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alternative practices

Linked to 3 items

• from: Conversation_with_Kenneth_Goldsmith (pad)

  alternative practicesYesterday we were talking with another guest, Irene De Craen about subversive publishing. She proposed a new strategy, a new tactic to be subversive, that is - do not publish. We were discussing a lot about this fact, because we are living in a sort of environment in which you are somehow forced to publish, to produce contents, to share contents. Now you're describing a sort of status or situation in which you're abandoning as a sort of tactic or strategy to react to the situation. I'm curious to know your point of view about not publishing anymore, or like mute yourself as a tactic. I'm also wondering if, in the back of your mind, this is a sort of temporary moment, or if you are considering the abandoning thing as a longer strategy, as Bifo also proposed. Kenneth (00:36:22) Wow, I like that idea of not publishing, but then I'm 63 years old. I've published 35 books. I publish so much. I published UbuWeb, which is hundreds of thousands of things. I think it's very different for younger people. Most people are younger than I am at this point. I can withdraw, right? I've done enough. It doesn't matter to me if I publish a 36th or a 37th or a 38th book, for me? I mean, it really doesn't matter. Who the fuck cares? Younger people have to publish. I think that's the imperative of publishing, right? To get your tenure, even for your own status, even for your own sort of self-worth, your trajectory, like who the fuck am I? We all leave a beautiful cultural trail behind us of our cultural production. That's beautiful, that's the most beautiful narrative I think in my life is the trail of cultural production. But I've had, you know, 40 years to make that trail. I remember the first time I published a book, I think it was 1991 or something like that. I remember saying to Cheryl, my wife, if I never do anything else, I got this fucking book. This is amazing, right? I remember that feeling and I think publishing is, to me, a trace. It's a sense of permanence, right? Particularly when I was really in the digital flow, I began to question, why publish? There's a flow, but if you don't publish, then it's just all flow and it just flows and it's meaningless. I always thought of them in the height of digital publishing around 2010. I thought, why should I still publish books? But then by publishing a book, I felt it was a way of stopping the flow, like putting a rock in the middle of a stream. Making a statement. It somehow made sense of that chaos. It was a dialectical constellation. That's where I found Benjamin to be useful. A dialectical constellation that came together, even if to temporarily stop the flow and to try to make sense around it. I always thought that was the reason to continue to publish books.

• from: Silvio Lorusso (chapter)

  Silvio 08:07 I see it as crucial. traditional publishingThe point in which “Entreprecariat” and small independent publishing intersect is in the fact that making a book in the traditional sense, in a way that lasts, is distributed, has an ISBN, et cetera, is very difficult. The actors that are active in making this happen are very minimal. Especially for the kind of literature that I’m interested in both reading and writing, the options are small and they are becoming smaller. Currently, that’s my primary concern. I’m sorry if I take too long, but I think it’s a crucial point to articulate my understanding of expanded publishing. alternative practicesIn the past I’ve been mostly interested in the weird experimental EPUBs or booking a JPEG, booking a floppy disk, a super long form that is interactive and so on… Nowadays, it’s a bit of a disappointment that many of physical objectsthese experiments, after about 10 years, are completely forgotten unless there is someone who, again, converts them into the traditional book — by the way, that’s what happening, for example, with the book by Annette Gilbert that is coming out now for Spector Books, references“Library of Artistic Print on Demand: Post-Digital Publishing in Times of Platform Capitalism”.

• from: Silvio Lorusso (chapter)

  alternative practicesWhat people appreciate of independent publishing (without going too much into this) is that kind of selfless, thankless job of putting the community in the front without that ego reward that the author gets. I think that an author, at one point, should also be active on that other side and communityit would be nice if every author would dedicate part of their time to do the less visible job of bringing to the front the work of the community, the intelligence of the community. Another point that comes to mind is that very often the publisher is an individual, literally an individual. For example, the publisher of my last book is an individual who has boxes in his house, so I think something is fascinating about the fact that it’s hard to imagine that behind the publisher, very often, there is just a very generous, very committed individual.