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.
This text originates from the desire to dislodge a classical decision-making process present in my practice of graphic design: an individual application of the discipline where the content, separately produced, is “locked in place” before “design” can take place. I have progressively lost interest in being assigned the unwanted responsibility of making aesthetic and structural choices arbitrarily (or upon my subjectivity) at a post-production stage of the workflow.
More recently and through an increasing practice of design in contexts where publishing is a process achieved collectively, I attempted, in different ways, to shift the design process from a post-production to a pre-production stage. These experiments resulted in what I identified as an intuitive persistence to design “open-systems” in place of “solutions”. Practically, I found myself dialoguing with collectivity through the design of “malleable” structures that demanded to be responded to.
Reversing the process of design, however, did not seem sufficient to prevent the division between content and container (the design in which the content is poured). Instead, I imagine sharing a form of curatorial agency with the intention of producing collective outcomes where content and design are mutually beneficial in that they permeate each other in the course of the process.
The aims carried by the practice of graphic design appeared to be discordant with the values upon which the process of publishing collectively operates, especially in that designing is often a means for experimenting within the collective process rather than the collective's goal (exaggeratedly speaking, a “good design”).
Graphic design, in the un-demarcated field of "independent publishing", may alternatively be introduced as a tool to facilitate collective processes: I am curious about the impact of a design operation happening elsewhere than at the post-production stage.
Dear Jeanne,
Thank you for referring me to the work of Augusto Boal after we shortly spoke about role-plays. I am only starting to get acquainted with his oeuvre and look forward to diving deeper in it. Such an accurate reference actually made me curious about your own work. You mentioned having been trained to rather be "a listener" than someone "a speaker", which is something I definitely sensed in our conversation. I had to find out about your works differently, then! I visited your website and, as I wasn't yet familiar with the "not-yet", I first decided to read your contribution to "Slow Reader" titled "Preparing for the not-yet".
I bounced back to your website which required me an unusual involvement and a lengthy amount of time to understand its navigation. The works you produced are documented in such a way that the relations to others, contributors and contexts are made visible. Simultaneously, these relations are proposed as a route to the visitor. The literal function of "zooming-out" (signified by a "-" button) allows the viewer to place each work in perspective with one another. In fact, it does not only materialise the existing relations between the different "works", but also the relations linking the "works" to "people" and "places" involved in each production. In short, an ambitious attempt to track down all the relations involved. In turn, "zooming-in" (signified by a "+" button) allows us to land within a specific node (a specific work, participant, exhibition, etc.). The net(work) is perceptible at every level, even when diving in the most specific node, an "exit" or bifurcation is systematically proposed which is how I ended up exploring corners, entering backdoors and organically tracing my own way through this net.
Before I knew about your own practice, you notified me of wanting to hear more about the role-plays produced in the course of my practice.
I mentioned a past experience involving various personified kitchen tools and staged into a role-play intended to facilitate the decision-making process of a group of 12. Each character's description depicted an attitude which was also the condition of participation in the discussion.
Choosing kitchen tools, condiments, furniture and appliances was a conscious decision not to circumscribe the participants into stereotypical human "personality traits" (such as "shy", "leader", "sceptical", etc.) but instead, instruct a way of relating to others through language constraints (eg: "The Bread Knife will only express in negative sentences", "The whisk will only participate using interrogative sentences") or through exaggeration of the relations (eg: "The Tea Cup only has the chance to talk when the Olive Oil facilitates that for them by calling their name", "The Pepper Mill's only way to suggest an idea is by building up on what has been proposed by the Sea Salt").
In fact, I find the environment of the kitchen to be a great metaphor for a lot of situations. Having worked in a number of restaurants' kitchens, ran a bar for a short while, and very often hosted friends for dinner, I noticed a similarity in the workflow:
cooking/serving
publishing process/publication
backstage/stage
bummock/hummock (the submerged part of the iceberg and its emerging tip)
The previously mentioned role-play was part of a series of experiments tirelessly pushed by alternating members of our group (class) and originating from our need to self-organise in the process of publishing (which took place at least three times in the year).
Let's imagine that the dish—coming out of the kitchen to be served to guests—is a publication being launched. In the kitchen, we'll look at the dish from the perspective of the kitchen tools, condiments, furniture and appliances. Let's blur the human presence for a moment (facilitator? narrator?): Elements participate collaboratively in the elaboration of the dish. Each of them has its own capacity, and function, some can even achieve tasks they weren't designed for (eg: a fork can replace a whisk to beat an egg, although this replacement has its limits: the fork will hardly whip egg whites to meringue consistency, and an equalitarian role inversion is hard to imagine: the whisk will have difficulty to replace a fork to prick a potato.). In kitchen chemistry, some condiments will enhance certain unsuspected flavours: add a spoon of sugar to shallots while they fry, and their smell will instantly intensify. Sometimes there are missing condiments and limited appliances, but the imperativeness to eat persists, and the same dishes are achieved otherwise. Things can get messy too, in my kitchen/laboratory. Experiments and failures are a big part of the learning process. But is it learning to cook, really? Is it about "mastering" the dish? As you wrote in your text, "Preparing for the not-yet":
"All of this is about growing, but, again, not about 'growth' in the capitalist logic of accumulative continuity. It is very important to think about growing without necessarily having a point on the horizon. (...) How can we practice the collective without seeing that as aiming towards a fixed point in the future?"
