Hickey, Eva Hemmungs-Wirtén, Joanne McNeil, Karen Di Franco, Lionel Bently, Prodromos Tsiavos, Sergio Munoz Sarmiento and awaits prospective essays by James Bridle, Stephen Wright and 16 others. Courtroom drawings are by Stephanie Thandiwe Johnstone.

Edited by Andrea Francke and Eva Weinmayr. Pulished, designed and produced by AND Publishing, London, 2014.

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The Impermanent Book, co-authored with Andrea Francke (essay)

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The essay discusses the potential unease and unsettlement that the instability of digital print poses to the assumed authority of the mass-produced printed book. It argues that the prevailing understanding of a book as a fixed and immutable object is partly due to the industrial printing press. The emergence of digital print and print-on-demand, can arguably change this perception, as digital print allows for continuous changes, adaptions, and revisions. The text discusses the effects of such versioning on the reader. What happens when books become unreliable objects? When one copy of a book potentially tells a different story than the other copy of the same title?

In Rhizome.org, 2012 and in Best of Rhizome 2012, edited by Joanne McNeil, Brescia: LINK Editions, 2013

Read essay on Rhizome.org


Outside the Page, Making Social Realities With Books (chapter)

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This chapter examines the ways in which a publication can engage with the temporality and situatedness of reading practice. Using two examples, Marcel Brodthaers' Voyage on the North Sea (1974) and Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy? workbook (2016), the chapter studies the different ways the medium-specific characteristic of "the page" as a sequencing method have been expanded and redefined through readers' engagement with the book. Marcel Brodthaers' Voyage on the North Sea (1974), a two-part work consisting of a film and a book, creates interdependency between the temporality of the visual narrative in the book and the reader's actual temporality while flipping through the pages of the book. Let's "Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy? workbook, a contextual publishing experiment by the Feminist Pedagogy workgroup at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design (2016), turns the art academy into a walkable book , through the pasting of its pages on the walls of the building. Both works, as I argue, are an attempt to "socialize" the book.

In The Filmic Page, "On Curating" ZHdK Zürich, edited by Chiara Figone, Paolo Caffoni and students of Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano (NABA), forthcoming issue

Download chapter Pdf.jpg



Help! David Cameron Likes my Art (book chapter)

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This text narrates the course of events triggered by the UK Government Art Collection's acquisition of my artwork "Today's Question" and its subsequent loan to Samantha and David Cameron, then Prime Minister of the UK, for their private residence at 10 Downing Street.

In Distributed, edited by David Blamey and Brad Haylock, London: Open Editions, 2018

Download preprint version of book chapter Pdf.jpg




Discursive – teaching, workshops, presentations, discussions, think-ins (Unfixed)

Radical Publishing Practices Demand Radical Librarianship: Perspectives and Framing Under the Disguise of Neutrality (presentation),
at We Publish, Kunsthalle Bern. January 16–17, 2020

Wir publizieren, Bern Trinh T. Minh-ha.jpg

Context: "At the intersection of literature, art, design, technology, law, politics and economics there is a mixture of practices, processes and institutions in which the little-researched phenomenon of independent publishing takes place. (Gilbert 2019). The one and a half-day conference “We discuss” aims to address this phenomenon by means of lectures, discussions and interventions. We ask ourselves the following questions: How can the interest in self-organized publishing as a political and social practice, and the resulting artifacts, be justified? How can these mostly complex and collective processes be archived and made accessible? What are the requirements for our behavior today? And how can these be conveyed?" (announcement)

Presentation: In the presentation "Radical Publishing Practices Demand Radical Librarianship: Perspectives and Framing Under the Disguise of Neutrality" I discuss the political nature of cataloging practices. The concept of the library seems to have gained much attention recently: on the one hand, we keep hearing about public library closures across the continent; on the other, we witness much energy and activism in the development and sustenance of shadow libraries, whether physical or online. After all, libraries are spaces that turn marketable goods into public goods. They provide free access to knowledge that would otherwise have to be purchased. However, libraries are also, arguably, disciplinary institutions. They determine what is validated and legitimized as relevant knowledge and how this material is framed and represented in the catalog, which as I will claim, constitutes a meaning-making structure itself. As library scholar Emily Drabinski points out, classification schemes "are socially produced and embedded structures, they are products of human labor that carry traces of all the intentional and unintentional racism, sexism, and classism of the workers who create them. It is not possible to do classification objectively. It is the nature of subject analysis to be subjective". Using the Library of Inclusions and Omissions as a starting point I will discuss the political nature of cataloging and indexing and its inherent dilemma, since each standard and category valorizes a particular point of view and in detriment of all others.

