Manifestos by artists, authors, editors, publishers, designers, zinesters explore publishing as artistic practice.

Independent publishing, art publishing, publishing as artistic practice, publishing counterculture, and the zine, DIY, and POD scenes have proliferated over the last two decades. So too have art book fairs, an increasingly important venue—or even medium—for art. Art publishing experienced a similar boom in the 1960s and 1970s, in response to the culture's "linguistic turn." Today, art publishing confronts the internet and the avalanche of language and images that it enables. The printed book offers artists both visibility and tangibility. Publishing Manifestos gathers texts by artists, authors, editors, publishers, designers, zinesters, and activists to explore this rapidly expanding terrain for art practice.

The book begins in the last century, with texts by Gertrude Stein, El Lissitsky, Oswald de Andrade, and Jorge-Luis Borges. But the bulk of the contributions are from the twenty-first century, with an emphasis on diversity, including contributions from Tauba Auerbach, Mariana Castillo Deball, Ntone Edjabe, Girls Like Us, Karl Holmqvist, Temporary Services, and zubaan. Some contributors take on new forms of production and distribution; others examine the political potential of publishing and the power of collectivity inherent in bookmaking. They explore among other topics, artists' books, appropriation, conceptual writing, non-Western communities, queer identities, and post-digital publishing. Many texts are reproduced in facsimile—including a handwritten "speculative, future-forward newspaper" from South Africa. Some are proclamatory mission statements, others are polemical self-positioning; some are playful, others explicitly push the boundaries. All help lay the conceptual foundations of a growing field of practice and theory.

Praise for Publishing Manifestos:

A vibrant artistic and political publishing sphere has been developing since the turn of the millennium. This long-desired reader, compiled by one of the best insiders of the independent art publishing scene, is not only a valuable document but is itself a manifesto, a call to action to the publishing, artistic, and literary world: it is vital to cocreate the future of publishing.

—Annette Gilbert, editor of Publishing as Artistic Practice

Here, finally, is the manifesto that we’ve been waiting for. Michalis Pichler’s provocative question to innovative artbook and zine publishers about their felt need to make books generates an array of important responses, including a very interesting reflection on the personal and political implications of self-publishing. Along the way, the volume provides a useful overview of some of the most vital independent artists operating today.

—Alexander Alberro, author of Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity

Wow—this dense anthology is a mega- and meta-artist’s book in its own right; indispensable reading for radical artists’ publishing practice. It’s all in here: hard work  commingled with fun play!

—Max Schumann, director of Printed Matter, Inc.

A BOOK IS A BOOK FOR ALL THAT

—Lawrence Weiner, artist