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A few weeks ago, shortly after reading that Elsevier, the world’s largest
academic publisher, had made over €1 billion in profit in 2017, I received
notice of a new journal issue on decolonization and media.* “Decolonization”
denotes the dismantling of imperialism, the overturning of systems of
domination, and the founding of new political orders. Recalling Achille
Mbembe’s exhortation that we seek to decolonize our knowledge production
practices and institutions, I looked forward to exploring this new collection
of liberated learning online – amidst that borderless ethereal terrain where
information just wants to be free. (…Not really.)
Instead, I encountered a gate whose keeper sought to extract a hefty toll: $42
to rent a single article for the day, or $153 to borrow it for the month. The
keeper of that particular gate, mega-publisher Taylor & Francis, like the
keepers of many other epistemic gates, has found toll-collecting to be quite a
profitable business. Some of the largest academic publishers have, in recent
years, achieved profit margins of nearly 40%, higher than those of Apple and
Google. Granted, I had access to an academic library and an InterLibrary Loan
network that would help me to circumvent the barriers – yet I was also aware
of just how much those libraries were paying for that access on my behalf; and
of all the un-affiliated readers, equally interested and invested in
decolonization, who had no academic librarians to serve as their liaisons.
I’ve found myself standing before similar gates in similar provinces of
paradox: the scholarly book on “open data” that sells for well over $100; the
conference on democratizing the “smart city,” where tickets sell for ten times
as much. Librarian Ruth Tillman was [struck with “acute irony
poisoning”](https://twitter.com/ruthbrarian/status/932701152839454720) when
she encountered a costly article on rent-seeking and value-grabbing in a
journal of capitalism and socialism, which was itself rentable by the month
for a little over $900.
We’re certainly not the first to acknowledge the paradox. For decades, many
have been advocating for open-access publishing, authors have been campaigning
for less restrictive publishing agreements, and librarians have been
negotiating with publishers over exorbitant subscription fees. That fight
continues: in mid-February, over 100 libraries in the UK and Ireland
[submitted a letter](https://www.sconul.ac.uk/page/open-letter-to-the-
management-of-the-publisher-taylor-francis) to Taylor & Francis protesting
their plan to lock up content more than 20 years old and sell it as a separate
package.
My coterminous discoveries of Elsevier’s profit and that decolonization-
behind-a-paywall once again highlighted the ideological ironies of academic
publishing, prompting me to [tweet
something](https://twitter.com/shannonmattern/status/969418644240420865) half-
baked about academics perhaps giving a bit more thought to whether the
politics of their publishing _venues_ – their media of dissemination –
matched the politics they’re arguing for in their research. Maybe, I proposed,
we aren’t serving either ourselves or our readers very well by advocating for
social justice or “the commons” – or sharing progressive research on labor
politics and care work and the elitism of academic conventions – in journals
that extract huge profits from free labor and exploitative contracts and fees.
Despite my attempt to drown my “call to action” in a swamp of rhetorical
conditionals – “maybe” I was “kind-of” hedging “just a bit”? – several folks
quickly, and constructively, pointed out some missing nuances in my tweet.
[Librarian and LIS scholar Emily Drabinski
noted](https://twitter.com/edrabinski/status/969629307147563008) the dangers
of suggesting that individual “bad actors” are to blame for the hypocrisies
and injustices of a broken system – a system that includes authors, yes, but
also publishers of various ideological orientations, libraries, university
administrations, faculty review committees, hiring committees, accreditors,
and so forth.
And those authors are not a uniform group. Several junior scholars replied to
say that they think _a lot_ about the power dynamics of academic publishing
(many were “hazed,” at an early age, into the [Impact
Factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor) Olympics, encouraged to
obsessively count citations and measure “prestige”). They expressed a desire
to experiment with new modes and media of dissemination, but lamented that
they had to bracket their ethical concerns and aesthetic aspirations. Because
tenure. Open-access publications, and more-creative-but-less-prestigious
venues, “don’t count.” Senior scholars chimed in, too, to acknowledge that
scholars often publish in different venues at different times for different
purposes to reach different audiences (I’d add, as well, that some
conversations need to happen in enclosed, if not paywalled, environments
because “openness” can cultivate dangerous vulnerabilities). Some also
concluded that, if we want to make “open access” and public scholarship – like
that featured in _Public Seminar_ – “count,” we’re in for a long battle: one
that’s best waged within big professional scholarly associations. Even then,
there’s so much entrenched convention – so many naturalized metrics and
administrative structures and cultural habits – that we’re kind-of stuck with
these rentier publishers (to elevate the ingrained irony: in August 2017,
Elsevier acquired bepress, an open-access digital repository used by many
academic institutions). They need our content and labor, which we willing give
away for free, because we need their validation even more.
