„Terrain Vague“ – ein Gespräch zwischen Barbara Buchmaier und Miriam Jung über das Fotografieren und Publizieren

Stand Miriam Jung Friends with Books 2019

Barbara Buchmaier: Liebe Miriam, ich kenne Deine Fotografien vor allem aus Deinen Publikationen, wie Du sie seit einigen Jahren regelmäßig auf Berliner Kunstbuchmessen zeigst. Was war für Dich generell das entscheidende Moment oder der Auslöser, um selbst zu publizieren, um eigene Fotografien in Heft- bzw. Buchform zu zeigen? Gab es bestimmte Vorbilder oder eine bestimmte Beobachtung, die Dich dazu inspiriert hat – 2012 hast Du ja damit angefangen. 

Miriam Jung: Nachdem ich die Kamera einige Jahre verbannt hatte, begann ich 2010 wieder zu fotografieren und habe erst mal mit Inhalten und Formaten experimentiert. Ich hatte angefangen, mit männlichen Modellen zu arbeiten und ging auch in die Dunkelkammer, aber konnte mir nicht vorstellen, die Abzüge in einer Ausstellung zu präsentieren – also mit der Wand als Ausstellungsfläche zu arbeiten. So kam ich ohne konkrete  Vorbilder zum Buchformat, das mir die Möglichkeit gab, die Intimität des Ateliers in den Buchraum zu übertragen.

BB: Wie bezeichnest Du Deine Publikationen? „Künstlerbücher“ (artists’ books)? Oder benutzt Du auch andere Wörter dafür?

MJ: Ich benutze all diese Wörter: Publikation, artist’s book, Künstlerbuch, Edition. Meistens sage ich jetzt einfach nur Buch oder „meine Arbeit“. Einzig das Wort „Katalog“ benutze ich nicht, denn darum handelt es sich eben ganz klar nicht.

BB: In welcher Relation stehen die Fotografien, wie man sie in den Publikationen sieht, zu den physischen (Baryt-)Abzügen, die es ja oftmals auch davon gibt?

MJ: Die Barytabzüge interessieren mich erst mal als Einzelbild. Sie bieten einen Bildraum mit tiefen Schwärzen und Gradationen der Körnung, der beim Druck (insbesondere, wenn man auf die Kosten achten muss) verloren gehen kann. Dagegen kann ich im Buchformat das große illusionistische Potenzial des Fotos für eine ganz neue Erzählung nutzen, was mir extrem viel Spaß macht!

BB: Das Buch als alternative Form der Ausstellung – Exposition – funktioniert ja unter ganz anderen Bedingungen als ein dreidimensionaler Ausstellungsraum. Das Buch-Machen ist ein ganz anderer Modus des (Sich-selbst-)Präsentierens und -Kuratierens, des Bereitstellens der Bilder für die Betrachter/innen. Was interessiert Dich daran?

MJ: Alle Prozesse der Produktion, Publikation, Distribution und Vermarktung eines Buches übernehme ich erst mal selbst. Diese Arbeitsbedingungen sind prekär, aber sie bieten ein hohes Maß an Autonomie und künstlerischer Freiheit. Alle Formate, die ich verbinde (Buch, Fotografie und Druck), sind mit Konventionen belegt, die ich berücksichtigen oder erweitern kann. Vieles dreht sich bei mir um „Raum“, den ich mir eröffne, nehme oder zur Verfügung stelle. Das Buch ist insofern meine Ausstellung (und nicht der Katalog zur Ausstellung), die ich den Betrachter/innen mit nach Hause geben kann.

BB: Zu Deiner Vorgehensweise: Entstehen Deine Ideen für Fotografien und diese selbst denn immer schon für eine bestimmtes imaginiertes Buch- oder Ausstellungsformat – oder erst mal davon unabhängig?

MJ: Am Anfang stehen das Fotografieren mit der Kamera (analoge Spiegelreflex oder Handy) und die Suche nach einem Bild. Dieses Bild übernehme ich in der Regel vollständig und arbeite kaum mit Bildausschnitten. Das Bild entsteht erst mal als Einzelbild, an dem mich etwas interessiert, das zum Zeitpunkt der Aufnahme vielleicht etwas ganz anderes ist als später, wenn ich es auswähle und für ein Buch oder einen Papierabzug verwende.

