Freedom of the Presses: Artists’ Books in the 21st Century
Freedom of the Presses: Artists’ Books in the 21st Century
Dimensions
9 × 6 in
Pages
220
Publisher
Booklyn, Inc.
$ 25.00
1 in stock
View Collectors
Amherst College
Brown University
Bucknell University
Carnegie Mellon University
Chelsea College of Arts
Claremont Colleges Library
Columbia University
Cornell University
DePaul University
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Duke University
Emory University
Getty Research Institute
Harvard University
Lafayette College
Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET)
National Gallery of Art Library
New York University (NYU)
Oberlin College
Pennsylvania State University Libraries
Pratt Institute
Queens College
San Diego State University (SDSU)
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Smithsonian Libraries
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
Temple University
The British Library
The New York Public Library (NYPL)
The University of Iowa (UI)
Tufts University
Tulane University
University of Arizona Library
University of California, Irvine (UCI)
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
University of Colorado at Boulder
University of Connecticut (UCONN)
University of Delaware Library
University of Florida
University of Puget Sound
University of Southern California (USC)
Wesleyan University
Yale University
Freedom of the Presses is at once a textbook and a toolbox for using artists’ books and creative publications to further community engagement and social justice projects.
Far from being a staid survey of an art historical practice, Freedom of the Presses intervenes in an ongoing discussion about art and activism in the present day by considering the place of the art book in the 21st century. The publisher, Booklyn, has been involved in this conversation since 1999 when a group of six artists decided to band together to promote contemporary artists’ books and publications. Booklyn’s focus has always been voracious, encompassing street art, punk, and activist culture, alongside more conventional artists’ books.
This restless energy is present in Freedom of the Presses which brings together a mix of humorous, intimate, and scholarly writing in order to expand how we think about the concept, content, design, and distribution of artists’ and activists’ publications today. Aimed at a global community of librarians, publishers, and readers, it offers models of how to reimagine contemporary artists’ bookmaking as a socially engaged political practice.
With essays by Kurt Allerslev, Tia Blassingame, Sarah Kirk Hanley, FLY-O, Karen Eliot, Richard J. Lee, Florencia San Martín, Ganzeer, Suzy Taraba, Stephen Dupont, Bridget Elmer, Janelle Rebel, Marshall Weber, Anton Wurth, Xu Bing, Deborah Ultan and Aaron Sinift, Freedom of the Presses enacts the dialogue it calls for, inviting artists and activists to weigh in on the place of artists’ books in the most pressing social, political, and cultural issues of our time.