All this is true. Still, I’d prefer to think that we _can_ actually resist
rentierism, reform our intellectual infrastructures, and maybe even make some
progress in “decolonizing” the institution over the next years and decades. As
a mid-career scholar, I’d like to believe that my peers and I, in
collaboration with our junior colleagues and colleagues-to-be, can espouse new
values – which include attention to the political, ethical, and even aesthetic
dimensions of the means and _media_ through which we do our scholarship – in
our search committees, faculty reviews, and juries. Change _can_ happen at
the local level; one progressive committee can set an example for another, and
one college can do the same. Change can take root at the mega-institutional
scale, too. Several professional organizations, like the Modern Language
Association and many scientific associations, have developed policies and
practices to validate open-access publishing. We can look, for example, to the
[MLA Commons](https://mla.hcommons.org/) and the [Manifold publishing
platform](https://manifold.umn.edu/). We can also look to Germany, where a
nationwide consortium of libraries, universities, and research institutes has
been battling Elsevier since 2016 over their subscription and access policies.
Librarians have long been advocates for ethical publishing, and [as Drabinski
explains](https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/9568/10924),
they’re equipped to consult with scholars and scholarly organizations about
the publication media and platforms that best reinforce their core values.
Those values are the chief concern of the [HuMetricsHSS
initiative](http://humetricshss.org/about-2/), which is imagining a “more
humane,” values-based framework for evaluating scholarly work.
We also need to acknowledge the work of those who’ve been advocating for
similar ideals – and working toward a more ethically reflective publishing
culture – for years. Let’s consider some examples from the humanities and
social sciences – like the path-breaking [Institute for the Future of the
Book](http://www.futureofthebook.org/), which provided the platform where my
colleague McKenzie Wark publicly edited his [ _Gamer
Theory_](http://futureofthebook.org/gamertheory2.0/) back in 2006. Wark’s book
began online and became a print book, published by Harvard. Several
institutions – MIT; [Minnesota](https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-
division/series/forerunners-ideas-first); [Columbia’s Graduate School of
Architecture, Planning, and Preservation
](https://www.arch.columbia.edu/books)(whose publishing unit is led by a New
School alum, James Graham, who also happens to be a former thesis advisee);
Harvard’s [Graduate School of Design
](http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/publications/)and
[metaLab](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=2006); and The New
School’s own [Vera List Center
](http://www.veralistcenter.org/engage/publications/1993/entry-pointsthe-vera-
list-center-field-guide-on-art-and-social-justice-no-1/)– have been
experimenting with the printed book. And individual scholars and
practitioners, like Nick Sousanis, who [published his
dissertation](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674744431) as a
graphic novel, regard the bibliographic form as integral to their arguments.
Kathleen Fitzpatrick has also been a vibrant force for change, through her
work with the [MediaCommons](http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/) digital
scholarly network, her two [open-review ](http://www.plannedobsolescence.net
/peer-to-peer-review-and-its-aporias/)books, and [her
advocacy](http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/evolving-standards-and-practices-
in-tenure-and-promotion-reviews/) for more flexible, more thoughtful faculty
review standards. Her new manuscript, _Generous Thinking_ , which lives up to
its name, proposes [public intellectualism
](https://generousthinking.hcommons.org/4-working-in-public/public-
intellectuals/)as one such generous practice and advocates for [its positive
valuation](https://generousthinking.hcommons.org/5-the-university/) within the
academy. “What would be required,” she asks, “for the university to begin
letting go of the notion of prestige and of the competition that creates it in
order to begin aligning its personnel processes with its deepest values?” Such
a realignment, I want to emphasize, need not mean a reduction in rigor, as
some have worried; we can still have standards, while insisting that they
correspond to our values. USC’s Tara McPherson has modeled generous and
careful scholarship through her own work and her collaborations in developing
the [Vectors](http://vectors.usc.edu/issues/index.php?issue=7) and
[Scalar](https://scalar.me/anvc/scalar/) publishing platforms, which launched
in 2005 and 2013, respectively. _Public Seminar_ is [part of that long
tradition](http://www.publicseminar.org/2017/09/the-life-of-the-mind-online/),
too.