BB: Dein fotografischer Ansatz scheint mir immer auch eine Art der (im Ansatz vielleicht romantischen oder auch ethnografischen) „Selbsterkundung“ zu beinhalten. Als würdest Du dir Fragen stellen wie: Wie weit kann ich gehen, wer bin ich, wenn ich selbst die Kamera in der Hand habe? Was traue ich mich, wie weit lassen andere das zu? Dies frage ich vor allem in Hinsicht auf Deine Publikationen wie Looking At (2016), in denen Du SW-Fotografien von nackten Männern zeigst ... Wie überhaupt kam die Annäherung an das andere Geschlecht zustande? Und wie hast Du sie umgesetzt, auch technisch ...? 

Cover von Looking At (2016)

MJ: Ich hatte angefangen, mich für männlichen Akt zu interessieren – was er kulturell repräsentiert und vor allem, wie er auf mich wirkt – und hatte dabei verstärkt das Gefühl, dass diese Darstellungen nicht für mich, für mein Empfinden oder meinen Blick geschaffen wurden. Innerhalb der Kunstgeschichte ist dabei auffällig, wie sehr der Penis tabuisiert und vom Phallus ersetzt wurde. Außerhalb der Kunst, in den Bildwelten von Kino, Pop, Werbung und auch in schwul kontextualisierten Magazinen hatte ich denselben Eindruck gewonnen. Ich bin also mit einem großen Fragezeichen ins Atelier gegangen: Wie entsteht ein Bild für mich, eines, das mich anspricht und meinem Blick entspricht?

Ich arbeite mit Männern zusammen, die sich im wahrsten Sinne sehr wohl in ihrer Haut fühlen und diese gerne zeigen. Ich schaffe im Atelier einen Raum für einen Dialog zwischen dem Modell und mir (keine Assistenten, natürliches Licht), bei dem sich das Modell nackt und üblicherweise tiefenentspannt meinem Blick zur Verfügung stellt und ich mich, bekleidet und hinter der Kamera, suchend vorantaste. Ich arbeite mit 50mm Festbrennweite, die nur einen geringen Schärfebereich bietet. Die Fotosession ist ein Gespräch, aber auch ein sehr physischer Akt. Nichts an dieser Konstellation erscheint mir bislang als „normal“ und ich bemerke meine eigenen Konditionierungen und Grenzen. Ich empfinde es als eine sehr machtvolle Position, „eines Menschen Bild zu nehmen“ und frage mich immer, wieweit ich gehen kann.

Innenseiten von Looking At (2016)

BB: Wie waren die Reaktionen auf diese Publikationen? Zum Beispiel, als Du sie an Deinem Tisch auf der Friends with Books gezeigt hast? Welche Fragen kamen da?

MJ: Fast alle Bemerkungen bezeugen eine große Intimität und Sensibilität der Fotos. Nicht selten kommt dann die Frage, ob ich mit den Modellen Sex habe oder woher oder ob ich sie näher kenne. Manche Männer äußern sich spöttisch, selbst Künstlerinnen und Künstler aus meinem Bekanntenkreis fragen auch schon mal, wie mein Partner das wohl so alles findet. Frauen freuen sich, dass die Fotos von einer Frau gemacht wurden, hin und wieder sind es Künstlerinnen, die selbst mit männlichen Modellen arbeiten.

BB: In Deiner 2019 auf der Friends with Books präsentierten Publikation sieht man wieder SW-Fotografien. Diesmal hast Du dich selbst als Spiegelung im Bildschirm fotografiert, der jeweils Standbilder von amerikanischen Kino-Produktionen wie American Gigolo (1980), American Psycho (2000) oder auch der TV-Serie Sense8 (2015–2018) zeigt. Oft verschwimmen dabei Teile Deines Körpers oder Deines Umraums mit dem des männlichen Protagonisten bzw. dem Filmset. Wie kam dieses Konzept zustande und was sagt Du den Betrachter/innen und dir selbst mit dem Titel the aesthetics of narcissism (2018), den Du von dem gleichnamigen Aufsatz der amerikanischen Kunsttheoretikerin Rosalind Krauss (veröffentlicht 1976 in der US-Zeitschrift October) übernimmst?

