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Conversation_with_Irene_de_Craen

3 July 2024, 10 AM

Carolina (00:00:00) - Hi Irene, good morning. We are going into different aspects of publishing and its politics, and you can say a lot about this and Errant Journal. Let’s start with a one-liner introduction of you and your practice: what do you hope to achieve with it and why do you operate the way you do, what kind of politics, mission and goals go into guiding it?

Irene (00:00:45) - Before going into more specific politics, I always tell how and why I started Errant. I have a background in visual art; I did Art Academy and Art History. I was working as a curator or, rather, artistic director at an art space, making exhibitions. This format of telling a story at an exhibition is unsatisfactory because I’ve always been interested in combining different voices and non-art objects or voices. The White Cube or any art space diminishes this difference: when you enter an art space, you look at everything in the same way, when you put something that is not an artwork in an art space, it becomes an artwork (also thanks to Marcel Duchamp, of course).

In combining art with activist voices, I have also worked with voices that just speak from experience; I find that it’s troubling. At the time, I was reading Édouard Glissant, and he writes a lot about sameness and difference in multiple ways, about how Western culture — or culture in general — can diminish difference and work towards sameness, which is very destructive. So, I stopped working as an artistic director, and I’ve always liked publications. I also used to work as a journalist and always made publications together with exhibitions. For me, this format is a way to combine more difference, and this is especially true with language. We will get into specific things I do with publishing later. Saying that the Errant Journal is also like an exhibition also got me into trouble because I was rejected. Well, I’ve been rejected for funding many, many times. One of them happened early in the beginning when I said Errant Journal is like an exhibition. And they were like, no, it’s not. So I thought about it and realised that for many people, an exhibition is maybe a collection of images - something that is visual. For me, an exhibition is something that tells a story and also tells a story from different perspectives. So I thought that was a funny experience, sometimes you learn a lot from rejections.

Carolina (00:03:59) - You already mentioned a few inspirations or references that guide your practice, namely Glissant with “Poetics of Relation” and the sort of idea of opacity, perhaps. What other references, materials or theories inspire your publishing practice?

Irene (00:04:24) - Well, apart from Glissant, there are a lot of other, mostly Latin American decolonial thinkers, as well as Ariella Azoulay, who’s also very important — her book, “Potential History”, speaks a lot. Her background is in photography, so she talks a lot about images and archives, especially the violence behind archives and structures. Of course, publishing, writing and communicating in the English language is not ideal, and I always say, maybe at some point, I’ll be fed up with all the limitations of publishing, and I’ll move on to another format. But I think there’s a lot to be done within this format, a lot of opacity is important, a lot of refusal, and a lot of subverting in how you put things together. So I find that very interesting because by doing that, you question how we think about knowledge and how we think about what is important and what is not important. So, I really like that format.

Carolina (00:05:53) - Amazing, thank you for that. So, we are just moving on to our other part, which goes through threads on the “how” of the Infrastructures of Publishing. How does that process of seeing a publication as an exhibition space (and much more) look like to you? Do you also take time to refuse certain traditional workflows? And how is the idea for the themes born, developed and then published?

Irene (00:06:52) - I think there’s a lot to your question. The way I set up Errant, structurally and organizationally, is also very important for the content. There is the editorial process and how I approach each contribution, and then there is an umbrella over the process of how I approach the object of the book and how I subvert that. So, there are different layers to it. To start with organizational aspects, I was the artistic director of a very large space before I started Errant. The bigger the space is, the more limiting it is. One of the things that constantly frustrated me was that when we didn’t have the budget, we still needed to fill the space, which forced artists to work for nothing. This is the kind of situation that is giving me burnout, thinking how ridiculous it is to have to perform for the funders.