Individual scholars – particularly those who enjoy some measure of security –
can model a different pathway and advocate for a more sane, sustainable, and
inclusive publication and review system. Rather than blaming the “bad actors”
for making bad choices and perpetuating a flawed system, let’s instead
incentive the good ones to practice generosity.
In that spirit, I’d like to close by offering a passage I included in my own
promotion dossier, where I justified my choice to prioritize public
scholarship over traditional peer-reviewed venues. I aimed here to make my
values explicit. While I won’t know the outcome of my review for a few months,
and thus I can’t say whether or not this passage successfully served its
rhetorical purpose, I do hope I’ve convincingly argued here that, in
researching media and technology, one should also think critically about the
media one chooses to make that research public. I share this in the hope that
it’ll be useful to others preparing for their own job searches and faculty
reviews, or negotiating their own politics of practice. The passage is below.
* * *
…[A] concern with public knowledge infrastructures has… informed my choice of
venues for publication. Particularly since receiving tenure I’ve become much
more attuned to publication platforms themselves as knowledge infrastructures.
I’ve actively sought out venues whose operational values match the values I
espouse in my research – openness and accessibility (and, equally important,
good design!) – as well as those that The New School embraces through its
commitment to public scholarship and civic engagement. Thus, I’ve steered away
from those peer-reviewed publications that are secured behind paywalls and
rely on uncompensated editorial labor while their parent companies uphold
exploitative copyright policies and charge exorbitant subscription fees. I’ve
focused instead on open-access venues. Most of my articles are freely
available online, and even my 2015 book, _Deep Mapping the Media City_ ,
published by the University of Minnesota Press, has been made available
through the Mellon Foundation-funded Manifold open-access publishing platform.
In those cases in which I have been asked to contribute work to a restricted
peer-reviewed journal or costly edited volume, I’ve often negotiated with the
publisher to allow me to “pre-print” my work as an article in an open-access
online venue, or to preview an un-edited copy.
I’ve been invited to address the ethics and epistemologies of scholarly
publishing and pedagogical platforms in a variety of venues, A, B, C, D, and
E. I also often chat with graduate students and junior scholars about their
own “publication politics” and appropriate venues for their work, and I review
their prospectuses and manuscripts.
The most personally rewarding and professionally valuable publishing
experience of my post-tenure career has been my collaboration with _Places
Journal_ , a highly regarded non-profit, university-supported, open-access
venue for public scholarship on landscape, architecture, urbanism. After
having written thirteen (fifteen by Fall 2017) long-form pieces for _Places_
since 2012, I’ve effectively assumed their “urban data and mediated spaces”
beat. I work with paid, professional editors who care not only about subject
matter – they’re just as much domain experts as any academic peer reviewer
I’ve encountered – but also about clarity and style and visual presentation.
My research and writing process for _Places_ is no less time- and labor-
intensive, and the editorial process is no less rigorous, than would be
required for a traditional academic publication, but _Places_ allows my work
to reach a global, interdisciplinary audience in a timely manner, via a
smartly designed platform that allows for rich illustration. This public
scholarship has a different “impact” than pay-walled publications in prestige
journals. Yet the response to my work on social media, the number of citations
it’s received (in both scholarly and popular literature), and the number of
invitations it’s generated, suggest the significant, if incalculable, value of
such alternative infrastructures for academic publishing. By making my work
open and accessible, I’ve still managed to meet many of the prestige- and
scarcity-driven markers of academic excellence (for more on my work’s impact,
see Appendix A).