 

Innenseiten von the aesthetics of narcissism (2018)  

MJ: Wie meistens kamen auch hier verschiedene Einzelteile zu einem neuen Ganzen zusammen. Die Fotos gehören zur Reihe Man In My Mirror (2018), die ich auch schon als gerahmte Barytabzüge gezeigt habe. Den Titel von Rosalind Krauss habe ich mir humorvoll angeeignet. In ihrem Artikel kritisiert sie, sehr verkürzt dargestellt, Positionen wie beispielsweise die von Vito Acconci, die mit Video-Feedback arbeiten und eine Gleichzeitigkeit von Aufnahme (des Künstlers) und reproduziertem (Selbst-)Bild herstellen als geschichts-vergessen und narzisstisch, gefangen im Loop. Sie wirft ihnen vor, das neue Medium nicht wegweisend sondern althergebracht (ebenso narzisstisch wie Malerei) zu verwenden. Ich jedoch betrachte den Blick in den Spiegel, der in meinem Fall ein Computerbildschirm ist, als eine adäquate und zeitgemäße Befragung von Welt, und die Vieldeutigkeit, die in den Überlagerungen von Zeit- und Raumebenen entstehen, als großartigen visuellen Schatz. Das Buch, in dem auch ein Screenshot, Handyfotos und Fotos von Fotos aus der Dunkelkammer zu sehen sind, ist für mich daher auch ein „Selbstportrait als Fotokünstlerin“ – aber das ist nur eine Lesart von vielen.

BB: In Hommage à L’Interrogation (2015) hast Du Deinen Fotos zum ersten Mal direkt Text zugeordnet. Bis auf die Impressen und Deinen eigenen Text in Wanderlust (2014), der, wie die Fotos, im Kontext einer Kanada-Reise entstanden ist, sind Deine Publikationen ja sonst bisher immer reine „Bilderbücher“. Für Hommage à L’Interrogation hast Du eigene Handyfotos von gebrauchten, auf die Straße entsorgten Matratzen (und die oft daraus entstehenden Stillleben) aus dem Berliner Stadtraum mit einer abgewandelten Textarbeit von Lea Lublin (1929–1999) aus dem Jahr 1978 kombiniert. Anders als Lublin, die mit 25 Fragen eine “L’interrogation de la femme” betreibt, hinterfragst Du den Mann. Wie kam es dazu? Und wie gehst Du bei der grafischen Umsetzung vor?

Innenseiten von Hommage à L'Interrrogation (2015)

MJ: Lea Lublin hat damals mit allen möglichen „Befragungen“ gearbeitet und ich fand ihr Stilmittel, sehr komplexe Themen mit Ja-oder-Nein-Fragen zu untersuchen, bestechend gut und zeitlos aktuell. Es ist eine Falle, in die man bereitwillig hineintappt, um dann zu bemerken, welcher Sprengstoff in der Frage steckt: Ist der Mann ein soziales Opfer? Ja! Nein! Ich wollte das Layout einer Zeitungsbeilage wie dem SZ Magazin aufgreifen und die Verbindung zwischen Überschriften und Fotos übernehmen, die beim Blättern sofort hergestellt wird. So wird die Matratze im Bild unwillkürlich zum „Mann“ und spielt mit den erwartbaren Assoziationen. Die Auswahl der Schrifttype fand ich sehr schwierig, weil in ihr die ganze lange Geschichte des (Zeitungs-)Drucks mitschwingt. Während ich üblicherweise allein an der Gestaltung arbeite, war es hier die Grafikdesignerin Lisa Pommerencke, die Layout und Schrift übernommen hat.

BB: In Deinem aktuellen Projekt, das Du mir als Entwurf am Rechner gezeigt hast, sind SW-Fotografien verschneiter Straßen und Stadtlandschaften zu sehen, die Du mit einem Zeitungstext über ein Verbrechen und die Suche nach dem oder der Täter/in verknüpfen willst ...?