So one of the things I’m very happy about with a publication is that it doesn’t have a space. Especially being an independent publisher, there is no space to take care of. I also made sure that we are not publishing periodically, we publish whenever the hell we are ready to publish — and this is a structure that I’ve set up that funders find a little bit hard to understand. When you are interested in including certain voices, you’re also able to give space to people having those voices. I always use the example of the second issue, which was about the environment, and it was delayed because one of the contributors was in a court case in Nigeria against Shell. So this is a good reason to extend the deadline, and because there is no space, you can create at your own pace. It is the same with Gaza, about which the last issue was also delayed because someone was trying to get their family members from Gaza. I’m trying to set up an organization that can make space for people’s lives, people’s problems that are often connected to geopolitical problems, to the problems and the issues that we try to discuss so that the actual work is not removed or cut off from the actual lives and work of people I work with. That is very important, and then, of course, we are a journal, so we now have set up a subscription model. This subscription model is not periodical, that was a bit of a puzzle to find out, as how can you get people to pay for a subscription when it’s not periodical, so maybe one year there won’t be an issue for whatever reason. Do you want to know more about how I work with the actual contributions or with editing?

Carolina (00:11:00) - Yes, I think it’s nice to know a bit more about the workflow that leads to the finished publication, but I think it’s also interesting to go into what kind of tools are important for you, material or collaboration-wise. Is there a specific guide or workflow structure that guides these collaborations, and how do you find collaborators and build up this process?

Irene (00:11:40) - Having any tools or guidelines would be very anti-Glissantian! Each process is individual, although, of course, I learn certain things that work or do not work. I try to build very personal relations with everyone I work with, especially to give space to what I’ve just mentioned —, now I have someone who told me that they would not be able to write, and it’s a very private and personal story, which of course I will not go into, but I’m very happy that people are coming forward with that. It’s a very important and delicate relationship, and in that sense, I don’t have any tools besides that. I used to be an editor for different magazines, and I’ve worked with someone over email for two years I never realised that they were 30 years older than I thought, or they were even a different gender, I just never put one and one together. And I think in the work that I do, that just cannot happen, so I have conversations with people in real life, if possible, but mostly over Zoom.

It is also important how I was educated as an editor: there was a mantra for the first magazine I worked for that the editor is always right. Even if the editor is wrong, the editor is still right because you’re the publication’s guide. In this day and age, that might still be true for academic papers. However, from my point of view and politically from Errant Journal, that is insane and ridiculous. I try to create an atmosphere where I let the contributors know that they should push back, and then I get nice pushbacks when correcting texts. There was one text by a Taiwanese writer. We were correcting her English, and she said, “But that’s not the way you say it in Chinese.” It’s very important to leave idiosyncrasies in text, and the basis of that is a personal relation where someone doesn’t feel like they’re talking to a boss.

Carolina (00:14:43) - And, if I’m not mistaken, you’re based in Berlin now, right?

Irene (00:14:51) - The magazine is officially based in Amsterdam, but I am personally based in Berlin.

Carolina (00:14:56) - I remember last time we had a conversation, you talked a lot about the decolonial position that Errant Journal takes and the way you contribute to people from the Global South by providing that platform. How do you see those infrastructures that we can access in the Netherlands or Western Europe with building up this anti-white cube European-centric thinking within a publication that is based in the Netherlands?

Irene (00:15:34) - I’m very much aware that my position is still that of a Western white academic, so it is about constantly challenging myself. That is why it is important to talk to people so that I practice listening, which is a decolonial practice. You know, shut up for once and listen to what people have to say. Currently, I’m working with Ghiwa Sayegh from Kohl Journal, which is a Lebanese open-access publication by anarchist feminists focused on the MENA region. That is fantastic because I’m learning a lot from how they are approaching the editing. Yesterday, I was looking at another magazine that I didn’t know yet. I think that there are a lot of magazines out there that say that they’re giving space to other voices, but it always does give me a bit of the “ick”. I hope Errant Journal doesn’t do that, but it might for some, and I get that as well.

One of the problems that I see often is that a lot of these publications don’t pay people. They say they are open to everyone, but by not paying people, you’re not open to everyone, you’re open to people who can afford to work for free, which is a very small segment of our society. From the beginning, it’s always been very important to pay people, and that’s one of the main focuses when trying to reach other voices.

