Publishing as Process : An exhibition of artists’ publishing by Banner Repeater

About

Preview: Thursday 8 September 5.30 – 7.30pm

Curator’s Talk: Thursday 8 September 4.30 – 5.30pm

An exhibition of Artists’ books and prints from the experimental art space Banner Repeater,including those recently acquired for abcD DJCAD’s artists’ book collection, Dundee. The works exhibited are drawn from Banner Repeater’s Archive of Artists’ Publishing, the imprints: Banner Repeater paperbacks and the UN-PUBLISH series, and co-presented alongside selected books from the abcD collection.

Sited significantly on a working train station platform in Hackney, Banner Repeater is an experimental project space and reading room with an onsite public Archive dedicated to Artists Publishing and soon to be launched Digital Archive of Artists publishing: BookBlast.  It has an ongoing arts programme of newly commissioned works with exhibitions, lectures, and performances, and publication launches. Driven by it’s location, Banner Repeater is dedicated to developing critical art in the natural interstice the platform and incidental footfall of over 4,000 passengers a day provides. Integral to its operation is the distribution of artists publishing straight into a main artery of the city of London. 

Banner Repeater developed from a sense of location that includes footfall and the inter-related networks/structures that it sits within through a diagrammatic reading of the project as a site of affective experimentation. As a site rich in a historical sense it provides an opportunity to reflect on more recent technologies in terms of what might blur the lines between publishing and broadcasting, via social media and other networked connectivities, and an evolving subjectivity that emerges through market relations.  As such, an emphasis on performative and processual articulations has developed, that come of an expanded idea of publishing as a means to consider what might amount to ‘criticality’ within our accelerating technicity.   

The Curator’s Talk accompanying the exhibition on Thursday 8 September will focus on ideas of ‘Publishing as Process’, and will pick up on several publications developed with artists during exhibitions.  She will also touch upon the recent publication of her 'writing' Chapter 4 of the French financier Elie Ayache’s influential book The Blank Swan: The End of Probability, and how this might differ from previous ideas of copying and appropriation, to repeat the contingency of the text.

Banner Repeater publications under discussion include: the UN-PUBLISH series with contributions from: Yuri Pattison, Nina Power, Arcadia_Missa, orbits.com, El Impublicado (The Unpublisher) with Mexican writers/artists: Nadia Cortes, Miguel Trancozo, and Isaac Olvera, The Outage by Erica Scourti, the collective writing projectOn Demand, and Ami Clarke: Author of the Blank Swan.

Curator’s Biography

Ami Clarke is an artist whose practice explores the limits of contemporary art within a differential economy as an increasingly general condition. Recent public events include a live performance at the ICA London in December 2015 and a discussion with Elie Ayache, in the Technology Now series at the ICA in July 2016. Clarke is also founder of Banner Repeater. She has recently exhibited/curated works at Wysing Arts Centre, ICA, Museo Del Chopo - Mexico City, Hayward Gallery, collaborated with Cuss Group SA at Ithuba Gallery (British Council connect ZA), David Roberts Arts Foundation, Camden Arts Centre and The Container, Japan.  She continues to commission new artists/writers works through Banner Repeater, and several publishing imprints: Banner Repeater paperbacks, and the UN-PUBLISH series.  She teaches across the UK with a focus on Publishing, Distribution and Dissemination: post-digital art production and publishing.