➺ Coming back to André Breton’s “One Publishes to find Comrades” I’d like to think of printed publications, posters or zines as not necessarily the end product trying to convince anyone of anything, but rather as “working towards establishing conditions for the co-production of meaning.” In the publishing classes I run as part of AND Publishing we try to establish a social process where issues and ideas can be articulated and acted upon, where skills are exchanged and knowledge co-produced – in public. Actually AND also tests the implications of such co-operative models.
How can we create a horizontal model of communication between artist and audience, a less owner-ship- based notion of authorship? “A growing number of artists and artist collectives, challenging the artist’s expert-like authority, have come to advocate co-authorship, broadening responsibility for the creative process to all those taking part;” explains Stephen Wright whose recently published reader “Toward a Lexicon of User- ship” has massively enriched the discussion. “Usership represents a radical challenge to at least three stalwart conceptual institutions in contemporary culture: spectatorship, expert culture, and ownership”.
This is where publishing becomes a political act: “It is imperative that we publish” says Matthew Stadler, “not only as a means to counter the influence of a hegemonic ‘public’, but also to reclaim the space in which we imagine ourselves and our collectivity.”