The conference took place as part of the exhibition “We publish – editing, design, production and distribution of independent magazine formats in Switzerland since 1960” (Kunsthalle Bern, December 20, 2019 – February 2, 2020). Conference contributions by Annette Gilbert, Jan-Frederik Bandel, Rolf Lindner, Anja Schwanhäußer, Andreas Vogel, Eva Weinmayr, Tine Melzer, Urs Lehni, Olivier Lebrun. Convened by Lucie Kolb, Tania Prill, Robert Lzicar.
The exhibition “Wir publizieren” is a collaborative project of the School of Art and Design at the Bern University of the Arts HKB in Switzerland, and of the Art and Design Department at the University of the Arts Bremen in Germany.

See "We Publish" website
Watch podcast 🔊
See flyer, program

Situated Collective Publishing: Less Noun, More Verb (presentation)
at Publishing as Social Practice, Ystads konstmuseum, November 21-22, 2019

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Context: "Publishing as a Social Practice is a two-day encounter to discuss different modes of publishing to highlight their collaborative and experimental implications. We would like to stress and consider publishing as a way to establish collaborative processes, not only for the dissemination of non-institutionalized knowledge or the presentation of alternative narratives but to enforce modes of relation, acting and working together. That is why the main focus of this meeting is to highlight publishing projects in which the relationship, engagement and support of the collective action are emphasized. To think together on questions regarding political and emotional implications that these modes of collaboration have, and to inquire questions of authorship and collective labor. Moreover, we will also dedicate time to think, from an institutional point of view, how to collect and democratize an archive of printed matter. It is important for us to discuss different cases of study that introduce strategies on how a collection can involve a neighboring community or procedures where the archive is rewritten and activated periodically with the users. Last but not least, we believe that publishing involves “many” in the process and we would like to celebrate these collective forms. Furthermore, we wish to build a net of affections between people interested in collective labor, to get inspiration by looking to different projects and discussions that can trigger key questions concerning publishing. Finally, we would like to encourage institutions in the south of Sweden to support the local scene by collecting and funding these forms.

Convened by Helena Fernández-Cavada in collaboration with curator at Ystad Art Museum, Felicia Tolentino.
Participants: Mela Dávila, Thomas Millroth, Olivia Plender, Eva Weinmayr, Carla Zaccagnini.

Download program

Moments of Autonomy. Feminist educational practices for the digital commons (think-in),
at Open Scores – How to program the Commons, convened by Creating Commons @ Panke Gallery, Berlin. October 12, 2019

MOMENTS OF AUTONOMY TECHNOFEMINIST EDUCATIONAL STRATEGIES.jpg

Context: This one-day workshop gathered a group of participants around a table to exchange experiences, compare methodologies, and develop strategies for feminist educational practices and digital commoning: "What concepts of knowledge inform our techno-feminist thinking and practice? How much do we have to know to be able to take an emancipated position? What is the role of affect in our daily handling of technology? To what extent can the principles of open-source culture be an inspiration for educational projects? What do we need to build communality in and for the techno-feminist struggle? (local/global)? What are methods for transforming what has been learned into a collective agency and empowering strategies for desired change?" (announcement)

Participants: Andrea Hubin (Kunsthalle Wien), Shusha Niederberger (Haus für Elektronische Künste, Basel), Peggy Pierrot (erg, Brussels), Daphne Dragona (Transmediale, Berlin), Safa Ghnaim (tactical tech, Berlin), Stefanie Wuschitz (Mz* Baltazar's Laboratory, Vienna), Magda Tyzlik-Carver, Janine Sack, Marie Dietze, Eva Weinmayr (AND, Let's Mobilize, Teaching to Transgress Toolbox, London/ Göteborg). Studio, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, organized by Cornelia Sollfrank and Shusa Niederberger.