Carolina (00:18:21) - You’re right. I think that always ends up being omitted. As you said, it’s nice to say, “We open this space”, but then how open is it if it’s not paid work? You also mentioned the subscription model that you’re investigating to circumvent certain funding structures of the Netherlands that divide publications, art, and spaces in very tight borders. How do you keep the sustainability? How have you explored these different models to ensure that Errant Journal can continue?

Irene (00:19:01) - That’s also funny — from the start, I also find it strange that organisations are always supposed to have a business model. My business model is not a very traditional one. I always take it slow, one or two issues at a time, because I do look ahead, of course, but I didn’t set it up to think that things are going to be a certain way because it doesn’t work like that, I cannot count on a certain income. This has been a reason why I’ve been rejected, for not having the right business model. I find that very funny because, again, the way we work and the way we live are very pulled apart. Because I’ve been living like this for 20 years, I can look ahead for a few months, but not more than that. So when I’m starting an organization, it has no overhead, no buildings, and no staff from the beginning. Yet I’m still expected to make a 10-year projection. So because of this, we have received many rejections in the beginning. A friend once said that Errant Journal won’t last because we don’t have a good business model. And I found it very strange because the only reason Errant Journal would stop is if I don’t feel like doing it anymore. Financially, I can keep going, especially with this model, because I haven’t set myself up to produce a certain amount.

There are other things that I do, the podcast, for example. I’m also working on Open Access now, which I can do without any funding. There are no costs except for the authors, and of course, I do have income from advertising and sales. But again, I’ve been living, and any freelancer that I know, and any artist I know, lives like this for decades. When I registered myself as a freelancer back in 2001, the guy at the tax office said artists are funny because they never actually go bankrupt. As long as you’re alive, you can keep going. Of course, you can file for bankruptcy as a freelancer as well, and some people do in some situations. But he’s right: as long as you are alive and you’re able to work, then you work.

Carolina (00:21:56) - I imagine that you can find other ways to sustain this practice by not having a very strict deadline.

Irene (00:22:11) - Yes, but I don’t know if you’re also a freelancer, but you could meet someone tomorrow who comes saying they have a pocket of money and that we should collaborate and maybe we can. This happens to me all the time, and I’ve been doing it long enough to know that, although it’s not a business model, it is sustainable because it’s been sustaining me for 20 years.

Carolina (00:22:35) - That’s interesting. I think you’ve mentioned your collaborations, your community and this network that enables Errant Journal to continue and also shape itself in different times and spaces. How has this sort of community of collaborators or readers been created? How do you relate to them?

Irene (00:23:17) -Sometimes I get questions such as “How did you find this or that writer?” It’s not the only way, but one way that this may be unusual is that I will remember something that I read 15 years ago, and I will just go look for a person. I think the example I often use is also from the second issue. I was looking for a title for the Journal, and one of the names that I considered was Tuvalu. Tuvalu is the second smallest island nation in the world. It’s very fun to Google and see the images. It’s one of the many islands that is sinking; it’s a group of atolls, and it’s not just one island sinking through because of the rise of sea level. I think the total population of this country is 11,000, and they’re on tiny strips of sand in the middle of nowhere while sinking.

Somehow, this just grabs my mind, coming from art, there’s so much to say there. I wanted to find a person from there to write about Tuvalu. You can imagine when a country is that small, it’s quite hard to find someone willing to write, who has experience writing, who has good internet access, all these things. Certain activist groups are working in that part of the world on climate change, and I started writing to all of them because I had one name at some point, and he didn’t respond anymore. And I started writing via Facebook Messenger, and at some point, I got an email from the same person that didn’t reply to me. He said, “You must really want me to write because you’ve now emailed me through three different organisations” — it turned out he worked for all of them, and these are all very small organizations, so he was getting the emails. So that was quite funny. I said, “Yes, I really do want you to write for me”. So, that’s one way I’m just spamming the hell out of people. Other ways now, when the network is growing, it’s also through referrals. We have an open call, although open calls are also very flawed, but I’m still using them.

Carolina (00:26:17) - Can you expand on the flaws of the open call?