To me, this experimental kitchen is about learning how to operate together, acknowledging each other's needs, capacities, desires, obstacles and finding ways to compose. The dish may just be an excuse, but also a way to test out the audience's reaction, and receiving feedbacks in the kitchen may also help us adjust (Perhaps the Sea Salt could leave space to the Vinegar to express its drizzling sharpness, the Oven could stabilise its temper, etc.)
The dish that was published is in fact not the end point, many meals, many dishes will follow. The same exact dish will be served another thousand times, with possibly variations in the process.
So, out of everything you might find in your fictional kitchen, using that space as a metaphor for publishing collectively, which tool, condiment, furniture or appliance would you choose to describe the way you relate to other roles involved in the collective process?
This letter, addressed to you and authored by my own hand, was written with the intention to be published and therefor the narrative in it also takes a potential audience into consideration.
Rotterdam, 2022
Piet Zwart Institute, XPUB2
The beginning of the second year of the master was punctuated with the so-called public moments. On several occasions, our class had a chance to organise public events in changing locations during which we would invite the audience to permeate our processes, exchange with us on unfinished thoughts, drafts, prototypes, questions... Although we were all concerned with our individual research, the small-scale events had everything of a “group show”. Therefore, the collective concern to unite the various contributions and provide a comprehensible experience to our guests quickly emerged. The first format suggested for the “public moment #3”—and adopted —was that of a zine to be launched and distributed during the event. Each of us was free to design an A3-sized spread capturing our research in its current state and which would all come together attached by a paper strap crediting our 11 names and a few lines summarising the origin of the publication’s content.
Dear Erica,
I am currently processing our shared history as "hosts", a reflection to which I felt the necessity to invite you in.
Both triggered by the position of “the host”, a classmate and I decided to form a pair and embody this role in the context of the coming event. The intention was to experiment with gestures that engage with the potential audience. Our expected contribution to this "public moment" was to suggest a common lens through which the public could access the various research. Finally, the challenge was to find a way to connect without obstructing.
Our hosting practice emerged from a common concern: the numbness of a network of relations in which we found ourselves involved through practising publishing collectively. In this context, the relations we cared to restore were the fostering links between us, our peers, the environment in which things were to become public as well as the subsequently forming audience. The latter being, at once, expected to receive and respond to what we were about to publish.
Throughout the past months, I have attempted to track down the origin of that illegitimate impression of loneliness experienced in publishing processes. Processes that were yet approached collectively. In fact, this loneliness did not only restrict to my own but extended to the witnessing of other isolated entities involved in these processes. The neglecting of the relations occurred amidst our collectivity as well as between our collectivity and its surrounding.
Occasionally and out of convenience, I admit having given up on looking for remedies to collective loneliness, gambling on the belief that collectivity would work like a membership: signing up and automatically benefiting from it.
I admit having sometimes failed to resist (by lacking of tools to resist) the pressure pushing me to solely focus on my individual performance. As a result, I have mistaken the notion of participation with the one of engagement. Although, I do not believe I was ever meant to resist this pressure in solitude.
To slip into this role together became a way to extend our concerns publicly while also tailoring our position towards the surrounding.
I remember us, a few hours before the first public moment, roaming in a dedicated space for collectivity like caged lions, shared between not knowing what to contribute with and searching for ways to engage with the rest of us, the space, the audience... This wasn't the last time we would feel disarmed by a misunderstood format of collectivity.
From sensing that publishing collectively wasn't about dividing a surface, a space or a timeline into 11 equal shares we came to acknowledge our lack of collective agency. Eventually, it is through a continuous practice and dialogue on the hosting matter that we became able to verbalise those concerns. As an outcome of a series of hosting experiments taking place in contexts where publishing is a collective process, we came to distinguish two degrees of "being collectively".
On one level, being part of a collectivity may prove to be advantageous for individuals looking to share, for example, a space, a rent, a curriculum, a workload. In this case, collectivity may operate a division producing an equalitarian outcome such as a sequence of individual works hosted by a common structure (a zine, a gallery, a radio show, etc.).
On another level, when a group of individual engage with each other and their surrounding, when individuals become aware of their own role, their position and how that affects and is affected by others amidst and beyond the collectivity they create, the collective agency begins to operate. Thus, such collaborative effort participates to creating something common, something equitable. This version of collectivity requires a high investment of time and care, a steadier training, a series of attempts. Producing collectively, in this latter version of collectivity, is a conscious practice of simultaneously positioning the self and acknowledging others.