See website: Panke Gallery
See website: Creating Commons


Situated Collective Authorship (propositive input),
at Authors of The Future: Re-imagining Copyleft Studyday,
Constant, Brussels, hosted by Institut Supérieur pour l’Étude du Langage Plastique (ISELP, Brussels). September 27, 2019

Authors of the Future study day.jpg

Context: "Conventional intellectual property law binds authors and their contemporary hybrid practices in a framework of assumed ownership and individualism. It conceives creations as original works, making collective, networked practices a difficult fit. Within that legal and ideological framework, Copyleft, Open Content Licenses, or Free Culture Licensing introduced a different view of authorship, opening up the possibility for a re-imagining of authorship as a collective, feminist, webbed practice. But over time, some of the initial spark and potentiality of Free Culture licensing has been normalized, and its problems and omissions have become increasingly apparent. This study day is therefore meant to see if we can start re-imagining copyleft together: Can we invent licenses that are based on collective creative practices, in which cooperation between the machine and biological authors, need not be an exception? How could attribution be a form of situated genealogy, rather than accounting for heritage through listing names of contributing individuals? In what way can we limit predatory practices without blocking the generative potential of Free Culture? What would a decolonial and feminist license look like, and in what way could we propose entangled notions of authorship? Or perhaps we should think of very different strategies?" (announcement)

Presentation: I discuss how we could come to a different understanding of authorship altogether, one that is radically situated and contextual. If we understood an author as an instigator – maker, doer, teacher, as somebody who "causes something" – such a definition would (i) expand the role of the author beyond being a creator of "outputs" or discrete objects that are bound to a tangible and fixed form and (ii) it would instigate a change in evaluation, reference and license practices.

Speakers:
→Severine Dusollier (SciencesPo, Paris): Listen to podcast: Inclusive Copyright 🔈
→Aymeric Mansoux (XPUB, Rotterdam): Listen to podcast: Free Only-if 🔈
→Eva Weinmayr (Piracy Project/And Publishing, London): Listen to podcast: Situated Collective Authorship 🔊
→Daniel Blanga Gubbay (KFDA, Brussels): Listen to podcast: Potential Authorship 🔊

See website: Authors of The Future: Re-imagining Copyleft Studyday

Library Talks (presentation), at Rietveld and Sandberg Library, Amsterdam. September 24, 2019

Rietveld Library Talk lowres.jpg

Context: Gerrit Rietveld Academy & Sandberg Institute holds a monthly series of Library Talks in which invited guest speakers introduce 10 books that have been important to their practice. These books will be acquired for the library collection. The idea behind this series is (i) to show the different voices that inform the guest speakers' practice and (ii) to practice a new form of library acquisition, (iii) to introduce a different way to read the library collection. It can be explored through the library catalog and through the category "selection" that groups the 10 books together around the name of the guest speaker to trace their genealogy in the library collection.

Presentation: I discussed 10 selected books that each developed a specific approach to attribution and credit in the colophon that reflect the collective work that went into the publication. The selected books are as follows: 1) Radical open Access – The Ethics of Care, Disruptive Media Lab, Postoffice Press, Coventry University, 2018;
2)Uncounted by Emily Roysdon, Secession, Vienna, 2016;
3) The Techno-Galactic Guide to Software Observation, Constant Brussels, 2018;
4) I think that conversations are the best, biggest thing that Free Software has to offer its users, Constant Brussels, 2014;
5) See Red Women's Workshop: Feminist Posters 1974–1990, Four Corner Books, London, 2016;
6) The Feminist Bookstore Movement, Lesbian anti-racist and feminist accountability, by Kristen Hogan, Duke University Press, 2016;
7) Let’s Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy?, ed. Feminist Pedagogy Workgroup HDK-Valand, Gothenburg, 2016;
8) Teaching for people who prefer not to teach, ed. Rosalie Schweiker and Mirjam Bayersdörfer, London: AND Publishing, 2017; 9) Do the right thing, a manual from Malmö Free University for Women Johanna Gustavvson and Lisa Nyberg, Malmö, 2010;
10) Synergy Magazine Index of years 1967–71 San Francisco: Bay Area Reference Center, 1972.



