Critical Publishing
IDCE, 2025 — PART II
PART 01 History and Theory of Publishing
PART 02 Publishing Manifestos
PART 03 Emerging Publication Infrastructures
PART 04 Social Publishing Practices
PART 05 Exploring new modes of dissemination
Publishing
a mediation process that enables content to exist and be accessible. We can distinguish three stages in this process, which correspond to three different functions of publishing: a function of choice and production , a function of legitimization and a function of distribution .
– Marcello Vitali-Rosati & Benoît Epron, 2018
→ to decide what content deserves to be made accessible to the public
→ to confer symbolic power on content
→ to make content visible while addressing it to a particular audience
Publishing Ecosystem
Publishing should be understood as the inquiry and participation into the technological frameworks , political context and cultural processes through which things are made public.
– Aymeric Mansoux
Technological Frameworks
!Mediengruppe Bitnik
– 2017
Political context
Ruined by Design, Mike Monteiro
– 2019
Cultural Processes
#artselfie, Douglas Coupland
– 2014
Publishing Ecosystem
Publishing should be understood as the inquiry and participation into the technological frameworks, political context and cultural processes through which things are made public.
Public
Public life
Public sphere
Public interest
Public goods
Public domain
Public conduct
Public space
...
Public sphere
space for communication and mediation between
the state and civil society
Public domain
area of control of property and the exercise of
state authority (as opposed to the market)
Public life
as opposed to private life, unfolds in places open to sociability, meetings and gatherings
Public goods
raise a problem for neoclassical economists insofar as their benefits are collective and indivisible
Public space
is accessible to anyone, to circulate, to be seen
or to express oneself without restrictions
Book history
Book history could be called the social and cultural history of communication by print. [...] it includes all aspects of the history of production, publication and distribution, from the stage of authorship on through to the impact of books on readers and, ultimately, on society.
– Darnton, 1982
Extending Horizons
The survival phase shows how context affects texts, and how they circulate through different embodiments, a notion useful to look at the circulation of texts in the digital environment, where PDFs, inscriptions on retail platforms, reviews, unofficial translations, fragments, and different formats coexist.
– Silvio Lorusso, 2016
Editorialization
is the set of dynamics that produce and structure digital space. These dynamics can be understood as the interactions of individual and collective actions within a particular digital environment.
– Marcello Vitali-Rosati, 2018.
Editorialization
technical devices (networks, servers, platforms, CMS, search engine algorithms), structures (hypertext, multimedia, metadata), and practices (annotation, comments, recommendations via social networks) that produces, organizes, and enables the circulation of content on the web.
– Marcello Vitali-Rosati, 2018.
Editorialization
the process of producing and diffusing content in a digital environment. We could say that, in this sense, editorialization is what publishing becomes under the influence of digital technologies.
– Marcello Vitali-Rosati, 2018.
Michael Mandiberg, Printing Wikipedia
– 2009-...
James Bridle, The Iraq War: A History of Wikipedia Changelogs
– 2010
Martin Wecke, C.O.P.Y
– 2013
Cory Arcangel, Working On My Novel
– 2014
Dear Lulu, James Goggin + students
– 2008
Editorial workflow
It refers to the series of steps and processes involved in the creation, production, and distribution of a publication, from the initial conception to the final release.