MJ: Der Arbeitstitel des Buches lautet offene Enden. Der reißerisch geschriebene Text erzählt von einer jungen Frau, die wortlos ihre Familie und ihr Umfeld verlässt und nach Jahrzehnten durch einen Zufall wiederentdeckt wird. Den Text kombiniere ich mit Fotos (Doppelbelichtungen, teilweise Selbstportraits), fotografiert in einer Zeit, in der ich im selben Alter war und in derselben Region in Deutschland gelebt habe wie die beschriebene Person.

BB: Du erwähntest die französische Autorin Annie Ernaux (* 1940), die sich als „Ethnologin ihrer selbst“ bezeichnet und in den letzten Jahren unter anderem mit Die Jahre (2017; franz. Original: Les années, 2008) als „autofiktive Autorin“ endlich auch in Deutschland sehr viel Aufmerksamkeit bekommen hat. Auf welcher Ebene fühlst Du dich ihr verbunden?

MJ: In Die Jahre erstellt Ernaux Bildbeschreibungen von Fotografien, auf denen sie selbst abgebildet ist, und setzt sich von einem „Ich heute“ ins Verhältnis zu dem abgebildeten „Ich damals“. Die Fotos dazu erscheinen aber nicht als „Beleg“ im Buch und es ist unklar, ob es sie tatsächlich gibt. In offene Enden zeige ich Fotos, die den Bericht über eine wahre Begebenheit untermauern und verstärken. Es wird jedoch wohl nie ganz geklärt werden, was ich mit der Sache zu tun habe ... Als „autofiktive Autorin“ würde ich mich auch selbst bezeichnen.

BB: Soweit ich verstanden habe, soll diese Publikation aufwendiger gestaltet werden als die bisherigen ... Wie planst Du, dies umzusetzen? Hast Du eventuell vor, an Verlage heranzutreten?

MJ: Ich denke seit diesem Jahr erstmals darüber nach, mit einem Verlag zusammenzuarbeiten und bin bei der Friends with Books mit einigen Verleger/innen ins Gespräch gekommen, deren Programm ich für mich passend finde. Gleich welcher Verlag, würde dies allerdings nur mit einer Förderung gehen, die dann eine umfangreichere Produktion, Auflage und ein neues Distributionssystem ermöglicht. Ich möchte mich konkreter umschauen, wenn ich in Kürze den ersten Dummy fertig habe!

BB: Vielen Dank für unser Gespräch. Ich bin gespannt, in welches „Terrain Vague“ Du mit Deiner Arbeit noch vordringen wirst. Viel Erfolg auch bei der Zusammenarbeit mit einem Art-Book-Verlag.

Berlin, 10.01.2020

(Verschriftlichung eines Gesprächs aus dem November 2019)

Barbara Buchmaier, * 1975, ist Kunstkritikerin und Autorin und lebt in Berlin.

Miriam Jung, * 1976, ist Künstlerin und lebt in Berlin.

Alle Fotos: © Miriam Jung

An interview with Elisabeth Tonnard

Artist Elisabeth Tonnard interviewed by art critic Agnieszka Gratza.

Agnieszka Gratza: Could you tell me about your background and how you came to work with the artist book format?

Elisabeth Tonnard: My background is mostly literary; I studied literary theory and comparative literature for my first degree in the Netherlands. A study of the classics of Western literature: not very experimental at all. There was no component in it on artist books or conceptual literature. After that, I started writing myself but only with great difficulty. You study the classics so much that at first you think, ‘There's so much out there already, what can I contribute?’ As time went on, spontaneously I began making some works that had a more visual component but they were literary and had to do with language. My first book is the reworking of a poem by T.S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. It's a series of poems I developed out of one strophe by applying Tipp-Ex, the correction fluid, to the existing text and seeing which meanings would come out when you covered up some parts. I could turn the word ‘what’ into ‘hat’ by making the letter w white, for example.

  Let us go then, you and I. Acquoy, 2003. Image courtesy Elisabeth Tonnard.