Irene (00:26:29) -The space I ran before was also a residency, and we had an open call. Again, you’re looking for other voices. In art, one of the things that they like to say is that they are looking for experimental things, which are never experimental. I find it very strange that installation art is still called experimental. I mean, it’s been around for 30-40 years, so what’s experimental about that? When you do an open call, 99% will be white, in northern-western Europe and the same kind of art. I find it very problematic. I see other organizations doing open calls, and they spread the call widely and then use the amount of people that respond as a sort of marketing tool. Like, “Look, we had 700 people reply”, which I find very odd. When we have the open call, I hardly promote it at all because I don’t want quantity, I want quality. I’m trying to find a place where I hope to find people that I’m actually interested in. The process of announcing open calls is hard because you pour your heart out, and then you get a rejection, so I make the threshold very, very low, I just ask for a proposal of 300 words, and I sometimes say it’s basically an email. I need you to send me an email with your idea, that’s it, and a few references and a bio and that’s it. For all the people who are constantly applying for things, the process is so tiring to get rejection after rejection, and I hope to make it honest in that sense. There are many people I’ve started a working relationship with after I’ve rejected them because then they come back for collaborations, and I’m always open for it, or they ask me to look at a text they wrote, so I try to do that.

Carolina (00:29:19) - I always think it’s also about balancing between the pen calls and the invitations because inviting also keeps you within your frames of reference.

Irene (00:29:33) - That’s exactly why I still do it through the open call, I get people that I would otherwise never have found. It’s funny that you can also see how the call spreads and develops — for the previous open call, we had a very large amount of architects apply. There is a small fan base in Cairo and the Philippines. So it’s quite interesting to learn a little about how people find you. I try to keep it as simple as possible for the people that are applying.

Carolina (00:30:14) - You mentioned this idea of the editor and the traditional way of seeing it as someone who’s always right, but you were also trying to defy that. What are the ways that editors can be creators of community and art? Can they be or not?

Irene (00:30:50) - Well, definitely, I think this is important. I’ve been told that sometimes people can be intimidated by me, which I find very sad and funny because I don’t think I’m intimidating at all. I try to be very careful in creating a space where people feel that they can contradict me, please do, if you think that I’m wrong, then for God’s sake, tell me. I have a certain view on things that come from my background so if you have another view, I’ll never know if you’re gonna pretend that I’m right. I’ve been working with Ghiwa from Kohl and they’re doing writing circles and making their journal collectively. I have always been a bit of a loner, but working collectively is something that I am definitely considering for myself. I have to be honest, groups kind of freak me out. I think making publications is the world of introverts, but I also talk to people who also do translations collectively and I think that is a very good way to think about publishing together. And I think the outcomes of that are also very, very interesting.

Carolina (00:32:53) - That’s interesting: the idea of the publication, as you mentioned, is such a collective work, but then it’s also the work of the introvert somehow.

Irene (00:33:12) - Before I started Errant, I realised I had to be part of book fairs. I hate fairs, and those are horror situations for me but I realised I needed to take part in them because they’re really important to get your name out there. At the very first book fair, I realised, it’s great because you can sit somewhere for three days, and no one actually talks to you, because you’re all introverts. I might have two conversations over the weekend, which is perfect.

Carolina (00:33:48) - Folks just want to look at the publications, right? Book fairs end up being important to reach your readers. You talked about the way that you communicate with contributors of the magazine. Who are the people who read Errant?

Irene (00:33:50) - That is nice about book fairs because although I’m a loner, I do meet people who say they’ve been reading the journal, and that is great, those are the kinds of conversations I’m happy to have.

Carolina (00:33:52) - Some positive reinforcement, too.

Irene (00:33:52) - I do need it! Because otherwise, you go mental. My idea of the audience, from the start, was twofold, which is also reflected in who I am. On the one hand, it’s artists, people interested in the visuals and thoughts, and on the other, academics of all sorts of disciplines and I found that it works exactly like that, Errant Journal is very popular among art students and artists. From the sales, I often see orders from universities; then, occasionally, I look up to see who the person is and what their research is about. It’s fascinating because sometimes it’s the weirdest research! I’m very happy because it was exactly set up like that. One of the first rejections I had put the focus on the kind of audience I reach, saying it wouldn’t be interesting for academics.

