Difference between revisions of "Project 1 * AND Publishing"

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to develop infrastructures of publishing starting from three questions: Why publish, how and for whom?
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{{Outerlink|http://andpublishing.org/|see website: AND Publishing, London}}
  
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AND is a collaborative publishing activity, co-founded in 2010 at Byam Shaw School of Art in North London by Lynn Harris and Eva Weinmayr. Rosalie Schweiker joined in 2015. With no official mandate, but supported by colleagues and occasional university research funding,<ref name="support"/> AND operated as a kind of indie university press exploring the immediacy and the new social, creative and economic possibilities of print-on-demand technologies, which were emerging at the time.<ref name="POD"/> AND's purpose in the context of the academic institution was to conceptualize publishing as an artistic as well as a pedagogical tool of experimentation and articulation, and to institute a critical approach that worked equally well with students, staff, and alumni – confounding prevailing hierarchies and roles (student, alumni, teacher, professor, etc.).
  
AND is a collaborative publishing activity, co-founded in 2010 at Byam Shaw School of Art in North London. Without an official mandate, but supported by colleagues and occasional university research funding<ref name="support"/> (micro-budget books) AND operated as a kind of indy university press.
+
After several years working at Byam Shaw School of Art, this host institution merged with Central Saint Martins. AND was deemed "a free-floating anomaly" that was acknowledged as generative but not given a place in the newly merged and streamlined institution. AND moved into a collectively-financed studio and worked independently with institutions, collectives and individuals on a broad range of publishing projects. AND set up an open distribution platform for POD publications (AND Public, 2011–15), publishing evening classes (The Showroom, 2012–13), education programs at art institutions (South London Gallery, 2018), and gave lectures and workshops at various universities and cultural spaces.<ref name="artspaces"/>
 +
{{Outerlink|https://web.archive.org/web/20150202101530/http://andpublishing.org/self-publishing/and-self-publishing/| see distribution platform: AND Public on Wayback machine}}
 +
Over time and through the multiplicity of its members,<ref name="AND names"/> who themselves form part of a diverse network of critical, feminist, decolonial publishing activities and campaigns<ref name="networks"/>, AND's practice broadened its range of social, political and artistic investments to include feminist practice, radical pedagogy, informal support structures– e.g. a studio collective; the provision of resources, advice and skills, means of production and distribution; re-allocation of budgets; commissioning work – and (re-)publishing out-of print or hard to find material.
  
Two aspects were important to AND's early practice: to institute a critical approach to publishing at the art school, that supported works of students, staff, and alumni in an equitable manner confounding the defined hierarchies and roles at the art school (student, alumni, teacher, professor, etc.) [pick me up] Publishing was understood as an experimental artistic and pedagogical tool.
+
{{Interlink|4_Summary_of_projects_and_submitted_material#UND_statt_ODER_.E2.80.93_die_Anatomie_von_UND_.28interview.29|see published interview: "UND statt ODER, die Anatomie von UND" (AND instead of or, the anatomy of AND), 2018.}}
  
Secondly, lots of energy went into experimenting with the immediacy of emerging models of print-on-demand publishing that allowed for small print runs down to one copy and did not require upfront funding. <ref name="POD"/>   Digital print opened a multitude of possibilities and invited for experiments to test the conceptual and social boundaries of the printed book that I discussed in the co-authered essay "The Impermanent Book" and in the chapter "Reflection theorization. {{Interlink|Reflection,_theorisation_of_projects#Queering_the_authority_of_the_printed_book|see chapter: Reflection: Queering the authority of the printed book}}
+
This contingent and cumulative approach – indicated by the long list of "ands" on the website – does not aim to produce one position, a focused brand or unified face,<ref name="Raunig1"/> and is grounded in multiplicity. This specific dynamic of different constellations, collaborations, concerns, and tactics that are defined by the conjunction "and" (rather than "or") seeks to evade any clear-cut framing of its activities. It is a practice that keeps creating spaces – both literal (the studio) and metaphorical (friendships, alliances, collaborations) – where the quality of being and working together is not impaired (or is so to a lesser extent) by allocated roles, questions of authorship, or cultural capital. (It is however affected by precarity, a topic that I will unpack in the chapter analysis.) Given the internal cumulative logic of AND, I will not attempt further to pin its practice down for the purpose of this PhD submission, but acknowledge its function as an overarching framework for the four practice projects that I describe and analyze in the following chapters.
  
