Publishing and Place: Situated Knowledges in Art and Academia | 15 June 2021 | Centre for Postdigital Cultures Annual Conference

Publishing and Place: Situated Knowledges in Art and Academia; part of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures Annual Conference

Janneke Adema, Nathan O’Donnell

"Many digital publishing projects and initiatives (even those with print outcomes) now take place predominantly online via (open) digital infrastructures and internationally distributed networks of scholars, writers, editors, designers, printers, and publishers. Punctum books, a scholar-led press with editors based on several continents, has gone so far as to sign their ‘place of publication’ in their books with ‘Earth, Milky Way’ to reflect this state of being. Yet publishing is of course very much situated, through its modes of production (from printing plants to warehouses) as well as through the networks of human and non-human relationalities that enable the publishing process. The seemingly global and digital publishing ecosystem is held up by geopolitical power structures leading to structural inequalities and exclusions, especially for those from the Global South. In contrast to our so-perceived ‘global’ knowledge systems and publishing infrastructures, more situated publishing and knowledge projects often respond directly to critical local or regional issues through a close engagement with the places to which they are connected.   This panel focuses on how situated forms of publishing have and continue to play an important role in our post-digital publishing endeavours. Focusing on publications and publishing processes that foreground or interrogate their own entanglement within particular situations, relations, conditions, and materials, this panel will explore some of the political dimensions and collective potentialities of certain forms of post-digital publishing. In this way, through talks, discussion, and reflection, focusing on both historical and contemporary publishing, the panel aims to reaffirm the importance of place in publishing. ..."