Carolina (00:41:34) - It can always be surprising. Thank you. I’m now just going to ask the rest of the group to see if they want to say anything or have any questions.

Janis (00:41:36) - Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Janez from Aksioma in Slovenia. I think it’s interesting that you said you were leading a gallery as an artistic director, and the limitation that you saw in such a format to create knowledge or to deliver it. In a way, it’s similar to the path I’m going through. We have a gallery space, but we do more and more publications so I totally understand what you want to say here. As for the publication, I have to admit that I did not know much about you, and I did some investigation before this meeting. I see that you do podcasts too. I’m wondering if, after so many years of experience as a publisher, you have perhaps found other kinds of limitations. Did you, after investigating so much, find a limit? Do you ask yourself in what ways can new technologies open different horizons and expand the concept of publishing?

Irene (00:41:56) - Yeah, I totally get what you mean. I always say that at some point, I will come across the same kind of wall, but not now. Obviously, there are some limitations that have always been there from the start. Language is the main one currently. We are still communicating in English, which is a colonial language. Yet, for me, there are so many ways to play with it: the ways with which we can subvert this do these things differently. There is plenty of room for looking into things. Maybe if I do all of these things in the next couple of years, I will be fed up with it. So, no, I do not see this as a real limitation. We’ve been able to find satisfactory solutions or experiments for each thing so far. At some point with White Cube, there were a few exhibitions where I tried things, and in my eyes, I felt miserable. I was so unhappy; people were saying, “oh, it’s a nice exhibition”, and I was thinking, “ugh, it’s another nice exhibition”. It was completely unsatisfactory. So, I do not have the same feeling yet and we are also doing fun things that might be unusual. I am absolutely a book fetishist. The material and the paper are always important to me. And I always tried to play with that. We are the only magazine or book in the world that has a smell. Not all copies have a smell, and on some copies, they disappear. I work with Mediamatic in Amsterdam, which has an olfactory studio to add smell. I think this is also about how we communicate language and a story. I am really happy to add the smell to this because it’s a very subversive way of saying or doing something. I have not advertised the smell a lot because people were very confused. For example, the second issue smells of cucumber. It’s very light, but it’s there — if you had a book in your bag for a while, and you open the bag, that’s when you smell it. I’ve told some people this, and they said, “I was wondering where that salad smell came from all the time!”. During the book fair last year, I saw

someone at the booth next to me, smelling all the books. I knew that the smell was coming from Errant Journal. So, if we are talking about expanded publishing, this is a fun way for me.

Lorenzo (00:44:12) - Hi! I am thinking about what you said about your business model being precarious. On one side, there is a limit, of course, because it’s a fragile model that can probably not guarantee continuity. On the other side, there are also characteristics of independent publishing, so I was asking myself if you were fine with being not stuck in this situation that it can be a limit but also an opportunity. If you are interested in broadening your audience and communicating with the bigger community with your message and content, how is this possible with this kind of limitation?

Irene (00:44:43) - If you really want to support Errant Journal, please subscribe. I’m kind of amazed with how steady our income is because we only have 44 subscribers so far, which is not much at all. But from that small amount, there’s a monthly revenue that I can count on so I’m already seeing some developments. Of those 44 subscribers, 11 of them are universities, and they pay a lot more. When I was getting all those rejections, I had a feeling that there was nothing to see. In the meantime, there have been organisations that are supporting Errant Journal, like the CCA in Montreal, Canada. Never been there, never met those people in person and yet they put money into each issue. If I lose one partner, the next phone call I’m going to make is to the CCA, they have a great program and are a really nice organisation. So, in terms of growth, these chance encounters or collaborations are created as you keep going. Other organizations have already expressed their wish to collaborate but I try to be as independent as possible. It’s always a balance between money that people can offer and my independence. I’ve been very surprised, actually, at how much revenue I can get from advertising. The first budget that I made, the income from that was very low. I was wrong about that, the only way I found that out was by trying it. So, I don’t think these models are fragile, we have been taught to think in a very neoliberal, capitalist way. As you were talking, I was also thinking banks are usually not considered precarious or fragile, and yet governments have to save them by billions every couple of years. So, who’s the fragile one? Obviously, there are differences, I’m not a bank, but you know where I’m getting at: it is a perception of how you see precariousness or fragileness in business structures. So I resist that, as I do with many other things.