_* I’ve altered some details so as to avoid sanctioning particular editors or
authors._
_Shannon Mattern is Associate Professor of Media Studies at The New School and
author of numerous books with University of Minnesota Press. Find her on
twitter[@shannonmattern](http://www.twitter.com/shannonmattern)._
Goldsmith
If We Had To Ask for Permission We Wouldnt Exist: An Open Letter to the Frameworks Community
2010
To the Frameworks Community,
I have been reading your thread on UbuWeb's hacking on the list with great
interest. It seems that with a few exceptions, the list is generally positive
(with reservations) about Ubu, something that makes me happy. Ubu is a friend,
not a foe.
A few things: first of all, Ubu doesn't touch money. We don't make a cent. We
don't accept grants or donations. Nor do we -- or shall we ever -- sell
anything on the site. No one makes a salary here and the work is all done
voluntarily (more love hours than can ever be repaid). Our bandwidth and
server space is donated by universities.
We know that UbuWeb is not very good. In terms of films, the selection is
random and the quality is often poor. The accompanying text to the films can
be crummy, mostly poached from whatever is available around the net. So are
the films: they are mostly grabbed from private closed file-sharing
communities and made available for the public, hence the often lousy quality
of the films. It could be done much better.
Yet, in terms of how we've gone about building the archive, if we had to ask
for permission, we wouldn't exist. Because we have no money, we don't ask
permission. Asking permission always involves paperwork and negotiations,
lawyers, and bank accounts. Yuk. But by doing things the wrong way, we've been
able to pretty much overnight build an archive that's made publically
accessible for free of charge to anyone. And that in turn has attracted a
great number of film and video makers to want to contribute their works to the
archive legitimately. The fastest growing part of Ubu's film section is by
younger and living artists who want to be a part of Ubu. But if you want your
works off Ubu, we never question it and remove it immediately; it's your work
after all. We will try to convince you otherwise, but we will never leave
anything there that an artist or copyright holder wants removed.
Ubu presents orphaned and out-of-print works. Sometimes we had inadvertently
host works that are in print and commercially available for a reasonable
price. While this is strictly against our policy, it happens. (With an army of
interns and students and myself the only one in charge, it's sometimes hard to
keep the whole thing together.) Then someone tells us that we're doing it and
we take it down immediately and apologize. Ouch. The last thing Ubu wants to
do is to harm those who are trying to legitimately sell works. For this
reason, we don't host, for example, any films by Brakhage: they're in print
and affordable for anyone who wants them on DVD or through Netflix. Fantastic.
[The "wall of shame" was a stupid, juvenile move and we removed a few years
ago it when we heard from Joel Bachar that it was hurtful to the community.]
Some of the list members suggested that we work with distributors. That's
exactly what's starting to happen. Last winter, Ubu had a meeting with EAI and
VDB to explore ways that we could move forward together. We need each other.
EAI sent a list of artists who were uncomfortable with their films being
represented on Ubu. We responded by removing them. But others, such as Leslie
Thornton and Peggy Ahwesh insisted that their oeuvres be on Ubu as well as on
EAI. [You can see Leslie Thorton's Ubu page
here](http://ubu.com/film/thornton.html) (all permissioned).
Likewise, a younger generation is starting to see that works must take a
variety of forms and distributive methods, which happen at the same time
without cancelling each other out. The young, prominent video artist Ryan
Trecartin has all his work on Ubu, hi-res copies are distributed by EAI, The
Elizabeth Dee Gallery represent his work (and sells his videos there), while
showing in museums around the world. Clearly Ryan's career hasn't been hurt by
this approach. [You can see his Ryan Trecartin's Ubu page
here](http://ubu.com/film/trecartin.html) (all permissioned).
Older filmmakers and their estates have taken a variety of approaches.
[Michael Snow](http://ubu.com/film/snow.html) contacted Ubu to say that he was
pleased to have some of his films on Ubu, while he felt that others should be
removed. Of course we accommodated him. Having two permissioned films from
Michael Snow beats hosting ten without his blessing. We considered it a
victory. In another case, the children of [Stan
VanDerBeek](http://ubu.com/film/vanderbeek.html) contacted Ubu requesting that
we host their father's films. Re:Voir was upset by this, saying that we were
robbing his children of their royalties when they in fact had given the films
to us. We put a link to purchase DVDs from Re:Voir, regardless. We think
Re:Voir serves a crucial function: Many people prefer their beautiful physical
objects and hi-res DVDs to our pile of pixels. The point is that there is much
(understandable) suspicion and miscommunication. And I'll be the first to
admit that, on a community level, I've remained aloof and distant, and the
cause of much of that alienation. For this, I apologize.