{{Outerlink|https://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/apr/19/impermanent-book/| see co-authored essay: "The Impermanent Book"}}
 
  
{{Interlink|Summary of projects and submitted material#UND statt ODER .E2.80.93 die Anatomie von UND .28interview.29 |see interview: UND statt ODER, die Anatomie von UND}}
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[[File:AND_Publishing_webpage.png|thumb|700px|left|link=http://www.andpublishing.org|AND Publishing webpage]]
  
 +
<br clear=all>
  
Through different constellations of members <ref name="ANDnames"/> and having loosened the ties with the art school AND's practice shifted towards a more political practice that is invested in feminist radical pedagogy, builds informal support structures, shares a studio, provides resources and advice as well as access to skills, means of production and distribution.
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=Notes (AND Publishing)=
AND re-distributes budgets, commissions work, and (re-)publishes material which is difficult to find. AND works with individuals, collectives, and institutions including publishing classes, workshops, talks and education programmes. Likewise, the varying members of AND are part of a diverse network of critical, feminist, de-colonial publishing activities and campaigns.<ref name="networks" /> <br/>
 
  
[[File:AND_Publishing_webpage.png|500px|left|link=http://www.andpublishing.org|thumb|left|AND Publishing webpage]]<br clear=all>
 
The long list of equal "ands" on the website indicates, that we are not concerned with developing a focused brand or a unified face.<ref name="Raunig1"/> In contrast to the conjunction "or", "and" is accumulative and messy. This fundamental accumulative approach resists to be reduced to one research question, instead, AND serves here as a starting point, a marker and overarching context for the four artistic projects submitted for the PhD.
 
 
==Alliances: Elusive, Contingent, Precarious==
 
[[File:AND Showroom Working in the edges.jpg|thumb|300px| AND evening school: Working in the Edges, The Showroom, London 2013-14]]
 
 
 
[[File:OOMK Rabbits Road Press open access risograph press.png|thumb|300px|right|Rabbits Road printing press, London, ongoing]]
 
{{Outerlink|http://oomk.net|see: OOMK, London}}
 
 
[[File:OOMK Rabbits Road printing press.jpg|thumb|400px|left|Rabbits Road printing press, London 2018]]
 
 
[[File:X Marks the Bökship Andrea Francke Pirates in Peru.jpg|thumb|400px|left|X Marks the Bökship: Andrea Francke reports from her visit of Pirate Book Markets in Peru, London, 2011]]
 
 
[[File:AND Variable Formats 02 lowres.jpg|thumb|300px|right|link=|AND Publishing, Variable Formats, an experimental series of sample books using 12 different commercial POD platforms. Conceived by Lynn Harris and Design Collective Åbake, London, 2012.]]
 
 
 
 
 
 
{{Outerlink|http://bokship.org/|see: X Marks the Bökship, London}}
 
Similarly, X Marks the Bökship that operated for six years in London from a range of locations, shops, or galleries since 2010, was a space for independent publishing. Part bookshop, part meeting place, it hosted a multitude of book launches, workshops, conversations, lunches, and lectures. Such kind of community building is not achieved by "distributing" books about feminism or community, but through a genuine personal generosity, openness and through the support of others. <ref name="Bokship"/> http://bokship.org/ In these communities the qualifying marker is not being an artist but helping to drive the cause of intersectional feminist practice.
 
