Octavio Kulesz: Digital Publishing in Developing Countries (2011) [English/French/Spanish]

E-books, print on demand, online sales sites, the boom in mobile phones… new technologies are profoundly transforming the way texts circulate. Developing countries, however, which face serious limitations in infrastructure, have a considerable challenge ahead of them.

What new actors are emerging in the countries of the South, outside of the powerful platforms already existing in the US, Europe and Japan? Is it conceivable that there may be an autonomous evolution of digital publications in developing countries, entirely independent of the richest nations? What support policies could be implemented to promote the growth of this new industry and accompany traditional actors in the process of adapting to the changes involved?

The digital experiences undertaken in the South suggest that new technologies represent a great opportunity for developing countries – particularly in terms of diffusion –, but on the condition that local entrepreneurs seek out original models adapted to the concrete needs of their communities.

This study was carried out by Octavio Kulesz (Editorial Teseo and Digital Minds Network) in October 2010, and commissioned by the International Alliance of Independent Publishers, with the support of the Prince Claus Foundation.

ISBN 9782951974760 [EN]
156 pages
via Marcell Mars

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Agamben, Badiou, Bensaïd, Brown, Nancy, Rancière, Ross, Žižek: Democracy in What State? (2009/2011) [French/English]

“Is it meaningful to call oneself a democrat? And if so, how do you interpret the word?”

In responding to this question, eight iconoclastic thinkers prove the rich potential of democracy, along with its critical weaknesses, and reconceive the practice to accommodate new political and cultural realities. Giorgio Agamben traces the tense history of constitutions and their coexistence with various governments. Alain Badiou contrasts current democratic practice with democratic communism. Daniel Bensaid ponders the institutionalization of democracy, while Wendy Brown discusses the democratization of society under neoliberalism. Jean-Luc Nancy measures the difference between democracy as a form of rule and as a human end, and Jacques Rancière highlights its egalitarian nature. Kristin Ross identifies hierarchical relationships within democratic practice, and Slavoj Zizek complicates the distinction between those who desire to own the state and those who wish to do without it.

Concentrating on the classical roots of democracy and its changing meaning over time and within different contexts, these essays uniquely defend what is left of the left-wing tradition after the fall of Soviet communism. They confront disincentives to active democratic participation that have caused voter turnout to decline in western countries, and they address electoral indifference by invoking and reviving the tradition of citizen involvement. Passionately written and theoretically rich, this collection speaks to all facets of modern political and democratic debate.

Démocratie, dans quel état?
By Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensaïd, Wendy Brown, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière, Kristin Ross, Slavoj Žižek
Originally published by La Fabrique, Paris, 2009
Canadian edition published by Les Éditions Écosociété, Montréal, 2009, ISBN 9782923165585

Translated to English by William McCuaig
Publisher Columbia University Press, 2011
New Directions in Critical Theory
ISBN 0231152981, 9780231152983
130 pages

review (Robin Celikates, Krisis)
review (Salvador Santino Regilme, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books)

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publisher (French, Canadian edition)
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google books (French)
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Tanja Ostojić: Strategies of Success / Curators Series, 2001-2003 (2004) [English/Serbian/French]

“Tanja Ostojić is an interdisciplinary artist from Belgrade who lives and works in Berlin. In her provocative performances, she investigates the position of women within contemporary cultural and political power regimes. She uses persiflage, provocation and irony as strategies to expose and subvert the exclusionary mechanisms of European immigration policies and the hierarchies within the Western art world.

In the years 2001 to 2003, Tanja Ostojić worked on the series Strategies of Success / Curator Series, which consists of performances, installations, photographs and a journal. In I’ll Be Your Angel (2001) she accompanied the curator Harald Szeemann during the opening of the 49th Venice Biennale, never leaving his side. She “presented” her conceptual body art work Black Square on White (2001), in which her pubic hair was trimmed in a square, by keeping it hidden. Tanja Ostojić’s other public actions include taking a bubble bath with the Italian curator Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and art critic Ludovico Pratesi in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome as the lovely ending to a shared gala dinner, and washing the feet of the Belgrade-based curator Stevan Vuković in Sofa for Curator (2002). The only traces of the non-public performance with the Albanian curator Edi Muka, Vacation with Curator (2003), are the photographs taken by the paparazzi she hired. In her work Politics of queer curatorial positions: After Rosa von Praunheim, Fassbinder and Bridge Markland (2003) she and the Slovenian curator and theorist Marina Gržinić re-enact an iconographic scene featuring Gabrielle d’Estrées, mistress to King Henry IV of France, and one of her sisters.” source

With texts by Marina Gržinić, Suzana Milevska, Tanja Ostojić.

Publisher Galérie La Box, Paris, with Student Cultural Center, Belgrade, 2004
Translations by Laurence Chamlou, Danielle Charonnet, Dušan Djordjević Mileusnić
ISBN 2910164322, 9782910164324
144 pages

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