That work was made very quickly; I then spent two years trying to get it published in Holland. It did not fit any literary publishing house, nor any art publishing house. At the time I did not have much knowledge of artist books at all. I knew artists but not artists working with books. I come from a family of artists yet I've always kept away from art, focusing on literature instead. After commenting on my work, an uncle who was an artist suggested that I apply for a grant to publish this book myself. After two years of trying to publish it with a publisher, I got a grant and I was able to publish it myself. I worked with a printer and a binder but I designed it, determined the content and chose the paper.

  Let us go then, you and I. Acquoy, 2003. Image courtesy Elisabeth Tonnard.

AG: Thinking about your wider publishing practice, the books that you make are largely, if not exclusively, self-published in Leerden, your home town. How do you go about publishing them?

ET: They are published wherever I am living. I published some in Berlin and some in Rochester, New York when I lived there. It works differently from book to book. I am currently working on a book I printed myself and that I'm also binding myself, regrettably, I have to say, because it's really too much work. I have a type of inkjet printer that I like to work with. I never used any kind of letterpress or traditional printing press techniques. I mostly have books printed at printing houses and most of the time it's digital printing.

AG: Your catalogue of books lists over 40 items that appeared between 2003 and 2018. Some books are published in limited editions, others as open editions. What dictates whether they are one or the other?

ET: It's sometimes a matter of what I felt like at the time, I have to confess. It's also down to practical issues. I once made an edition where I thought I would make 30 books and I got stranded at 29. For technical reasons I wasn't able to make any more, so then it became an edition of 29. On another occasion, I bought a stack of paper at the paper factory and I could only make so many books out of that one stack. I like the idea of an open edition in the sense that it is then not limited though in a practical sense it may be. You can do it when you do a digital print run. You could make a hundred copies, for instance, and if they're sold out you order more. But the paper you used in the first instance or the printer may have changed, so it ends up being different to the original run. Over the years I've found that it's actually really inconvenient to keep a book available. You just want to go on to the next project when it's sold out and not have to think ‘How did we do that, again?’

AG: Although technically you're not a publishing house, it's very much a business that you manage yourself. You have a webshop and you process orders. Nine of your titles are listed as sold out. The books range in price from 0 euros for The Invisible Book which sold out instantly to 985 euros for the special edition of Song of Myself, which stands out because the other ones are much more reasonably priced. What is special about it?

ET: The special edition of that project I printed myself. It's also quite large, A3-sized, and it comes in a portfolio. It's a very limited edition of seven copies only. That all adds up to a higher price. It's also the last copy that's left now. The price was actually raised. The book version was printed by a printer as a cheap small paperback.

Song of Myself. Leerdam, 2015. Image courtesy Elisabeth Tonnard.

AG: Song of Myself was presented at Friends with Books in 2015. It was at once installed, as part of the group exhibition curated by Savannah Gorton, I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library, and presented on a book stand alongside other books you've published. For me, one of the appealing features of a number of your books is that they come in bound versions that can also be deployed as installations. Could you explain how that worked at Friends with Books?

ET: It was a special edition of the A3 sheets that was shown there. I should first say a little bit about the content of the book. It's called Song of Myself: American Renaissance and it's based on Facebook status updates. The title is a quote from a poem by Walt Whitman. I first found one by Edgar Allan Poe that read ‘Edgar Allan Poe likes his own link’. So I started collecting those updates by Edgar Allan Poe but then I also thought of other authors from the time when he lived, the American Renaissance: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne. I found it extraordinary to think of all those authors doing these very shallow things. Just imagine Emily Dickinson posting a photo of herself. But then what would they actually do if they lived now? The installation at Friends with Books, which took place at the Hamburger Bahnhof that year, was spread over a single wall. I really liked the fact that I could install those sheets of the special edition as a grid on the wall because where people post their updates on Facebook is also called ‘the wall’. So it made sense to show it like that.

Above and Below: Song of Myself (special edition). Leerdam, 2015. 

Installation view in the exhibition I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library,

Friends with Books: Art Book Fair Berlin at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2015. 

Images courtesy of Elisabeth Tonnard.   