Interfacing the Law, with Femke Snelting (workshop),
at XPUB, Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam, Infrastructural Manœuvres @ Rietveld and Sandberg Library Amsterdam. May 9–10, 2019

Interfacing the law-Amsterdam lowres.jpg

Context: Pirate libraries, shadow libraries, piratical text collections, amateur digital libraries, peer-produced libraries, and how to read them together. The study days are based on Femke Snelting's letter to the participants in which she explains her discomfort of having signed the Custodians Online 'In solidarity with Library Genesis and SciHub' letter back in 2015. She writes:

"The disobedient stance of piracy can obscure the way it keeps categories of knowledge in place, either by calling upon universalist sentiments for the right to access, by relying on conventional modes of care or by avoiding the complicated subject of the law altogether. If we want to find ways to make the public debate on shadow libraries transcend the juridical binary of illegal versus legal, and claim political legitimacy for acting out their potential, we need to experiment with how these libraries are a form of publishing, how they rethink the social contracts that link libraries, librarians, readers, and books. And that is what we'll try to do in Interfacing the law.
Extra-legal publishing, bibliothèques sauvage, piratical text collections, popular resource sharing methods, peer-acy, amateur digital libraries, bibliogifting, uneasy sharing, peer-produced libraries … the growing collection of euphemisms for pirate libraries points at the vibrancy of these practices that are literally unbound from institutional, legal and even conventional material constraints.
Always paradoxical or even incoherent, they interface each in their own way with legal and political frameworks. How can these practices get us closer to the kind of libraries we require?"

The two-day workshop (May 9–10, 2019) took place at Rietveld and Sandberg Library Amsterdam, and Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam. Participants included students of XPUB-1 students at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam and Femke Snelting (Constant), Ann Mertens (Constant), Martino Morandi (Infrastructural Maneouvres), Anita Burato (Infrastructural Manœuvres), Eva Weinmayr (Piracy Project, Library of Omissions and Inclusions).

See website: Interfacing the law
See collective notes: Rietveld and Sandberg Library
See collective notes: Piet Zwart Institute



Experimental Publishing #1, Critique, Intervention, Speculation (symposium),
at Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Postoffice, Coventry University. April 11, 2019

presentation slide

Context: "Experimental publishing can be positioned as an intervention, a mode of critique, and a tool of speculation. It is a way of thinking about writing and publishing today that has at its center a commitment to questioning and breaking down distinctions between practice and theory, criticality and creativity, and between the scholarly and the artistic. This series explores contemporary approaches to experimental publishing as: (i) an ongoing critique of our current publishing systems and practices, deconstructing existing hegemonies and questioning the fixtures in publishing to which we have grown accustomed—from the book as a stable object to single authorship and copyright; (ii) an affirmative practice that offers means to re-perform our existing writerly, research, and publishing institutions and practices through publishing experiments; (iii) a speculative practice that makes possible the exploration of different futures for writing and research, and the emergence of new, potentially more inclusive forms, genres, and spaces of publishing, open to ambivalence and failure. This take on experimentation can be understood as a heterogeneous, unpredictable, and uncontained process. It leaves the critical potentiality of the book as a medium open to new intellectual, political, and economic contingencies." (announcement)

Presentation: Discussing my publishing practice I try to answer the four questions posed in advance:
What is the state of publishing today?
How does your practice fit within this landscape?
Can experimental publishing be seen as (i) an ongoing critique, (ii) an affirmative practice, (iii) a speculative practice?
What is the future of experimental publishing?

Presentation and panel discussion with Rebekka Kiesewetter, convened by Janneke Adema and Kaja Marczewska.


See website: Experimental Publishing #1, Critique, Intervention, Speculation Symposium
Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Seewebsite: Postoffice
Watch mini interview: Eva Weinmayr & Janneke Adema 🔊


Creating Commons: Tools and Infrastructures (research meeting),
at HeK, House of Electronic Arts, Basel. September 13–16, 2018

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Context: "The research project Creating Commons explores interstitial practices that open the space between art and commons. It studies practices that challenge established notions of contemporary aesthetic practice as well as of contemporary commons. The research aims to develop a new theoretical and aesthetic frameworks for this emerging field. Commons constitute constantly evolving realities pointing beyond the growing commercialization of culture and its damaging effects." (announcement)

Research Meeting: For this research meeting, a group of artists, activists, designers, theorists, and researchers gathered to discuss the dynamics and role of infrastructures and tools. The framing questions for the research were: (i) how can new forms of organization and collaboration bring forth different kinds of cultural works and social relations? (ii) how are new property relations articulated? (iii) how can artistic practices contribute to the further development of the commons as inclusive, diverse, and democratic forms of organization? (iv) what role can art and an expanded understanding of aesthetics play in the advancement of the commons as a political project?

