Week 6: Publication as Practice, Site Re-Thinking, and Summerhall

Publication as Practice

Photo of Chiara Figone, Paolo Caffoni, “Notes Toward a Publishing Practice” in Pichler, Michalis, ed. Publishing Manifestos : An International Anthology from Artists and Writers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2023, pp. 310.

Intersecting with this week’s lecture theme, a key focus of mine is to flesh out the publication as a curated object to temporally extend and conceptually expand upon the physical project. An initial concept is to publish conversations held between the artists in small zines that are highly distributable and to employ a guerrilla distribution strategy of dispersion around the city, alongside freely accessed digital pdf’s.

Photo of Lefebvre, Antoine. “Portrait of the Artist as a Publisher” in Bajohr, Hannes. Publishing as Artistic Practice. Second edition. Edited by Annette Gilbert. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017, pp. 59.

Collage of Pichler, Michalis, ed. Publishing Manifestos : An International Anthology from Artists and Writers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2023, pp. 61-62.

Cover of Gommes, Lynn, author Walking as Research Practice Conference, and Soapbox. “Walking as Research Practice : A Special Issue Resulting from the WARP Conference (September 2022) /.” Fourth edition. Edited by Lynn Gommes. Amsterdam: Roma Publications, 2025.

I am also inspired by how the ‘Walking as Research Practice’ publication widens the dissemination of a research conference through a publication that incorporates new material whilst functioning as an art object.

Further Site Research

Dalmeny Street Park has hosted guerrilla Go Skateboarding Day events over the past few years, some of which resulted in negative community feedback and locals reaching out to the council, forcing a temporary removal of the skate ramps. I discovered a community Facebook group I could coordinate with, but these responses do not set a positive precedent for the project.

As an alternative, Out of the Blue Drill Hall seems like a space well suited for the project — located a mere half block down the street, it maintains a more casual and approachable atmosphere than a traditional white cube space, due to the cafe and various studios on site. The space is also very affordable (375/week), which could allow the exhibition a longer duration whilst also still hosting performances and programming. Given the proximity, these events could still exist in Dalmeny to expand the project out-of-doors in a less-invasive and lower-risk manner.

Collage of personal photos, Jí Jū Collective analyzing & installing mock-hang in Summerhall

Jí Jū in Summerhall

This week, the collective all brought printed photos of artworks and we installed a mock exhibition, a fun exercise to grapple with issues of how to curate an exhibition of incredibly diverse works while considering spatial dynamics at play and how to “hold the space.”

We discussed a possible curatorial project where we all bring non-art objects that remind us of home, curating these objects in what is our adopted ‘shell’ — Summerhall, which could be followed by a zine in which photographs of these objects function as a portrait of our collective, the publication becoming the next iteration of our occupied ‘shell.’

References

Lefebvre, Antoine. “Portrait of the Artist as a Publisher” in Bajohr, Hannes. Publishing as Artistic Practice. Second edition. Edited by Annette Gilbert. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017, pp. 52-61.

Pichler, Michalis, ed. Publishing Manifestos : An International Anthology from Artists and Writers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2023.

Gommes, Lynn, author Walking as Research Practice Conference, and Soapbox. “Walking as Research Practice : A Special Issue Resulting from the WARP Conference (September 2022) /.” Fourth edition. Edited by Lynn Gommes. Amsterdam: Roma Publications, 2025.