[spectre] New podcast: STAPLES AND INK. Some reflections on the small press boom in the art world

[Radio Web MACBA]

*New podcast: STAPLES AND INK. Some reflections on the small press boom in
the art world*
Independent publishing is experiencing a boom in the art world. Before the
bubble bursts, we speak to *Kit Hammonds* and *Bernhard Cella*
<http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/small-press/capsula> about the boom, the
recovery of supposedly obsolete printing techniques, the risk-aversion of
institutional art collections, about professionalisation and about digital
generation.

Link: http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/small-press/capsula

Independent publishing is experiencing a boom in the art world. The
vitality and ubiquity of small artist-editions has gone hand in hand with a
proliferation of sometimes highly imaginative micro-fairs and other spaces
for sharing, connection, dissemination and distribution.

Post-internet technological development has accompanied this latest stage
in the emancipation of the book. Leaving behind its quintessential role as
a conveyor of ideas, the book becomes a space for expression, a blank page
freed from the responsibility of representing 'reality'. The increasing
affordability and accessibility of means of production, maker culture, and
the revival of craft and DIY have favoured the boom, which revives and
updates the tradition that emerged in the late-sixties, of conceptual
artists’ books as an autonomous, democratic space.

Today’s independent publications maintain and strengthen their links to
non-objectual, immaterial art as idea and action, although they tend to
stay away from the political potential that once characterised the world of
the small press, in favour of the shifting sands of the fashionable.

Before the bubble bursts, we speak to
<http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/small-press/capsula>*Kit Hammonds*
and *Bernhard
Cella* <http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/small-press/capsula>
<http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/small-press/capsula>about the boom, the
recovery of supposedly obsolete printing techniques, the risk-aversion of
institutional art collections, about professionalisation and about digital
generation. We also look at some of the strategies they have used to
explore the medium, which range from placing the book at the centre of the
exhibition space, to inventing bizarre taxonomies, turning stolen books
into artworks, and being seduced by the eroticism of publication raves.

*Timeline*:

*Berhnard Cella*:
*02:55* Publishing and the legacy of Conceptual Art
*04:55* The Artist Book is a work of art
*07:30* Show, share, sell: the phenomenon of micro art book fairs
*12:20* Curating fairs and the case of Publish or Be Damned
*13:25* What it means to organise a micro-fair
*14:15* Professionalisation, money and meaning
*15:30* Boom and bubble: self-publishing goes mainstream
*16:08* Self-publishing and political expression: a change of paradigm
*18:20* Digital natives and bookmaking
*21:45* The small publishing scene in India and China
*25:40* The beginning of the collection
*29:10* Making a living
*31:30* Classifying books by colours
*34:26* Interaction rules and stolen books

*Kit Hammonds*:
*37:20* Independent curator
*43:12* After the death of print: the art world fascination with artists
publications
*45:40* Publishing as a trendy activity
*48:06* The blurring of genres and disciplines in the book form
*51:10* Publications as autonomous curatorial spaces
*53:05* Teaching: protecting bodies, provoking emotions
*53:48* Self-institutionalisation: lack of uniqueness and tick-boxing
practises in art book collections

*Produced with love by Maite Muñoz, Lucrecia Dalt and Anna Ramos*

Enjoy!
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