Participants: Shusha Niederberger (CC research project), Urban Sand (openki.net), Femke Snelting (Constant), Felix Stalder (CC research project), Mauricio O’Brian (goteo.org), Spideralex (feminist infrastructures), Panayotis Antoniadis (mazizone.eu / nethood.org), front row: Eva Weinmayr (AND publishing), Michael Murtaugh (Constant / Etherbox), Cornelia Sollfrank (CC research project), Daphne Dragona (Berlin), Lioudmila Voropaj (HFG Karlsruhe), Alessandro Ludovico (neural magazine). The research project is located at the Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zurich University of the Arts, conducted in cooperation with HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) and conducted by Felix Stalder, Cornelia Sollfrank and Shusha Niederberger (2017–20).

See website: Creating Commons: Tools and Infrastructures


Writer X, with Eleanor Vonne Brown (workshop),
at X Publishing School, Whitechapel Art Gallery London. September 8, 2018

Writer X X Publishing School thumbx.jpg

Context: During the London Art Book Fair 2018, Eleanor Vonne Brown, founder of the independent publishing space X Marks the Bökship in London curated a series of events reimagining Whitechapel Gallery as the X Publishing School. Divided across five spaces – a lecture hall, a common room, assembly hall, library and a playground – the School takes Robert Filliou's book Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts (1970), as its curriculum. Filliou writes: "The purpose of this study is to show how some of the problems inherent to teaching and learning can be solved – or at least eased – through an application of the participation techniques developed by artists in such fields as: happenings, events, action poetry, environments, visual poetry, films, street performances, non-instrumental music, games, correspondences, etc." Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts can be described as a study of experimental pedagogy based on the principles of Fluxus and kindred, participatory art movements of Filliou's era. For example, the publication's design enacts the principles it discusses: the text is punctuated with blank spaces left for the reader to fill – an invitation to collaborate and co-author the book. Filliou's invitation to the reader to become the writer was the starting point of this collaborative writing workshop.

Workshop: This workshop is a collaborative writing experiment using an online text editor to write a live script from the London Art Book Fair creating imaginative fictional co-authored and situated narration. Prompt: "A well known public figure is circumnavigating the London Art Book Fair disguised as a librarian, a dementor, or a stray dog. Writers are situated throughout the fair and its threshold, observing and collectively creating and reworking a rolling commentary with each other on possible sightings." Eight participants distributed over different spaces at the Whitechapel Art Gallery during the London Art Book Fair shared one and the same online writing pad. This experiment in collaborative writing resulted in a story, which formed in real-time by reading and changing or refining the unfolding narrative.

Workshop conceived by Eleanor Vonne Brown and Eva Weinmayr

Writer X, X Publishing School
Watch video 🔊


Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy?, with Rose Borthwick (workshop),
at Feminist Arts Education, Institute for Art and Art Theory, Intermedia / Artistic Media Practice and Theory, Cologne University. May 30, 2017

Cologne University Workshop-02.jpg

Context: Three decades ago, political scientist Carolyn M. Shrewsbury in her text "What is Feminist Pedagogy? "argued: "Feminist pedagogy begins with a vision of what education might be like but frequently is not. "In the 1990s, bell hooks claimed: "Feminist Thinking in the Classroom Right Now "! So, what is the current state of feminist affairs in institutional teaching and learning environments? What characterizes the relation between student and teacher, academic discourse, and the spaces of its implementation, subjective experiences and social dynamics, artistic methods, and their historical references?

Workshop: Rose Borthwick (HDK-Valand) and Eva Weinmayr (HDK-Valand) addressed these questions reflecting on their experiences of co-organizing the three-day international event "Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy?" at HDK-Valand Academy of Arts and Design, University of Gothenburg in 2016, followed by a practical workshop. Instant posters were collectively developed and distributed at selected locations across the corridors, staircases, walls, and doors of the University building.
Convened by Mirjam Thoman, Labor für Kunst und Forschung, Cologne University

see website: Institute for Art and Art Theory, Feminist Arts Education


Reading Gendered Words, with Rosalie Schweiker (workshop),
at Library Interventions, Leeds College of Art. April 13, 2017

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Context: "Reading Gendered Words" is a critical workshop in the series “Library Interventions” at Leeds College of Art that attempts to assess the opaque processes of cataloging in the college library. Questioning universalizing standards of library classification this one-day workshop shares strategies and experiences in developing context-based, user-centered, categorization schemes for particular collections. With Maria Fusco (Edinburgh College of Art) and Wendy Kirk (Glasgow Women Library), SPUR, and Rosa Nussbaum (artist, designer London), Rosalie Schweiker, Eva Weinmayr (AND Publishing, London).