AG: Your books strike me as both formally and materially inventive in so far as you experiment with format, typography, layout and even paper brand which all have a meaning you attempt to convey.

ET: I take this into consideration with every book. At the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, which is where I began to learn about artist books, I worked with an archive – the Joseph Selle collection of photographs – housed in the same building. I made a book out of that collection called Two of Us. It combined digitized materials from the archive in which I saw a pattern of doubles walking next to or behind each other in the street with a poem by Baudelaire about seeing the same old man several times over in the street and how uncanny that was. The double is a literary motif, that of the doppelgänger. Going back to the materiality of the book, Two of Us was designed as a novel, in other words not published or printed on shiny coated paper that you see in an ordinary photo book, which would have been great for showing the images. But I wanted the whole book to have a literary feel, to look like a novel on the outside, with the kind of paper that evoked a novel. It also has text on the same pages as the photographs.

Two of Us. Rochester, NY, 2007. Image courtesy Elisabeth Tonnard.

AG: A collection of your poetry in Dutch recently came out published by het balanseer in Ghent, not self-published in other words. Is that the direction you're heading in or are you still excited by self-publishing?

ET: I will definitely keep self-publishing but I see the poetry work that was published by that publisher as a separate thing. Within the field of literature, at least in the Netherlands, it's definitely not regarded very highly to self-publish. That means nobody wanted to publish your poetry. It's best as a writer to publish through the regular channels and in literary magazines. But for artist books that's different; I find that the best work is self-published. Of course it's really developed now, much more than when I first started. There are a lot of artist book fairs now where you can see work. That wasn't so much the case when I started self-publishing.

AG: Joachim Schmid's name crops up in some of your book projects, like The Invisible Book, The Lovers and Joachim Schmid Works, but have you ever worked together or collaborated on a project?

ET: We haven't been able to do that yet. We've responded to each others' works. For instance, he made E-Book, based on a letter he wrote to me. He left only the e letter and everything else he made white, referencing my procedure with Tipp-Ex. He then photographed es in the cities we visited together. And then I published Joachim Schmid Works, showing photographs of him working on that E-Book. He's known for never taking any photographs, so it was a little joke on my part to show that he's constantly taking photographs. But we haven't done an actual project together.

Joachim Schmid Works. Leerdam, 2016. Image by Elisabeth Tonnard.

Joachim Schmid Works. Leerdam, 2016. Image by Elisabeth Tonnard.

AG: Do you ever work collaboratively with people on your books?

ET: I don't think so actually, other than with poets who are already dead. (Laughs.)

AG: Why is that? A book project, at least in my experience of editing an artist book, can be a deeply collaborative experience, for better or for worse. Because of the nature of that particular project, I ended up working closely with all the contributors, the graphic designer, the printer, the binder. And suddenly the project felt out of my control.

ET: That's exactly what I try to avoid though I do collaborate with binders and printers. But I don't have them say how it should be done. I ask for their advice and sometimes they have good ideas but I try to keep it within my vision.

AG: Would you say that's one of the advantages of the artist book format? That you can go with your vision?

ET: Yes, absolutely. The advantages include speed, if you don't have to ask everybody what they think. I made some of my books really quickly, in one night, and sent it off to a printer. You can go as slow or as fast as you want, really. But the end result is a coherent piece and not some sort of Frankenstein's monster book. 

Indirections #1-8. Leerdam, 2018. Image courtesy of Elisabeth Tonnard.

Indirections #1, inside view. Leerdam, 2018. Image by Elisabeth Tonnard.

 

Marina Sorbello in conversation with Chiara Figone from Archive Books, Berlin

MARINA SORBELLO: Archive is many things: publishing house, exhibition space, design studio... Tell me: how did you start and how would you define your work?

CHIARA FIGONE: When Archive started, in 2009, we intended to launch a journal which would focus on artists using archives in their practices. Hence the name Archive Journal. Almost immediately, however, we realized that we were dealing with topics which would require the expansion of our publishing activity beyond the journal, and we started producing artists’ books as well as experimenting with other formats.

