Abstract
A dominant expectation that consumable artworks should be permanent objects and alienable from their artists puts dematerialised practices at a disadvantage in claiming their socio-economic values. Addressing this tension, my research analyses the role of contemporary artist publishing as an alternative cultural strategy for representing dematerialised art practices via circulatable and valorised forms of books. Through interviews with artists, publishers, retailers, and collectors around the globe who take part in the valuation ecology of artists’ books, this research charts today’s topography of the medium’s production, distribution, and consumption. In parallel to the qualitative analysis, a practice-based experiment of self-publishing verifies the findings from the interviews and solidifies the idea of artist publishing as a cultural strategy. The preliminary findings of this research are: 1) Artists’ books are a medium that could be chosen by any artist as a cultural strategy, transcending medium specificities; 2) Artists’ books, especially those that are self-published, allow self-representation and self-institutionalisation of artists by giving them aggressive credit in both stages of production and circulation; 3) Artists’ books question the traditional hierarchy of curatorial practices, which often considers publication as subsidiary to the primary mode of exhibition; 4) Artists’ books, as ‘artefacts’ of social and communal practices, propose a particular form of artistic output that evidences the immaterial process and production. These findings point to a particular direction of shift in the paradigm of art consumption, which translates the values of art practices into constructed socio-economic agents to replace the traditional sense of commodifying art.
Presenters
Hyunjoo ChoStudent, Research Degree (PhD), Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
Publishing, Artists’ Books, Cultural Strategy, Dematerialised Art, Re-Materialisation, Value Translation
