To whom it may affect
What does collectivity mean? What does collectivity do?
Which is the meaning to be found in collective approaches to publishing practices?
What are the different (mis)understandings of “acting collectively”, or “publishing collectively”? What are the forms into which collectiveness can transform?
Is there a collective understanding of collectivity?
Where does collectivity start, and where does it end? Does it ever start? Does it ever end?
Who does it include, and who does it exclude?
Does collectivity have an inside? Does it have an outside? Is publishing a border? A landmark? A cliff?
How is an audience positioned? How does an audience adopt a position?
What is an invitation? What is a host? What is collective responsibility?
How do we practice collective agency?
Where do we learn to act collectively? How do we train to act collectively?
The aim of this publication, rather than drafting answers, is to invite whomever these questions may affect to think along and take a position towards unresolved issues lingering above the un-demarcated field where collectives care to publish.
What follows is a corpus of four letters respectively addressed to Jeanne van Heeswijk, Erica Gargaglione, Carolina Castro and Chaiyoung Kim (Chae)—but also, to all of them at once and, ultimately, "to whom it may affect".
Each addressee is concerned with collective approaches whether their practice comprises rehearsing collectiveness, inspecting and documenting mechanics of self-organised cultural organisations, actually co-organising activities within a cultural organisation or more particularly questioning the effect of intimacy on publishing practices through experiments. At last, I would like to acknowledge all addressees for having played a consented or incidental role in the process and the publication of this epistolary chronicle.
Departing from a local issue—itself stemming from the context-specific process of a collective publication—these letters intend to give an account of recurring conflicts relating to collective processes.
The publishing of private missives both represents an invitation and a record of the relations involved in a process that is challenging to document or that may be overridden by its design. These series of epistles are punctuated with a collection of methods to practice collectiveness in publishing contexts. In turn, the suggested methods may be enacted and adapted to any collectivity.