 
{{Interlink|Reflection,_theorisation_of_projects#Queering_the_authority_of_the_printed_book|See Reflection: Queering the authority of the printed book}}
 
{{Interlink|Summary_of_projects_and_submitted_material#The_Impermanent_Book.2C_co-authored_with_Andrea_Francke_.28essay.29|See essay: The Impermanent Book}}
 
{{Outerlink|http://andpublishing.org/|see: AND Publishing, London}}
 
 
 
 
I will explain this incommensurability with the example of the early days of AND Publishing, a publishing activity I co-founded with Lynn Harris in 2010 at Byam Shaw School of Art in North London, as a kind of indy university press, without an official mandate, but occasionally supported by institutional research funding. There are three phases to AND's practice, the first one was to institute an approach to publishing at the art school, that published works of students, staff, and alumni likewise confounding the hierarchies that come with roles, a student, a teacher, a professor, etc. [pick me up] This activity was very much empowered by the fact that students and staff self-governed the library in order to keep it open as a socially and intellectually generative space. [see Piracy Project]
 
Secondly, lots of energy went into researching, and testing models of print on demand in order to explore the creative and social possibilities of this (commercially) emerging production and distribution technology. Since POD does not require upfront funding since, due to digital print, the print run can be very small down to one copy. Publications can be printed when you needed them, or an order was placed. <ref name="POD"/>  Digital technology opened a multitude of possibilities and invited therefore for experiments to test the conceptual and social boundaries of the printed book. Please find a discussion of such experiments in the reflection section: Queering the authority of the printed book and in the published essay "The Impermanent Book".
 
 
 
In 2012 AND started a production and distribution platform "AND Public". This community-based offer presented and distributed POD books via our AND Public website, via a kiosk at the ICA in London, at X Marks the Bokship and at international artist publishing fairs.  AND held evening classes in collaboration with The Showroom in London, run "surgeries" sharing knowledge on available print services giving practical and conceptual advice. There were several forces at play, that pulled in different directions. Lynn in her day job, for example, was working for a design agency, versed in communicating and selling ideas and projects. In her free time, she researched emerging POD platforms and their possibilities (in term of binding, print, size and papers) and supported artists to self publish their books.
 
 
[[File:AND Showroom Working in the edges.jpg|thumb|300px| Working in the Edges, Evening School, The Showroom, London 2014]]
 
 
Over time, however, I developed a certain discomfort that this form of support often led to artists using publishing in a quite traditional way to showcase their work and boost their artistic value. Often, not always, they seemed to fall back to the old values of individual authorship, art with a capital A, cultural capital, etc. Since our energies, time and resources are limited in we decided to shift AND Public from an open-to-all platform to an editorial practice that builds explicitly upon feminist collective practice either by its members or by other collectives/individuals that we want to support.
 
 
As a reference, it is interesting to revisit the work of political and feminist groups in the 60s and 70s, working in a politicized climate of counter-information. In cities across Europe and the US radical print-shops operated collectively (See Red), <ref name="Jess Baines" />, feminist magazines (Spare Rib), and a vivid feminist zine culture (Riot grrrls) developed in order to raise awareness against inequality and discrimination. Rejecting the role of the artist these activists participated in a network of campaign groups, radical publishers and distributors. One could argue, that the focus here was less on concepts of format or material qualities of a publication, instead, the posters, magazines, books were a means to an end, to agitate, to activate, to get the message out, to give voice, create solidarity and work collectively towards change.
 