In terms of sales and rentals ("Ubu is bad for business"), you'd know better
than me. But when [Peter Gidal](http://ubu.com/film/gidal.html) approached Ubu
and requested that his films be included in our archive, we were thrilled to
host a number of them. I met Peter in NYC a few months ago and asked him what
the effect of having his films on Ubu had been. He said, in terms of sales and
rentals, it was exactly the same, but in terms of interest, he felt there was
a big uptick from students and scholars by virtue of being able to see and
study that which was unavailable before. Ubu is used mostly by students and in
the classroom. Sadly, as many of you have noted, academic budgets don't
generally provide for adequate rental or projection money. I know this
firsthand: my wife, the video artist [Cheryl
Donegan](http://ubu.com/film/donegan.html) \-- who teaches video at two
prominent East Coast institutions -- is given approximately $200 per semester
(if that) for rentals. Good luck.
This summer, Ubu did a [show at the Walter Reade
Theater](http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/fcssummer/ubuweb.html) at Lincoln
Center in NYC. I insisted that we show AVIs and MP4s from the site on their
giant screen. They looked horrible. But that was the point. I wanted to prove
the value of high-resolution DVDs and real film prints. I wanted to validate
the existence of distributors who make these types of copies available. Ubu's
crummy files are a substitute, a thumbnail for the real thing: sitting in a
dark from with like-minded, warm bodies watching an enormous projection in a
room with a great sound system. Cinema, as you know too well, is a social
experience; Ubu pales by comparison. It will never be a substitute. But sadly,
for many -- unable to live near the urban centers where such fare is shown,
trapped by economics, geography, career, circumstance, health, family, etc. --
Ubu is the only lifeline to this kind of work. As such, we believe that we do
more good in the world than harm.
An ideal situation happened when UbuWeb was asked to participate in a
[show](http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/intermission) at the CCA in Montreal. The CCA
insisted on showing hi-res films, which they rented from distributors of
materials that Ubu hosts. We were thrilled. By having these materials
available to be seen on Ubu, it led to rental fees for the artists and income
for the distributors. It was a win-win situation. This Ubu working at its
best.
Finally, I don't really think it's good for me to join the list. I'm not well-
enough versed in your world to keep up with the high level of conversation
going on there. Nor do I wish to get into a pissing match. However, I can be
contacted [here](http://ubu.com/contact) and am happy to respond.
It think that, in the end, Ubu is a provocation to your community to go ahead
and do it right, do it better, to render Ubu obsolete. Why should there only
be one UbuWeb? You have the tools, the resources, the artwork and the
knowledge base to do it so much better than I'm doing it. I fell into this as
Ubu has grown organically (we do it because we can) and am clearly not the
best person to be representing experimental cinema. Ubu would love you to step
in and help make it better. Or, better yet, put us out of business by doing it
correctly, the way it should have been done in the first place.
Kenneth Goldsmith
UbuWeb
---|---|---|---
Goldsmith
UbuWeb at 15 Years An Overview
2011
# UbuWeb at 15 Years: An Overview
By [Kenneth Goldsmith](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/kenneth-
goldsmith)
It's amazing to me that [UbuWeb](http://ubu.com), after fifteen years, is
still going. Run with no money and put together pretty much without
permission, Ubu has succeeded by breaking all the rules, by going about things
the wrong way. UbuWeb can be construed as the Robin Hood of the avant-garde,
but instead of taking from one and giving to the other, we feel that in the
end, we're giving to all. UbuWeb is as much about the legal and social
ramifications of its self-created distribution and
[archiving](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/04/archiving-is-the-
new-folk-art/) system as it is about the content hosted on the site. In a
sense, the content takes care of itself; but keeping it up there has proved to
be a trickier proposition. The socio-political maintenance of keeping free
server space with unlimited bandwidth is a complicated dance, often interfered
with by darts thrown at us by individuals calling foul-play on copyright
infringement. Undeterred, we keep on: after fifteen years, we're still going
strong. We're lab rats under a microscope: in exchange for the big-ticket
bandwidth, we've consented to be objects of university research in the
ideology and practice of radical distribution.
