Temporary Services: Publishing in the Realm of Plant Fibers and Electrons (2014)

“This is an idiosyncratic guide to self-publishing. We think that self-publishers should craft their own hybrid publishing and distribution solutions. This booklet, we hope, is an aide for those curious about the process and who may want to start doing their own publishing.

Temporary Services has been actively thinking about, making, talking about, selling, and giving away publications for over 16 years. We have written or said things in interviews and lectures about our publishing, but we have never sat down to craft a long-form essay about our efforts and where they fit in the larger world of artist books, artist publishing and book making. This booklet is an attempt to articulate our ideas about publishing, particularly in light of the current post-digital environment.”

Illustrations by Kione Kochi
Publisher Temporary Services, Chicago, Sep 2014
32 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF

Stephen Duncombe: Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (1997)

“In this comprehensive study of zine publishing, Stephen Duncombe explores the history and theory of subterranean cultural production. From their origins in early 20th century science fiction fandom, their more proximate roots in ‘60s counter-culture and their rapid proliferation in the wake of punk rock, Notes from Underground pays full due to the political importance of zines as a vital network of participatory culture, and analyzes how zines measure up to their utopian outlook in achieving fundamental social change. Packed with extracts and illustrations, Duncombe provides a critical overview of the contemporary underground in all its love and rage.”

Publisher Verso, London, 1997
Reprinted by Microcosm Publishing, Bloomington, IN, 2008
ISBN 9781934620373, 1934620378
256 pages

Reviews: Susan Larson (Arizona J Hispanic Cult Stud, 1998), Jason Kuscma (Other Voices, 1998), st (Social Anarchism, 1998).

Publisher (2017 edition)
WorldCat

PDF

Abigail De Kosnik: Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom (2016)

“The task of archiving was once entrusted only to museums, libraries, and other institutions that acted as repositories of culture in material form. But with the rise of digital networked media, a multitude of self-designated archivists—fans, pirates, hackers—have become practitioners of cultural preservation on the Internet. These nonprofessional archivists have democratized cultural memory, building freely accessible online archives of whatever content they consider suitable for digital preservation. In Rogue Archives, Abigail De Kosnik examines the practice of archiving in the transition from print to digital media, looking in particular at Internet fan fiction archives.

De Kosnik explains that media users today regard all of mass culture as an archive, from which they can redeploy content for their own creations. Hence, “remix culture” and fan fiction are core genres of digital cultural production. De Kosnik explores, among other things, the anticanonical archiving styles of Internet preservationists; the volunteer labor of online archiving; how fan archives serve women and queer users as cultural resources; archivists’ efforts to attract racially and sexually diverse content; and how digital archives adhere to the logics of performance more than the logics of print. She also considers the similarities and differences among free culture, free software, and fan communities, and uses digital humanities tools to quantify and visualize the size, user base, and rate of growth of several online fan archives.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2016
ISBN 9780262034661, 0262034662
x+430 pages

Reviews: Jan Baetens (Leonardo, 2017), Amanda Gilroy (PopMatters, 2017), Ludi Price (2016), Silvia Bertolotti (DigiCult, 2016).
Interview with author: Henry Jenkins (2016), Christina Yang (TDR, 2019).

Publisher
WorldCat

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