Publishing Class IV: Community in Print (2013-2014)

14 September 2013–17 June 2014 / Casco HQ

Community in Print focuses on serial publishing inspired by art-publishing enterprises that were for the most part in series form: from magazines prevalent in the 1970s like the American counterculture catalog, published by writer Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog or the collective General Idea’s FILE magazine, to more contemporary examples such as artist, critic, philosopher, and writer workgroup Chto Delat’s newspaper that takes the name of the collective, the bilingual magazine Pages, which looks into the Iranian context and initiated by Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi or artist Can Atlay’s journal Ahali.

What is significantly common among them is their self-institutional agency. Be it a journal, magazine, or periodical, they offer a space for ongoing, self-disciplinary practices of artistic research. This space, in turn, forms a community of readers and interferes in existing cultural spheres.

We call upon the participants in the DAI program to develop their own magazine or any form of serial publication—with the first edition launched over the course of the 10 months of sessions. This inherently evolves in tandem with establishing a form of long-term inquiry, which we find essential to singular artistic practices. The emphasis is also given to the operation of feedback into communities with whom the publications try to engage. The students are thereby encouraged to exchange with their readership, fostering a generous network of ideas and activities. In this manner, publishing is understood as a “tool” of self-education and self-constituency that can be used in the development of communities.

Colophon:

The concept and framework of Publishing Class is developed by Binna Choi, director of Casco. Yolande van der Heide, publishing coordinator of Casco, is the managing editor of the class.

Community in Print is steered by monthly guest tutors including: MoMA librarian David Senior, art historian Gwen Allen, artist Can Altay (Ahali), critic and curator Benjamin Thorel (castillo/corralles), artist Ricardo Basbaum, designer, artist, writer and editor Will Holder, and Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi (Pages). It continues to collaborate with the Werkplaats Typografie in designing publications.

Publishing Class is an imprint of DAI Publications, a collection of artists’ books jointly published by the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) and Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory in collaboration with the Werkplaats Typografie. The DAI Publications collection consists of around 100 books that are printed in a limited edition of approximately 200 copies, these texts are the relics left by the participants of the DAI program; they are evidence of the work they engaged in at the DAI. The books also enter circulation, distributed by hand through local channels via collaborating institutions, and ultimately traveling to book fairs.