Publicación de manifiestos de publicación

Abstract

Publishing Publishing Manifestos is an essay that served to contextualize Publishing Manifestos (MIT Press & Miss Read, 2019) an international anthology from artists and writers, introduced by editor Michalis Pichler. Comprised of 10 short chapters, Publishing Publishing Manifestos provides a historical background to the gathered manifestos. It argues for a publishing practice against alienation, where artists and authors assert the aesthetic value of their own socio-politically informed concerns and to engage, often under precarious conditions, in cultural activities fully aligned with their political values. Pichler argues for Materialzärtlichkeit (material tenderness), to include the conscious orchestration and use of material, structural and social elements, within the process of producing books. He addresses how Artists books is a problematic term, because it ghettoizes, enforces the separation from broader everyday practices and limits the subversive potential of books by putting an art tag on them. He considers the Post-digital Turn as a Paradigm shift, how digital reproduction destabilizes the hierarchy between a physical copy and a data file, and the repercussions this has had on publishing, especially POD. Last but not least, the essay investigates Art Book Fairs as Public Spheres, and as a central forum for constituting and nurturing a community around publishing as artistic practice. The essay is printed along a bibliography of the 77 manifestos.