Marta (00:47:27) - The idea of precariousness is also about scale. I think the biggest question when it comes to subscription models or, I guess, alternative business models is to what extent they can be scaled when you start having more employees and more collaborators. And how do you ensure that you can keep going, and what about older people? Can they keep going? This is a conversation that we’ve also been having with others about ideas of care and self-care or the so-called exploitative cultural industry that claims to be interested in the care but then expects their workers to just keep going. Of course, it’s different if you’re working on your own compared to working with others. So I guess when it comes to scaling these things, how can you maintain or how do you see this non-fragility or resilience that you do see in these smaller independent publishing?

Can they be scaled? Should they be scaled? Can you build from those more social and personal connections in a wider network? This is also what we’re sort of doing with the consortium, putting together resources and knowledge. I guess this may move into the final question about the future of publishing. What direction can these models take?

Irene (00:49:28) - Yeah, there is growth, the sales of Errant are going well. At the moment, it is just me and the designer and I will not hire anyone else until I know that I can offer them fair pay. I had an editorial assistant for four issues because we had a subsidy. So then, from the beginning, I just communicated that she was paid fully, she was paid more than I have ever paid for that kind of job for those four issues. I will not work with interns even though I’ve had a few interns who came to me by themselves and sort of begged me. I find it very problematic because, so far, all interns and voluntary assistants who said they want to have experience in publishing have all been white. They’re all people who, for one reason or another, can work for free. Sometimes I will agree to that, sometimes you want to get more experience, but I still find it problematic. I’d rather do all the work myself than exploit someone, that’s just the basics of it. Unfortunately, I see how many other organisations work with interns and it’s exploitative. I come from a working-class background, I was never able to do an internship because I had to work to pay my rent. I always saw my fellow students do internships, and they all have very good jobs now at big museums. So, this is a very exploitative model that I refuse to engage in. Unless people sort of throw themselves at me, then it’s hard to say no, but still, I’m trying to be cautious.

Tommaso (00:52:38) - Hi, I’m Tommaso from Network Cultures. Firstly, thank you so much for all the very thoughtful insights. I think the reason why we started thinking about expanded publishing is not really because we felt limited but also because we felt the need to expand through the authors who would come to us saying they have some limitations, especially when we work with artists or artistic research practitioners, paper publication sometimes can be limiting. So my question is, have your authors ever felt limited in terms of paper publishing? Also, let’s expand a bit on “The Subversive Publishing Guide”.

Irene (00:54:08) - As for your first question, I’m used to working with artists because of my background. I’m trying to create a situation where people feel very free to just come with me with whatever, including artists wanting to expand on the publishing platform. You can leave it up to artists to come up with ideas. I was very happy that during the last issue, we published a sound piece from someone who responded to an open call with the idea of a sound piece, which in a way is separate from the publication, but it’s still part of the publication. So I thought that was nice and was happy to be able to give the space to this person to produce, and I was able to pay them for that. It was within the research they were already working on, so it made sense from all angles. Then there was an issue with this piece, and I asked myself, “Should I edit this?” So, you can let the artist or the contributors lead. I also have a wonderful designer who is very good at thinking. Sometimes, the limitation is cost. I hate to be the one, but sometimes I do have to say, “I’m sorry guys, we cannot do this, we cannot spend X amount of money just for this one page.” When something doesn’t work because of cost, it does play in my mind and maybe later on, I might think about doing it.