 
 
==Notes==
 
 
<references>
 
<references>
  
<ref name="Raunig1">See also Gerald Raunig’s description of transversal activist practice: as ‘There is no longer any artificially produced subject of articulation; it becomes clear that every name, every linkage, every label has always already been collective and must be newly constructed over and over again. In particular, to the same extent to which transversal collectives are only to be understood as polyvocal groups, transversality is linked with a critique of representation, with a refusal to speak for others, in the name of others, with abandoning identity, with a loss of a unified face, with the subversion of the social pressure to produce faces.’ Gerald Raunig, ‘Transversal Multitudes’, Transversal 9 (2002), http://eipcp.net/transversal/0303/raunig/en</ref>
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<ref name="support">
<ref name="support">Support included colleagues' offer to share office and equipment, including publishing classes in their courses inviting AND to develop publishing projects with students, facilitating work-based learning internships with AND. The management quickly realised the critical and socially generative potential of our activity and provided small funds and semi-official support </ref>
+
Informal support included colleagues sharing their office space, invitations to teach publishing classes in their courses, developing long-term publishing projects with students, and facilitating work-based learning internships with AND. The management quickly realized the generative and critical potential of AND for the art school and provided small research funds ("Micro-Budget Books", 2011, and Enterprise Seed-Funding, 2012). </ref>
 
 
<ref name="ANDnames"> AND was co-founded in 2010 by Lynn Harris and Eva Weinmayr. Andrea Francke worked closely with AND from 2010-15 in the framework of the Piracy Project. Since 2015 AND is run by Rosalie Schweiker and Eva Weinmayr. </ref>
 
 
 
<ref name="networks"> OOMK, X Marks the Bökship, Keep it Complex, Migrants in Culture</ref>
 
 
 
  
<ref name="OOMK"> OOMK describes it self as: "One of My Kind (OOMK) is a collaborative publishing practice led by Rose Nordin, Sofia Niazi and Heiba Lamara. Working together since 2014, we make, publish and distribute books and printed works which arise from self-initiated projects. We also commission new works by women artists and co-curate DIY Cultures, one of the UK’s largest annual independent publishing fairs." http://oomk.net/index.html</ref>
 
 
<ref name="Bokship"> Eleannor Brown started X Marks the Bokship in xxxx as event program at Donlon's, a bookstore for radical books in East London. Over time Donlon moved to a new space and the Bokship turned into a space of its own on Cambridge Heath Road. After 4(?) years of rent increase in 2014 the running of this shop was not affordable anymore and Matt's Gallery hosted the Bokship for two years at the foyer of their gallery in Tower Hamlets. In 2016 Matt's who had been residing on these premises had to move out due to Arts Council funding cuts. This was the moment when the Bokship decided to stop. See a record of activities here: http://bokship.org/</ref>
 
  
 
<ref name="POD">  
 
<ref name="POD">  
 +
The print-on-demand model of production and distribution is based on digital print technologies that allow for print runs as low as one copy. In the early 2000s, a range of commercial digital printers came up with an online interface that offered a range of print qualities, sizes, bindings (hard or softcover), paper stock, and a digital interface to upload a print-ready file. The innovation in this production system was in distribution. Once a book had been produced it was only printed when ordered (by anyone) via a direct link or on the POD Platform's "storefront", and shipped directly to the buyer's address. This direct distribution model cuts out the intermediary of the publisher or the distributor.
 +
It does not require upfront funding since the book is only printed when an order is placed and paid for. See Lulu, Blurb, the Newspaper Club (London) and many more.
 +
POD, of course, has existed since the invention of the photocopy machine in the early 60s, and AND made extensive use of the printers at the art school to produce repeated small print runs of its books.</ref>
  
Since POD does not require upfront funding since, due to digital print, the print run can be very small down to one copy. Publications can be printed when you needed them, or an order is placed.
+
<ref name="artspaces"> For example at X Marks the Bökship London (2010), Printroom Rotterdam (2011), Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), Ontario (2012), Printed Matter New York (2012), Witte de With Rotterdam (2012), London College of Communication (2013), Royal College of Art London (2013), Academy of Fine Arts Munich (2014), Kunstverein Munich (2014), MayDay Rooms London (2014), Academy of Media Art Cologne (2014), Goldsmiths College London (2015), Raven Row London (2015), Sideroom Amsterdam (2015), Wysing Art Centre Cambridge (2015), University of the Arts Bremen (2015), Edingburgh College of Art (2015), Whitechapel Art Gallery London (2018), Rabbits Road Press London (2020), among others.</ref>
 