    Archive Kabinett in Dieffenbachstraße, 

    Berlin-Kreuzberg, 2009

We consider artists’ books as a space of autonomy for artists. We are particularly interested in artists taking up the role of editors in order to assemble contents relevant to their research. So, artists also play a vital role in shaping Archive, as they work with and on content often differently than authors or academics do, especially in the relationship between text and image.

In addition, we publish anthologies and readers on a broad range of topics which nevertheless still revolve around notions of archives, as well as around the practice of film-making. Video as a medium has long been a central preoccupation of ours, and this preoccupation has also had wide-ranging impact on the way we produce books. As a medium, video has a unique relationship with time which needs to be reflected upon and addressed in the process of publishing a book. This not only means that books dealing with video need to interact with the experience of time imparted by the work itself – be it by reflecting it, explicitly calling it to attention or contrasting it through the experience of time imparted by reading the book – but also to address how the production of video work as a process leads to a different relationship with the book. Often, we address the impossibility of integrating the work itself into the book by integrating a lot of the materials artists collect and produce during the research phase of their work, which then become integral parts of the book’s content, and adds another dimension to how the artwork itself is understood.

Shortly after we founded Archive, we opened our first location in Berlin, on Dieffenbachstrasse. There, Archive became a hybridized space, which served as a bookshop, but also as a library and a space for discussion and sharing, thus playing a very important role by allowing the creation of a network of relationships which have also influenced our editorial line. Quite a few of the books we have published were the result of relationships established through Archive Kabinett. The exhibition space is a more recent development, after moving to Müllerstrasse. A development which has allowed us to further explore the medium of exhibition and present contents across different formats. Archive defines itself through this methodology of working in parallel, organically engaging with the space of the book and the exhibition space.

Archive Müllerstraße, Berlin-Wedding 2017

MS: How do you choose the artists you work with? Do you accept proposals, or do you seek authors based on your own editorial research?

CF: We do both. In some cases, we have contacted artists whose work we consider would be an important addition to our editorial line, but it has also worked the other way around, with artists contacting us because they felt Archive would be able to engage with and present their work in a measured and reflective way. Overall, the most important thing for a publisher is to remain committed to an editorial line, to establish a clear perspective. We thus often seek content which we feel would contribute in broadening and clarifying that perspective. As a publishing house, we not only think of our titles as individual works but also as participating in a broader web of meaning. We choose to publish works not only based on quality, but also on how they will engage with other titles we have published, on whether or not the works will benefit from the conceptual frame Archive provides and, vice versa, whether the title itself will add a layer of nuance to the network of concepts Archive considers its editorial line.

MS: So if I understand correctly, the books you publish are co-edited by the artists and someone from the Archive team... by the way who is Archive, exactly?

CF: I always say “we” because Archive is an extremely fluid group. There are a few people, such as Paolo Caffoni and myself, who have been part of Archive from its inception, people that were based in Berlin only for some years and were instrumental in the making of Archive such as Nicola Guy, people that are with us since many years such as Lilia di Bella, Pia Bolognesi, Alima de Graaf and Annika Turkowski, but also people that started recently and are already making a difference such as Caroline Bourrit, Binta Diaw, Ines Juster, Fatou Kiné Diouf, and Gaia Martino. Broadly, Archive is a collective endeavour: at the moment there are nine of us working at Archive, but that number can fluctuate between two and ten at any given time. To function at its best, Archive would ideally need ten full-time people. This relative instability is partly a consequence of the absence of structural support, as lack of funding can mean we cannot afford having more people working on some projects. We are lucky in that people support us and participate in our activity on a voluntary basis. We wouldn’t be able to afford permanent positions such as Head of Publications or Editor in Chief for the journal.

While this is a situation which has, in a way, been imposed upon us, it must be acknowledged that it is a situation which we have exploited to our advantage: it means that we all participate in all the different facets of Archive, from shipment organization to editorial work, which encourages dialogue and collaboration, an ethos which has informed, and even defined, Archive.

Exhibitions Archive Müllerstraße

MS: You mentioned the issue with lack of structural funding. Let us talk about finances: how do you fund your many activities?