Thank you for mentioning “Subversive Publishing”. That was a commission from Framer Framed to me as a person, but all the work in there comes from Errant Journal. There is a collection of so-called limitations, but they are not limitations, they are just the things that you come across that make you think about how to deal with them, especially with the background of politics and decolonial ways of thinking. I ask for the rights, or either rights-free images, I do a lot of research for that, but I absolutely will refuse to pay for certain colonial archives or museums, like the British Museum. They steal artefacts from all over the world, and then when you want to use an image, you have to pay for that. Fuck them, no way. But, of course, they can fuck me up as well. Redrawing something is a very lovely way of circumventing restrictions. That is inspired by Sarah Ahmed’s way of citation. I also have written texts where I’ve only cited female writers because it’s a habit to always go to the same people, and I’m doing it, and everyone’s doing that. It’s not like those male white thinkers were the first to think of something. Nine out of ten times, they were not. And you can find an equal source from someone else, someone of colour or a woman. Citation is very important. Sarah Ahmed wrote a very cool essay on her blog about how citation works within knowledge creation and publication. (https://feministkilljoys.com/2013/09/11/making-feminist-points/) I thought it was very interesting. I currently want to expand the Subversive Publishing series. I’m going to apply [for funding] because I’m working on Open Access, I want to make a collection of texts that go into this a little bit further and are also an umbrella of how I think about publishing and Errant because Errant is very themed and overarching. I hope to do that next year.

Lorenzo (00:59:04) - Since we’re talking about Hispanic publishing, I read on Errant Journal that you’re building some sort of ecosystem of different media, you’re using podcasts, but also public events. Sometimes, public events are a way to support the publication. I was curious to know and to understand better the function of this ecosystem and how you build it, and how all these things collaborate.

Irene (01:03:11) - Well, the podcast is very easy. I was working behind the scenes on Errant for over two years. I was due to publish the first issue in April or May of 2020 and then the pandemic happened. I had a complete meltdown because I had just quit my job. I had a job because the idea was that I would be travelling to book fairs and stuff like that, and then everything fell apart. That was also funny because I was talking to other publishers, and someone said, “Don’t worry, Irene, you don’t have a building to pay. You don’t have any revenue from last year to compare this disastrous year with.” I thought, “Okay, that’s good.” So that’s how the podcast started, because I felt like I was sitting at home anyway, so I needed to have online content. Now, I use the podcast to have very helpful conversations, it’s great to talk to people. It’s more of a research method, and how the other things come to be. So this series on adversity, like I said, is an example that I come across, and it makes me want to know more. I’ve had a lot of positive responses from this first publishing booklet, along with some critique of people who felt that things were missing, so this is a great starting point.

After this, I want to revamp the entire website: I built the website myself by googling codes, which can be done, but it’s time-consuming if you don’t know how to write code yourself. Now, it’s also falling apart a little bit. It’s really “houtje toutje”, as Dutch people say, you put things together with strings and elastic band and hope it will hold. So this is also another practical reason I’m looking into applying for funding. As funders don’t like to just pay for technical things, you have to make up some content, and the content is there. I don’t know if that answers your questions. As for the public events, like I said, I don’t really like doing public events. I just cancelled one also because, in my many years of doing public events, I decided that I don’t want to talk if I don’t feel I have something to say. I could sell Errant and get more subscribers at that public event, but I didn’t feel I had anything to say at that moment because I was very concerned with other things. I didn’t want to just sell my magazine at that moment, so I cancelled it. This is also something funders don’t like to hear.

Carolina (01:03:35) - That’s really important. It also reminds me of a quote from a Portuguese writer. He says, “I don’t want to write if I don’t have anything to say”. So it’s the same.

Irene (01:03:36) - I think we should all do that. Again, this comes back to big burnouts when you’re planning an exhibition, and you don’t get the money, but you still have to do it. Somehow, we have to find ways to stop doing that and the same goes for publishing. We all know we love it so much, but it’s incredibly polluting. So, if you don’t have something good to say, please do not publish. Please do not cut trees. Please do not distribute, which is incredibly polluting.