But by the time you read this, UbuWeb may be gone. Cobbled together, operating
on no money and an all-volunteer staff, UbuWeb has become the unlikely
definitive source for all things avant-garde on the internet. Never meant to
be a permanent archive, Ubu could vanish for any number of reasons: our ISP
pulls the plug, our university support dries up, or we simply grow tired of
it. Acquisition by a larger entity is impossible: nothing is for sale. We
don't touch money. In fact, what we host has never made money. Instead, the
site is filled with the detritus and ephemera of great artists—[the music of
Jean Dubuffet](http://www.ubu.com/sound/dubuffet.html), [the poetry of Dan
Graham](http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/poem.html),[ Julian Schnabel’s
country music](http://ubu.com/sound/schnabel.html), [the punk rock of Martin
Kippenberger](http://ubu.com/sound/kippenberger.html), [the diaries of John
Lennon](http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen7/diary.html), [the rants of Karen
Finley](http://www.ubu.com/sound/uproar.html), and [pop songs by Joseph
Beuys](http://www.ubu.com/film/beuys_sonne.html)—all of which was originally
put out in tiny editions and vanished quickly.
However the web provides the perfect place to restage these works. With video,
sound, and text remaining more faithful to the original experience than, say,
painting or sculpture, Ubu proposes a different sort of revisionist art
history, one based on the peripheries of artistic production rather than on
the perceived, or market-based, center. Few people, for example, know that
Richard Serra makes videos. Whilst visiting his recent retrospective at The
Museum of Modern Art in New York, there was no sign of [TELEVISION DELIVERS
PEOPLE](http://www.ubu.com/film/serra_television.html) (1973) or
[BOOMERANG](http://www.ubu.com/film/serra_boomerang.html) (1974), both being
well-visited resources on UbuWeb. Similarly, Salvador Dali’s obscure video,
[IMPRESSIONS DE LA HAUTE MONGOLIE—HOMMAGE Á RAYMOND
ROUSSEL](http://www.ubu.com/film/dali_impressions.html) from the mid-70s can
be viewed. Outside of UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929), it’s the only other film he
completed in his lifetime. While you won’t find reproductions of Dali’s
paintings on UbuWeb, you will find [a 1967 recording of an advertisement he
made for a bank.](http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/sound/dali_salvador/Dali-
Salvador_Apoth-du-dollar_1967.mp3)
It’s not all off-beat: there is, in all fairness, lots of primary expressions
of artists’ works which port to the web perfectly: [the films of Hollis
Frampton](http://ubu.com/film/frampton.html), [readings by Alain Robbe-
Grillet](http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/audio5B.html#jealousy), [Samuel
Beckett radio plays](http://www.ubu.com/sound/beckett.html), [the concrete
poems of Mary Ellen Solt](http://ubu.com/historical/solt/index.html), [the
writings of Maurice Blanchot](http://ubu.com/ubu/blanchot_last_man.html) and
the [music of Meredith Monk](http://www.ubu.com/sound/monk.html), to name a
few.
UbuWeb began in 1996 as a site focusing on visual and concrete poetry. With
the advent of the graphical web browser, we began scanning old concrete poems,
astonished by how fresh they looked backlit by the computer screen. Shortly
thereafter, when streaming audio became available, it made sense to extend our
scope to sound poetry, and as bandwidth increased we later added MP3s as well
as video. Sound poetry opened up a whole new terrain: certain of [John Cage’s
readings](http://www.ubu.com/sound/cage.html) of his mesostic texts could be
termed “sound poetry,” hence we included them. As often, though, Cage combined
his readings with an orchestral piece; we included those as well. But soon, we
found ourselves unable to distinguish the difference between “sound poetry”
and “music.” We encountered this dilemma time and again whether it was with
the compositions of [Maurico Kagel](http://www.ubu.com/sound/kagel.html),
[Joan La Barbara](http://www.ubu.com/sound/lab.html), or [Henri
Chopin](http://www.ubu.com/sound/chopin.html), all of whom are as well-known
as composers as they are sound artists. After a while, we gave up trying to
name things; we dropped the term “sound poetry” and referred to it thenceforth
simply as “[Sound](http://www.ubu.com/sound/index.html).”
