UbuWeb

UbuWeb, 2025

UbuWeb, 2024

UbuWeb, 2014

Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb, 2020, Log

UbuWeb is the most significant and largest online archive of avant-garde art; it was initiated and is led by conceptual artist Kenneth Goldsmith. UbuWeb has grown into a relevant and recognized critical institution of contemporary art. Artists want to see their work in its catalog and thus agree to a relationship with UbuWeb that has no formal contractual obligations. [1]

As of 2024, UbuWeb is no longer updated, but remains available on its website and mirrors.

On 1 February 2025, in response to the political changes in the US, UbuWeb announced restarting its activities. [2]

Essays, statements and interviews

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "Ubuweb wants to be Free", 2001. Open letter.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "The End of UbuWeb", UB Poetics discussion group, 1 Jun 2005.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "If It Doesn't Exist on the Internet, It Doesn't Exist", Harriet Blog, 16 Mar 2007.

• John Jourden, "UbuWeb Vu: Kenneth Goldsmith", Archinect, 26 Jun 2007. Interview.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "If We Had to Ask Permission, We Wouldn't Exist: A Brief Account of UbuWeb", Parkett 82, 2008, pp 6-10. [3]
  • "Müssten wir um Erlaubnis bitten, gäbe es uns nicht mehr UbuWeb - eine kurze Darstellung", trans. Wolfgang Himmelberg, Parkett 82, 2008, pp 11-15. (German)

• "UbuWeb", Cargo 3, Sep 2009, p 74. Interview. [4] (German)
  • "UbuWeb", cargo-film.de, n.d.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "If We Had To Ask for Permission, We Wouldn't Exist: An Open Letter to the Frameworks Community", 18 Oct 2010.

• "Son(i)a #116: Kenneth Goldsmith", Radio Web MACBA, 16 Dec 2010, 18 min. Audio.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "About UbuWeb", UbuWeb, 2011.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "UbuWeb at 15 Years: An Overview", Poetry Foundation, 26 Apr 2011; version on UbuWeb, 2011.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "Paradise Now: UbuWeb's World Without Copyright", 17 Mar 2012. Keynote speech given at Matadero Madrid. (English), (Spanish)

• "Memorabilia. Collecting Sounds with... Kenneth Goldsmith, Radio Web MACBA, 12 Jul 2012, 48 min. Audio.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "Robin Hood of the Avant-Garde", in Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online, eds. Rosemary J. Coombe, et al., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014, pp 251-260. [5]

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "Copyright Is Over – If You Want It (Guest Post)", Billboard, 15 Jul 2014.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "UbuWeb", Prague: Artyčok/Academy of Fine Arts, 28 Jan 2019, 56 min. Video. Audio. Talk on UbuWeb and Custodians Online. Part of TBA21's Class of Interpretation.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, "UbuWeb: An Accidental Archive", OnCurating 44: "Curating Contem­porary Music", Jan 2020.

• Kenneth Goldsmith, Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb, New York: Columbia University Press, Jul 2020, x+318 pp. [6]
  • "Le manifeste polémique d’UbuWeb", Multitudes 76, trans. Cristiano de Sá Fagundes, 2019, pp 155-167. Trans. of first chapter. [7] (French)

On UbuWeb

• Marcus Boon, "UbuWeb", The Wire 220, London, Jun 2002, p 78, HTML. [8]

• Stefan Drees, "klang, körper, text: «UbuWeb» ist eine Fundgrube für Material aus den grenzbereichen der Künste", Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 167:4, Mainz, Jul/Aug 2006, pp 52-53. [9] (German)

• Joel Harrison, "Web Poetics and the Gift Economy: nzepc, PennSound and UbuWeb", Ka Mate Ka Ora: A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics 2, Auckland, Jul 2006, pp 5-21, PDF. [10]

• Thomas Bécard, "Des pièces rares du cinéma contestataire mondial accessibles à tous", Télérama 2960, 7 Oct 2006. (French)

• David Klimeš, "Kolekce umělecké avantgardy", Respekt, 25 Mar 2007. (Czech)

• June Torbati, "UbuWeb offers uber obscure", Yale Daily News, 13 Apr 2007.

• Paul Fileri, "Site Specifics: UbuWeb", Film Comment 43:5, New York, Sep/Oct 2007, p 10. [11]

• Jean-Marc Manach, "Au royaume d’UbuWeb, trésors sonores et visuels d’avant-garde", Le Monde, 18 Oct 2007. (French)

• Damon Krukowski, "Free Verses: Kenneth Goldsmith and UbuWeb", Artforum 46:7, Mar 2008, p 129, HTML.

