UbuWeb

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.

As of 2024, UbuWeb is no longer updated, but remains available on its website and mirrors.

Essays, statements, interviews

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

• 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. [1]
  • "Müssten wir um Erlaubnis bitten, gäbe es uns nicht mehr UbuWeb - eine kurze Darstellung", trans. Wolfgang Himmelberg, Parkett 82, 2008, pp 11-15. (German)

• 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, "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. [2]
  • "Le manifeste polémique d’UbuWeb", Multitudes 76, trans. Cristiano de Sá Fagundes, 2019, pp 155-167. Trans. of first chapter. [3] (French)

On UbuWeb

• 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.

• 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, [4]. 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.

• Danny Birchall, "The Avant-Garde Archive Online", Film Quarterly 63:1, Autumn 2009.

• Miloš Vojtěchovský, "Jánošík online archivů. UbuWeb – autorské právo a poetická (an)architektura", A2 12, Prague, Jun 2010. [5] (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)

• 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.

• 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.

• Nick Collins, "The UbuWeb Electronic Music Corpus: An MIR investigation of a historical database", Organised Sound 20:1, Apr 2015, pp 122-134. [6]

• Agnès Peller, "UbuWeb de Kenneth Goldsmith : une archive issue du web de documents", Synoptique 4:1, Summer 2015, pp 151-164. [7] (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, University of Pennsylvania, 2015, pp 133-179. PhD thesis. [8]

• 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.

• 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.

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

• 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. [9]

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

Links

• Website
• Twitter
• Avant-Garde All The Time, podcast series, 16 eps, Poetry Foundation, Dec 2007-Jan 2011.
• Mirror: ubu-mirror.ch
• UbuWeb web archive, Library of Congress
• Wikipedia