When we began posting [found street
poems](http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/ass.html) that used letter forms in
fantastically innovative ways, we had to reconsider what “concrete poetry”
was. As time went on, we seemed to be outgrowing our original taxonomies until
we simply became a repository for the “avant-garde” (whatever that means—our
idea of what is “avant-garde” seems to be changing all the time). UbuWeb
adheres to no one historical narrative, rather we’re more interested in
putting several disciplines into the same space and seeing how they interact:
poetry, music, film, and literature from all periods encounter and bounce off
of each other in unexpected ways.
In 2005, we acquired a collection called [The 365 Days
Project](http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/index.shtml), a year’s worth of
outrageous MP3s that can be best described as celebrity gaffs, recordings of
children screeching, how-to records, song-poems, propagandistic religious
ditties, spoken word pieces, even ventriloquist acts. However, buried deep
within The 365 Days Project were rare tracks by the legendary avant-gardist
[Nicolas Slonimsky](http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/2003/070.shtml), an
early-to-mid-twentieth century conductor, performer, and composer belting out
advertisements and children’s ditties on the piano in an off-key voice. UbuWeb
had already been hosting historical recordings from the 1920s he
[conducted](http://www.ubu.com/sound/slonimsky.html) of [Charles
Ives](http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/sound/slonimsky_nicolas/Slonimsky-
Nicolas_02_Ives-Barn-Dance.mp3), [Carl
Ruggles](http://www.ubu.com/sound/agp/AGP167.html), and [Edgard
Varèse](http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/sound/slonimsky_nicolas/Slonimsky-
Nicolas_01_Varese-Ionisation.mp3) in our Sound section, yet nestled in amongst
oddballs like [Louis Farrakhan singing
calypso](http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/2003/091.shtml) or high school
choir’s renditions of “[Fox On The
Run](http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/DP/2003/01/365-Days-Project-01-04-dondero-high-
school-a-capella-choir-fox-on-the-run-1996.mp3),” Slonimsky fit into both
categories—high and low—equally well.
A few years back, Jerome Rothenberg, the leading scholar of
[Ethnopoetics](http://ubu.com/ethno/), approached us with an idea to include a
wing which would feature Ethnopoetic sound, visual art, poetry, and essays.
Rothenberg’s interest was specific to UbuWeb: how the avant-garde dovetailed
with the world’s deep cultures—those surviving in situ as well as those that
had vanished except for transcriptions in books or recordings from earlier
decades. Sound offerings include everything from [Slim
Gaillard](http://ubu.com/ethno/soundings/gaillard.html) to [Inuit throat
singing](http://ubu.com/ethno/soundings/inuit.html), each making formal
connections to modernist strains of [Dada](http://www.ubu.com/sound/dada.html)
or [sound poetry](http://ubu.com/sound/poesia_sonora.html). Likewise, the
Ethnopoetic visual poetry section ranges from [Chippewa song
pictures](http://ubu.com/ethno/visuals/chip.html) to [Paleolithic
palimpsests](http://ubu.com/ethno/visuals/paleo.html) to [Apollinaire’s
Calligrammes](http://ubu.com/historical/app/index.html) (1912–18) There are
dozens of papers with topics like “[Louis Armstrong and the Syntax of
Scat](http://ubu.com/ethno/discourses/syntax_of_scat.doc)” to [Kenneth
Rexroth’s writings on American Indian
song](http://ubu.com/ethno/discourses/rexroth_indian.html).
There are over 2500 full-length avant-garde films and videos, both streaming
and downloadable, including the videos of [Vito
Acconci](http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci.html) and the filmic oeuvre of [Jack
Smith](http://www.ubu.com/film/smith_jack.html), You can also find several
biographies and interviews with authors such as [Jorge Luis
Borges](http://www.ubu.com/film/borges.html),[ J. G.