 
POD of course existed since the invention of the photocopy machine and AND made extensively use of the printers at the art school to produce small and handmade print runs often in connection with teaching. However, in the early 2000s, a range of commercial digital printers came up with an online interface that offered a range of sizes, bindings, paper stock, color or black&white printing to choose from for an uploaded pdf. The invention in the production line was that once a book had been virtually produced by the author, it was only printed, when it is ordered (by anyone) via a direct link or on the POD Platform's "storefront", and shipped directly to the readers address. This direct distribution model cuts out the intermediary of the publisher or the distributor. See Lulu, Blurb, the Newspaper Club (London) and many more.</ref>
 
  
 +
 +
<ref name="Raunig1">
 +
See also Gerald Raunig’s description of transversal activist practice: "There is no longer any artificially produced subject of articulation; it becomes clear that every name, every linkage, every label has always already been collective and must be newly constructed over and over again. In particular, to the same extent to which transversal collectives are only to be understood as polyvocal groups, transversality is linked with a critique of representation, with a refusal to speak for others, in the name of others, with abandoning identity, with a loss of a unified face, with the subversion of the social pressure to produce faces." (Raunig 2002).</ref>
  
<ref name="Jess Baines">See Jess Baines’ text “Free Radicals” about radical Print shops emerging in London in 1968, as DiY sites of political and community activism. Afterall, 28.1.2010
+
<ref name="AND names"> AND was co-founded in 2010 by Lynn Harris and Eva Weinmayr. Andrea Francke worked closely with AND in the framework of the Piracy Project, 2010–15. Since 2015 AND is run by Rosalie Schweiker and Eva Weinmayr.</ref>
http://www.afterall.org/online/radical.printmaking#.V8iDdmUWw20</ref>
 
  
 +
<ref name="networks">  To name just a few of our allies [http://oomk.net OOMK, London], [https://www.rabbitsroadpress.com/ Rabbits Road Press, London], [HTTP://bokship.org/ X Marks the Bökship, London], and campaigns [https://makeitclear.eu/ Keep it Complex, London], [http://migrantsinculture.com/ Migrants in Culture (MIC)].</ref>
  
 
</references>
 
</references>

Latest revision as of 11:51, 23 September 2020

⟶  see website: AND Publishing, London

AND is a collaborative publishing activity, co-founded in 2010 at Byam Shaw School of Art in North London by Lynn Harris and Eva Weinmayr. Rosalie Schweiker joined in 2015. With no official mandate, but supported by colleagues and occasional university research funding,[1] AND operated as a kind of indie university press exploring the immediacy and the new social, creative and economic possibilities of print-on-demand technologies, which were emerging at the time.[2] AND's purpose in the context of the academic institution was to conceptualize publishing as an artistic as well as a pedagogical tool of experimentation and articulation, and to institute a critical approach that worked equally well with students, staff, and alumni – confounding prevailing hierarchies and roles (student, alumni, teacher, professor, etc.).

After several years working at Byam Shaw School of Art, this host institution merged with Central Saint Martins. AND was deemed "a free-floating anomaly" that was acknowledged as generative but not given a place in the newly merged and streamlined institution. AND moved into a collectively-financed studio and worked independently with institutions, collectives and individuals on a broad range of publishing projects. AND set up an open distribution platform for POD publications (AND Public, 2011–15), publishing evening classes (The Showroom, 2012–13), education programs at art institutions (South London Gallery, 2018), and gave lectures and workshops at various universities and cultural spaces.[3] ⟶  see distribution platform: AND Public on Wayback machine Over time and through the multiplicity of its members,[4] who themselves form part of a diverse network of critical, feminist, decolonial publishing activities and campaigns[5], AND's practice broadened its range of social, political and artistic investments to include feminist practice, radical pedagogy, informal support structures– e.g. a studio collective; the provision of resources, advice and skills, means of production and distribution; re-allocation of budgets; commissioning work – and (re-)publishing out-of print or hard to find material.

