Craig Dworkin, Simon Morris, Nick Thurston: Do or DIY (2012)

“Mixing anecdote and advocacy, the first section of this two-part polemical essay offers an introduction to the concealed history of do-it-yourself publishing—as undertaken by some of the most revered writers in the modern Western literary canon, from Laurence Sterne (1713–1768) to Irma Rombauer (1882–1941) via Virginia Woolf (1871–1922) and Derek Walcott (1930–).

Having looked back at some of the monuments of literary history, the second section takes its charge from the epigraph, ‘Institutions cannot prevent what they cannot imagine’, and looks forward to the political praxis of the 21st-century’s digital future.

The essay was first commissioned by the Foreword for the London Art Book Fair 2011 catalogue.”

Publisher Information as Material, York/UK, 2012
Creative Commons Attribution BY 2.5 Licence
ISBN 9781907468124
18 pages
via Electronic Poetry Center

Review: Christina Patterson (The Independent, 2012).

Publisher
WorldCat

Do or DIY (English, 2012)
Vydaj si sám (Slovak, trans. of excerpts, 2014)

Alan Moore, Alan Smart (eds.): Making Room: Cultural Production in Occupied Spaces (2015)

“An anthology of voices from the post-1968 squatting movement in Europe and beyond. It focuses on creative production and cultural innovation driven by squats. Squatting is certainly a tactic which has enabled a tremendous body of collective culture work to be done, and new kinds of lives to be lived. Making Room lays it out in the words of those who did it and study it.

The dark matter undercommons of disobedient culture surveyed in this book begins its roam in a theoretical introduction that includes autonomist theory, ‘monster institutions’ and simple economic justice. It moves from north to south, portraying by country some specific local conditions of an international movement.”

With contributions by Miguel Ángel Martínez López, Alan W. Moore, Stevphen Shukaitis, Universidad Nómada, Tino Buchholz, Vincent Boschma, Geert Lovink, Alan Smart, Aja Waalwijk, Jordan Zinovich, Britta Lillesøe,Tina Steiger, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, x-Chris, Kasper Opstrup, Azomozox, Ashley Dawson, Sarah Lewison, Azomozox, Nina Fraeser, Julia Ramírez Blanco, Tobias Morawski, Eliseo Fucolti, Gianni Piazza, Assembly of Teatro Valle, Patrick Nagle, Emanuele Braga, Margot Verdier, Vincent Prieur, Jon Lackman, Jacqueline Feldman, Julia Lledin, Elisabeth Lorenzi, Julia Lledinm, Stephen Luis Vilaseca, La Casa Invisible, Stephen Luis Vilaseca, Yasmin Ramirez, Gregory Lehmann, Sutapa Chattopadhyay, Jasna Babic, Tristan Wibault, Galvao Debelle dos Santos, E.T.C. Dee, Spencer Sunshine, Maxigas, and mujinga.

Co-published by Journal of Aesthetics & Protest and Other Forms, October 2015
Designed by Other Forms
Translation Milena Ruiz Magaldi and Jeannette Petrik
Open access
ISBN 9780979137792
355 pages

Publisher
Publisher

PDF (27 MB)
PDF (G Drive, from publisher)

Garnet Hertz (ed.): Critical Making (2012)

“Critical Making is a handmade book project by Garnet Hertz that explores how hands-on productive work ‐ making ‐ can supplement and extend critical reflection on technology and society. It works to blend and extend the fields of design, contemporary art, DIY/craft and technological development. It also can be thought of as an appeal to the electronic DIY maker movement to be critically engaged with culture, history and society: after learning to use a 3D printer, making an LED blink or using an Arduino, then what?

The publication has 70 contributors ‐ primarily from contemporary art and academia ‐ and its 352 pages are bound in ten pocket-sized zine-like volumes. The project takes the topic of DIY culture literally by printing an edition of 300 copies on a hacked photocopier with booklets that were manually folded, stapled and cut. The 300 finished copies were primarily given away for free to project contributors, individuals and institutions important to them. Some of the handmade copies were traded for reviews, photographs, videos, lectures and were given to library archives.

Due to the large demand for this content, the entire collection had been scanned and released on conceptlab.com/criticalmaking and through the Twitter account @criticalpdfs.”

Publisher Telharmonium Press, Hollywood/CA, November 2012
Open Access
10 booklets, 352 pages total

Reviews: Debatty (We Make Money Not Art, 2013), Blue (Engine Institute, 2013).

single PDF (36 MB)
PDF contributions (67 pieces)