• Discussion about UbuWeb on the Frameworks list, 9-20 Jun 2008.

• Lindesay Irvine, "Site of the week: UbuWeb", The Guardian, 29 Oct 2008.

• Street Poets & Visionaries: Selections from the Ubuweb Collection, Toronto: Mercer Union, 2009, 8 pp. Exh. booklet. Darren Wershler's essay, [12]. Photos. Reviews: Taylor (Globe & Mail), Sutton (c mag). Previously shown at Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York, 2006. Review: Cotter (NYT), Church (Art on Paper).

• "Kenneth Goldsmith's UbuWeb", KQED, 20 Mar 2009.

• Ned Beauman, "Web Intellectual: Meet the American poet bringing highbrow literature to the masses", Dazed and Confused, Sep 2009, HTML.

• Janneke Adema, "Scanners, collectors and aggregators. On the ‘underground movement’ of (pirated) theory text sharing", Open Reflections blog, Sep 2009.

• Danny Birchall, "The Avant-Garde Archive Online", Film Quarterly 63:1, Autumn 2009, pp 12-14, PDF. [13]

• Miloš Vojtěchovský, "Jánošík online archivů. UbuWeb – autorské právo a poetická (an)architektura", A2 12, Prague, Jun 2010. [14] (Czech)

• Miguel Conde, "A vanguarda da pilhagem. No maior site de arte experimental na web, a ordem é roubar primeiro e resolver depois", O Globo, Rio de Janiero, 26 Mar 2011, pp 1-2. (Brazilian Portuguese)

• Ashley M. Gibson, "From Ant Farm to UbuWeb: Distribution and Access in Artists’ Video from the 1960s to the Present", Eugene, OR: University of Oregon, Jun 2011, viii+87 pp. Master's thesis.

• Ekkehard Knörer, "Trainingseffekte. Arbeiten mit YouTube und UbuWeb", Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 3(2): "Empirie", 2011, pp 163-166. (German)

• Jean-Jacques Larrochelle, "Ubu, roi des sons", Le Monde, 18 Jul 2012. (French)

• Sean Dockray, "Kenneth Goldsmith, et al., UbuWeb", Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 71:3, Sep 2012, pp 429-430.

• Agnès Peller, "Ubuweb de Kenneth Goldsmith: un geste artistique dans les humanités numériques", Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2013. Master's thesis.
  • Kenneth Goldsmith's UbuWeb. An Artist's Contribution to the Digital Humanities, trans. Francesca Simkin, Paris: University of Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2015, 108 pp. Revised version.

• Cat Hope, John Ryan, "UbuWeb and the Repository of the Avant-Garde", in Digital Arts: An Introduction to New Media, Bloomsbury, Jun 2014, pp 189-190.

• Marcell Mars, Manar Zarroug, Tomislav Medak, "Public Library (An Essay)", Memory of the World blog, 27 Oct 2014; printed in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 75-85; reposted on Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft: Open-Media-Studies-Blog, 17 Dec 2018. On the idea of public library.
  • "Javna knjižnica (Esej)", trans. Una Bauer, in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 7-17. (Croatian)

• Sarah Hamerman, "Cataloging Plunder: Thoughts on the Digital Text-Sharing Underground", LIS Theory blog, 20 Nov 2014; upd. as Pirate Libraries and the Fight for Open Information", The Media 61: The Immaterial Digital Labor Issue, 5 Sep 2015.

• Rodrigo José Brasil Silva, "A experiência UbuWeb: arte e arquivo na internet", Texto Digital 10:2, Dec 2014. (Brazilian Portuguese)

• Blake Butler, "Ubu Publishes the Unpublishable", VICE, 26 Feb 2015.

• Deanna Fong, "Spoken Word: Audio-Textual Relations in UbuWeb, PennSound and SpokenWeb", Amodern 4, Mar 2015.