Workshop: This workshop reviews library science scholar Emily Drabinski’s claim, that classifications and subject headings are by their very nature “socially produced and embedded structures, that carry the traces of all the intentional and unintentional racism, sexism, and classism of the workers who create them”. During the workshop, we developed new, unconventional and user-centered categories for selected books which we borrowed from the “Library of Omissions and Inclusions”, a community-run reading room in Gothenburg gathering feminist, decolonial and intersectional materials. Workshop conceived by Rosalie Schweiker, Rosa Nussbaum, Eva Weinmayr.

See website: Library Interventions, Leeds College of Art


Let’s Mobilize! Here’s what we learned: Pedagogy and Social Justice, with MC Coble and Rose Borthwick (presentation),
at Exploiting Justice, Processes, Performances and Politics, Symposium at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of Gothenburg. October 27–28, 2016

presentation slide

Context: "Justice is a multifaceted concept, in a Western context often related to the view that individuals have equal value, and the statement that all human beings should be treated equally. Much of the rhetoric, policy, legislation, practical action, and theoretical perspective on justice are anchored in a human rights framework. Theoretical presumptions about justice impact the understanding of what justice is or should be, and how it can or should be reached. Scholars within gender studies have analyzed and questioned these presumptions, as well as the political and legal manifestations of justice, and reflected on the many ways of understanding justice in relation to gender. Several of the different ways of understanding gender justice can be structured around two main aspects: gender justice as a question of identity and recognition; and gender justice as a question of rights and responsibilities and of distribution of these between men and women. During the last decades, this way of thinking gender justice based on a binary structure in which women and men are put in two separate categories has been challenged by queer theory and intersectional perspectives. This has at undermined, at least theoretically, the distinction women/men and shed light on the interplay between other aspects like, among others, class, sexuality, ethnicity, race, and function" (announcement).


Presentation: In this open discussion we will reflect on the organization, processes, struggles, and future plans based on the three-day mobilization: "What is Feminist Pedagogy?" held at HDK-Valand, October 14–16, 2016. "Feminist Pedagogies – we use plural. We need to look at ideas, ways of interacting, working, and thinking which may not already be a part of our small communities and networks. There are many forms of pedagogy, such as critical, radical, queer, feminist. At times, these overlap and support each other or they challenge each other and are in conflict. In our view, feminist pedagogies start from an intersexual, intersectional, intergenerational and interdisciplinary attempt to face and change living in inequitable societies. This is not a luxury problem. Our commitment to feminism is far from an essentialist or separatist understanding of sex and gender. It is based on struggles against racism, classism, ableism, weightism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and neoliberalism. Our social, cultural, and economic successes are based on structures of care and support, on reproductive as well as immaterial labor, which needs to be acknowledged and turned into non-exploitative relationships across families, corporations and governments. Practicing a feminist pedagogy is a good starting point to counter white, patriarchal, profit-oriented, euro-centrist academia. It is also a step towards policy-making, which does not privilege individual authorship and merit on the back of collective efforts. “Patriarchy has no gender.” (bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom, 2010)" (announcement)



See conference programPdf.jpg


What is an Artschool (presentation),
at Chelsea College of Art, London. October 24, 2016

Presentation slide.

This presentation for students at Chelsea College of Art (BA, GD, BA) in the open seminar "What is an Art School" shared the strategies employed and insights gained with the collective organizing of "Let's Mobilize: What is Feminist Pedagogy?" at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
The talk focused on three questions:
How can you organize an event that does not reproduce hierarchies and normative roles and behaviors at the art school?
In which way can the event be understood as research process-focused rather than outcome-focused?
What is the role of collective actions, of doing and making together, such as cooking together in relation to the "discursive turn" at the art school?
What was the role of the workbook (i) for the working group, (ii) for the participants, (iii) for others?