Ballard](http://www.ubu.com/film/ballard.html), [Allen
Ginsberg](http://www.ubu.com/film/ginsberg.html), and [Louis-Ferdinand
Céline](http://www.ubu.com/film/celine.html). And there are a number of films
about avant-garde music, most notably [Robert
Ashley](http://www.ubu.com/sound/ashley.html)’s epic 14-hour [Music with Roots
in the Aether](http://www.ubu.com/film/aether.html), a series of composer
portraits made in the mid-70s featuring artists such as [Pauline
Oliveros](http://www.ubu.com/film/oliveros.html), [Philip
Glass](http://www.ubu.com/film/glass_aether.html), and [Alvin
Lucier](http://www.ubu.com/film/aether.html). A dozen of the rarely screened
films by [Mauricio Kagel](http://www.ubu.com/film/kagel.html) can be viewed as
can [Her Noise](http://www.ubu.com/film/her_noise.html), a documentary about
women and experimental music from 2005. There are also hours of performance
documentation, notably the entire [Cinema of
Transgression](http://www.ubu.com/film/transgression.html) series with films
by [Beth B](http://www.ubu.com/film/b.html) and [Richard
Kern](http://www.ubu.com/film/kern.html), a lecture by [Chris
Burden](http://www.ubu.com/film/burden.html), a bootleg version of [Robert
Smithson’s HOTEL PALENQUE](http://www.ubu.com/film/smithson.html), (1969) and
an astonishing [21-minute clip of Abbie Hoffman making gefilte
fish](http://www.ubu.com/film/hoffman.html) on Christmas Eve of 1973.
Other portions of the site include a vast repository of papers about audio,
performance, conceptual art, and poetry. There are large sections of artists
simply placed together under categories of Historical and Contemporary. And
then there is [/ubu Editions](http://www.ubu.com/ubu/), which offers full-
length PDFs of literature and poetry. Among the 73 titles, authors include Tim
Davis, Ron Silliman, Maurice Blanchot, Caroline Bergvall, Claude Simon, Jeremy
Sigler, Severo Sarduy, and Juliana Spahr. And finally there is a [Conceptual
Writing](http://ubu.com/concept/index.html) wing which highlights contemporary
trends in poetry as well as its historical precedents.
How does it all work? Most importantly, UbuWeb functions on no money: all work
is done by volunteers. Our server space and bandwidth is donated by several
universities, who use UbuWeb as an object of study for ideas related to
radical distribution and gift economies on the web. In terms of content, each
section has an editor who brings to the site their area of expertise. Ubu is
constantly being updated but the mission is different from the flotsam and
jetsam of a blog; rather, we liken it to a library which is ever-expanding in
uncanny—and often uncategorizable—directions. Fifteen years into it, UbuWeb
hosts over 7,500 artists and several thousand works of art. You’ll never find
an advertisement, a logo, or a donation box. UbuWeb has always been and will
always be free and open to all.
The future is eminently scalable: as long as we have the bandwidth and server
space, there is no limit as to how big the site can grow. For the moment, we
have no competition, a fact we’re not happy about. We’re distressed that there
is only one UbuWeb: why aren’t there dozens like it? Looking at the art world,
the problem appears to be a combination of an adherence to an old economy (one
that is working very well with a booming market) and sense of trepidation,
particularly in academic circles, where work on the internet is often not
considered valid for academic credit. As long as the art world continues to
prize economies of scarcity over those based on plentitude, the change will be
a long time coming. But UbuWeb seeks to offer an alternative by invoking a
gift economy of plentitude with a strong emphasis on global education. We’re
on numerous syllabi, ranging from kindergarteners studying pattern poetry to
post graduates listening to hours of Jacques Lacan’s
[Séminaires](http://www.ubu.com/sound/lacan.html).
And yet . . . it could vanish any day. Beggars can’t be choosers and we gladly
take whatever is offered to us. We don’t run on the most stable of servers or
on the swiftest of machines; hacks and crashes eat into the archive on a
periodic basis; sometimes the site as a whole goes down for days; occasionally
the army of volunteers dwindles to a team of one. But that’s the beauty of it:
UbuWeb is vociferously anti-institutional, eminently fluid, refusing to bow to
demands other than what we happen to be moved by at a specific moment,
allowing us flexibility and the ability to continually surprise our audience .
. . and even ourselves.
Originally Published: April 26th, 2011
Kenneth Goldsmith's writing has been called some of the most "exhaustive and
beautiful collage work yet produced in poetry" by _Publishers Weekly._
Goldsmith is the author of eight books of poetry, founding editor of the
online archive UbuWeb (http://ubu.com), and the editor _I 'll Be Your Mirror:
The Selected Andy Warhol..._