• Nick Collins, "The UbuWeb Electronic Music Corpus: An MIR investigation of a historical database", Organised Sound 20:1, Apr 2015, pp 122-134. [15]

• McKenzie Wark, "Metadata Punk", in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 111-117.
  • "Metapodatkovni punk", trans. Dušanka Profeta, in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 41-47. (Croatian)

• Tomislav Medak, "The Future After the Library. UbuWeb and Monoskop's Radical Gestures", in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 121-137.
  • "Budućnosti iz knjižnice. Radikalne geste UbuWeba i Monoskopa", in Javna knjižnica / Public Library, eds. Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars, and WHW, Zagreb: WHW & Multimedia Institute, 2015, pp 51-66. (Croatian)

• Alexeev Vladimir, "UbuWeb - das Archiv der Avantgarde schlechthin", Dada, Merz & Co., Jul 2015. (German)

• Agnès Peller, "UbuWeb de Kenneth Goldsmith : une archive issue du web de documents", Synoptique 4:1, Summer 2015, pp 151-164. [16] (French)

• Daniel Snelson, "'Ever the Avant-Garde of the Avant-Garde till Heaven and After': UbuWeb from Film to Database", ch. 4 in Snelson, Variable Format: Media Poetics and the Little Database (PhD thesis), University of Pennsylvania, 2015, pp 133-179; upd. as "Dropping the Frame: From Film to Database", ch. 4 in Snelson, The Little Database: A Poetics of Media Formats, Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press, 2025. Publisher. [17]

• Cornelia Sollfrank, "Nothing New Needs to be Created: Kenneth Goldsmith’s Claim to Uncreativity", in No Internet – No Art. A Lunch Byte Anthology, ed. Melanie Bühler, Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2015, pp 40-50.

• Nick Thurston, "Happy Birthday Ubu. Twenty years of sharing", Frieze, 26 Oct 2016.

• "Happy birthday, Ubu.com!", Custodians.online, 30 Nov 2016.

• Jacob Brogan, "The Website That Collects the Forgotten and the Unfamiliar", Slate, 23 Dec 2016.

• Björn Ekström, "Publiceringsvariationer: en jämförelse mellan DigitaltMuseum och UbuWeb", Tidskrift för ABM 2:1, Uppsala, 2017, pp 4-14. (Swedish)

• Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, "UbuWeb", in Thylstrup, The Politics of Mass Digitization, MIT Press, 2018, pp 94-97, n162, HTML.

• Michael Nardone, "UbuWeb", ch. 2 in Nardone, Of the Repository: Poetics in a Networked Digital Milieu, Montreal: Concordia University, 2018, pp 104-175. PhD thesis.

• Cornelia Sollfrank, "The Surplus of Copying: How Shadow Libraries and Pirate Archives Contribute to the Creation of Cultural Memory and the Commons", originalcopy, Nov 2018. [18]

• Michael Nardone, "Poetics in a Networked Digital Milieu", College Literature 47:1, Winter 2020, pp 248-258.
  • "Poétique des réseaux", trans. Sébastien McLaughlin, Sens Public, Jun 2021. (French)

• Olga Goriunova, "Uploading our Libraries: The Subjects of Art and Knowledge Commons", in Aesthetics of the Commons, eds. Cornelia Sollfrank, Felix Stalder and Shusha Niederberger, Zurich: diaphanes, Jan 2021, pp 41-61.

• Gill Partington, "Kontext ist alles. Kenneth Goldsmith und UbuWeb", Merkur 866, Jul 2021, pp 59-66. [19] (German)

• Sandra Fauconnier, "Challenges in the Creation, Perception and Distribution of Documentation", in Documentation as Art: Expanded Digital Practices, eds. Annet Dekker and Gabriella Giannachi, Routledge, Jan 2023, pp 75-86.

• Benoît Crucifix, "(CoCo): Conceptual Comics and Online Archives", in Ilan Manouach in Review: Critical Approaches to his Conceptual Comics, ed. Pedro Moura, Routledge, Sep 2023, pp 189-203. [20] [21]

• Ubu@50 — 50 Ubus: A Virtual Conference, eds. Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, Zagreb: Multimedia Institute, Apr 2024. Collection of video interviews.

• Ubu@50 – 50 Ubus: Everything Is Temporary, eds. Marcell Mars and Tomislav Medak, Zagreb: Multimedia Institute, May 2024. Collectively written hyperlinked publication.

• Jacopo Rasmi, "Platforms of Curiosities: Weird Ways of Publishing Movies", in The Politics of Curiosity: Alternatives to the Attention Economy, eds. Enrico Campo and Yves Citton, London: Routledge, 2024. [22]

See also reviews of Goldsmith's Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb.

Links

• Website
• Website (archived 1998)
• Bluesky
• Twitter
• Avant-Garde All The Time, podcast series, 16 eps, Poetry Foundation, Dec 2007-Jan 2011.
• Shadow Libraries: UbuWeb in Athens, exhibitions and symposia, Onassis Cultural Center & National Museum of Contemporary Art (ESTE), Athens, 16-18 Mar 2018. Booklet PDF.
• Mirror: ubu-mirror.ch
• UbuWeb web archive, Library of Congress
• Wikipedia