⟶  see published interview: "UND statt ODER, die Anatomie von UND" (AND instead of or, the anatomy of AND), 2018.

This contingent and cumulative approach – indicated by the long list of "ands" on the website – does not aim to produce one position, a focused brand or unified face,[6] and is grounded in multiplicity. This specific dynamic of different constellations, collaborations, concerns, and tactics that are defined by the conjunction "and" (rather than "or") seeks to evade any clear-cut framing of its activities. It is a practice that keeps creating spaces – both literal (the studio) and metaphorical (friendships, alliances, collaborations) – where the quality of being and working together is not impaired (or is so to a lesser extent) by allocated roles, questions of authorship, or cultural capital. (It is however affected by precarity, a topic that I will unpack in the chapter analysis.) Given the internal cumulative logic of AND, I will not attempt further to pin its practice down for the purpose of this PhD submission, but acknowledge its function as an overarching framework for the four practice projects that I describe and analyze in the following chapters.


AND Publishing webpage


Notes (AND Publishing)

  1. Informal support included colleagues sharing their office space, invitations to teach publishing classes in their courses, developing long-term publishing projects with students, and facilitating work-based learning internships with AND. The management quickly realized the generative and critical potential of AND for the art school and provided small research funds ("Micro-Budget Books", 2011, and Enterprise Seed-Funding, 2012).
  2. The print-on-demand model of production and distribution is based on digital print technologies that allow for print runs as low as one copy. In the early 2000s, a range of commercial digital printers came up with an online interface that offered a range of print qualities, sizes, bindings (hard or softcover), paper stock, and a digital interface to upload a print-ready file. The innovation in this production system was in distribution. Once a book had been produced it was only printed when ordered (by anyone) via a direct link or on the POD Platform's "storefront", and shipped directly to the buyer's address. This direct distribution model cuts out the intermediary of the publisher or the distributor. It does not require upfront funding since the book is only printed when an order is placed and paid for. See Lulu, Blurb, the Newspaper Club (London) and many more. POD, of course, has existed since the invention of the photocopy machine in the early 60s, and AND made extensive use of the printers at the art school to produce repeated small print runs of its books.
  3. For example at X Marks the Bökship London (2010), Printroom Rotterdam (2011), Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), Ontario (2012), Printed Matter New York (2012), Witte de With Rotterdam (2012), London College of Communication (2013), Royal College of Art London (2013), Academy of Fine Arts Munich (2014), Kunstverein Munich (2014), MayDay Rooms London (2014), Academy of Media Art Cologne (2014), Goldsmiths College London (2015), Raven Row London (2015), Sideroom Amsterdam (2015), Wysing Art Centre Cambridge (2015), University of the Arts Bremen (2015), Edingburgh College of Art (2015), Whitechapel Art Gallery London (2018), Rabbits Road Press London (2020), among others.
  4. AND was co-founded in 2010 by Lynn Harris and Eva Weinmayr. Andrea Francke worked closely with AND in the framework of the Piracy Project, 2010–15. Since 2015 AND is run by Rosalie Schweiker and Eva Weinmayr.
  5. To name just a few of our allies OOMK, London, Rabbits Road Press, London, X Marks the Bökship, London, and campaigns Keep it Complex, London, Migrants in Culture (MIC).
  6. See also Gerald Raunig’s description of transversal activist practice: "There is no longer any artificially produced subject of articulation; it becomes clear that every name, every linkage, every label has always already been collective and must be newly constructed over and over again. In particular, to the same extent to which transversal collectives are only to be understood as polyvocal groups, transversality is linked with a critique of representation, with a refusal to speak for others, in the name of others, with abandoning identity, with a loss of a unified face, with the subversion of the social pressure to produce faces." (Raunig 2002).