CF: Funding is very difficult, partly because publishing in the art field is a very specific niche which is nevertheless regulated by much broader funding systems and markets. This makes it quite difficult to produce independently – and, in fact, we do not think of or refer to Archive as an “independent” publishing house – because the production of our publications is so tightly conditioned by the broader cultural system, specifically to the public funding system and to private donations. We could say that we are independent from certain systems when we think about what we should publish but on a production level we have to take into acount forms of dependency… To answer your question, finding ways to fund our many activities is a constant exercise in imagination and flexibility: we apply for public funding, prizes and grants, run a design studio, teach at institutions abroad, etc. In practice, it is impossible for us to compartmentalize different projects and practices, so we fundraise for Archive as a whole in order to finance projects and books.  

MS: You successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign last summer.

CF: Yes. It was our first, and probably last, crowdfunding campaign. Despite thinking it is an interesting model, we don’t consider it a sustainable fundraising solution. In terms of financial sustainability and independence, there are a lot of expenses that we cannot crowd-fund. A great example is running costs: as a publishing house, we were unable to write applications to cover rent, electricity, telephone bills, etc. Every publication needed to have its own funding, which is devoted specifically to it by the funding body. Running an exhibition space certainly allowed us to apply for different types of funding.

Last year, for example, Archive was one of the recipients of the Berlin project spaces award, which takes into account running costs, which rarely happens. This 30.000 Euro grant gave us the opportunity to focus on the program and, crucially, allowed us to develop a sustainable ecology between our publications and our exhibitions.

Unfortunately, this is not a grant that one can receive every year, which means that this year we couldn’t count on receiving comparable funding. This can actually become quite detrimental to our activities, because it means some of our attention is diverted towards funding applications and deadlines which is a much more exhausting process than one would expect. It is a vicious cycle in a way, because we lack the funds to ask for funds properly and efficiently, that is, to hire someone who would be uniquely devoted to writing grant applications…

MS: Ideally, in your opinion, how should or could the funding of small-scale publishing houses work? Do you have a vision?

CF: Firstly, small-scale publishing houses deal with the same issues the entirety of the publishing field deals with: scarcity and precarity of bookshops partially due to new online businesses, the decreasing popularity of print media despite increases in number of books being published, the lack of financial margin to deal with high costs of printing and shipment… In the cycle life of any book, there are obstacles at every turn.

These problems are exacerbated in small-scale publishing houses such as Archive because we cannot work with larger distributors due to the fact that we produce books which not only belong to a very specific niche, but also produce them in relatively small quantities. Additionally, online platforms such as Amazon has proven not to be very effective for publishing houses of our size, and, most importantly, selling through them provokes dissonances because, from an ethical perspective, Amazon’s system is not one we wish to support.

Finally, there are other difficulties tied to the fact that Archive publishes art books. From a practical perspective, publishing art books involves costs that one simply does not have to deal with when it comes to plain anthologies and text-based books. Beyond that, there is a lack of understanding of what publishing in the field of contemporary art actually is. It is not a for-profit business. It cannot be. On this last point, there has been some positive developments, notably with Berlin establishing a new award for publishers based in the city.

We think there are ways in which this situation can improve, however. Bookshops still seem like the best platform for publishers like us, as they provide a context in which each publication’s meaning is enriched by its proximity with other publications. Bookshops also allow for relationships between public and publications to form in a way that cannot be replicated online; many bookshops are also functioning as cultural places, hosting events and readings and thereby helping the contents in finding readership.

Ideally, small-scale publishers would work more collaboratively and function like networks or cooperatives do: sharing costs, resources, know-how, applying jointly for funding. We could share storage space, support distributors and people who would deal with funding for all members of the network. This seems like it would be a positive development, but there is no way to know if it would really work like that, especially considering the publishing field seems inexorably competitive…

It could also be interesting to see more cooperation, or at least exchange, between the academic and art worlds. Academic publishing has managed to achieve a kind of sustainability that the “independent” art publishing context lacks, but art books tend to circulate more outside of the boundaries of their own sector in a way that academic publications do not. More interaction along these lines seems to me like it would be mutually beneficial.

Berlin, October 2018