Janez (01:04:01) - The more you talk, the more I relate to what you are saying. I haven’t done a public presentation for over five years now, I am detoxing. So, I also lost my status as an artist with the Ministry of Culture in Slovenia and I’m happy I’m free. I’m not an artist anymore! We should meet. When I come to Berlin, I make sure I pay a visit to you. There is one thing that actually struck me, a similarity between your way of doing and mine. And it’s not necessarily positive, at least from my own point of view and interpretation. When you talk about the organisation of your work, it sounds a bit self-exploitative. In the sense that I will produce until I can, you do your website on your own. You start the podcast… Believe me, I did the same and I’m still doing the same. But yesterday evening, we were discussing informally here, and we were asking ourselves if when it comes the time, where do you see the border beyond which you don’t want to go? Let’s say, perhaps during a collaboration, an author is too invasive or too controlling. How much are you ready to let it go if, for example, the proofreading isn’t perfect? Or, in the case of the Chinese author, you accepted her claim or their claim to respect that form of English. So what is the mechanism of self-defence in order not to be exploited by others besides the self-exploitation that you are ready to deploy?

Irene (01:08:09) - I want to get back to the topic of the booklet on Subversive Publishing because there are two, I also try to make it as a manifesto. The centrefold has 20 points to consider if you’re publishing subversively. One of the points I want to make here is to consider not publishing. This came up very often since publishing the booklet, I’ve also heard many people saying that this was a really good point - consider not to publish. Thank you for recognising my self-exploitation! This is also why, in the past, I’ve burned out many times, which is why now I just cancel events if I don’t feel like it. Another part of the manifesto was also to enjoy it. So, my main red line is that I have to enjoy the process. It’s stressful, there comes a point when I’m completely freaking out but I’ve learned to press pause just now. My business structure allows for that because there is no pressure of time. I do it for others, but I also do it for myself — I press pause. I also have such conversations with the designer, saying I’m not enjoying myself anymore, we need to take a break. So this is the way I try to self-exploit but as long as I’m enjoying myself, as long as it’s enriching me, I’m allowed to self-exploit myself. That kind of self-exploitation will not lead to burnout, or at least that is what I think, because I’m just a hypersensitive person. This is why I like to stay at home and avoid public events, I get overwhelmed very quickly. I thought when I was doing the interviews for the publication; it was nice that came up from other people as well, the fact that we have to enjoy it. Otherwise, there’s no point. So, I keep that in mind. I say no to things that other people would not say no to, like money, for example. Sometimes, I really don’t like the person or the organisation, or sometimes, I think it’s going to give me a lot of stress. I think they’re going to ask me things that I’m not comfortable with. So you know what? No. I’ll figure it out another way.

Carolina (01:09:12) - Thank you. I think it’s great that you mentioned this idea of tuning into our intuition when it comes to collaborations. Going into our final question, which concerns the so-called future of publishing or trying to define together what expanded publishing could be and is — this idea of the future is perhaps difficult to pin to, but if you’d like to formulate your own ideas of what that could be? What are the most urgent aspects that you think should be addressed in this future of publishing, if we can call it that, or the urgencies of publishing right now? Should we leave the future and concentrate on the present?

Irene (01:10:26) - I could be very cheeky because, from the colonial perspective, there is no future, this whole concept is fraud. But I won’t go into it, you can read the first issue of Errant; there are some thoughts about that. Maybe the future for me is not so much about technical development or progress in a traditional sense. However, the process of learning to give more space to fit the politics of what we are trying to do into the working methods, I think this is very, very important. This comes down to giving space to “other” voices, and the question is, how do you really make space for that? I am talking about how I organise things and how I see them, and I have to fight for that. So far, people don’t get it. They don’t get that this is the only way for me to move forward. Of course, privately, I go through depression, and burnout, but it’s not just me who’s hypersensitive, it is everyone that we work with in the cultural field, especially those who have to deal with real precariousness. Art or cultural sectors have been too bent with political wills, especially now when we see the direction taken to the right. We have to resist this, which we can do by ourselves. Doing these very small things, little subversive acts is resistance. Things I have been developing and thinking about last year are definitely not done, so I keep going, and I am planning to publish more about it and hopefully infect other people with some of these thoughts.

Carolina (01:12:54) - Thank you very much. I think this was a very good answer, like refusing the future but with a focus on what we can do right now, collectively. I think these acts of publishing are resistance. This resonates with us very much.