Why does publishing matter? What is its impact, and how? For centuries, books have been a platform for the sharing of knowledge and ideas across time and space.
Sometimes they carry opinions that reproduce the status quo, but sometimes they unmask injustices present and past, or carry ideas that allow us to think radically differently about the world around us. Today, publishing across platforms of all types, including but not limited to printed matter, remains a vital force in fostering a diversity of worldviews.
This symposium looks at publishing as a critical practice through historical and contemporary lenses and a range of disciplinary viewpoints.
Presented by RMIT School of Design and National Gallery of Victoria.
Auslan interpreting is available upon request, please use contact link below. Requests must be sent at least 10 days prior to event.
Ela Egidy
Ela Egidy is a typographer, designer and researcher. She works as a Lecturer in Design at the University of Melbourne. Her research emphasises critical perspectives to study typography in its varied forms.
Katie Kerr
Katie Kerr is a graphic designer and publisher based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Her practice revolves around design research and bookmaking, particularly in the form of experimental paperbacks. With Bristol-based photographer Alice Connew, she runs GLORIA Books—an imprint with a multidisciplinary approach to publishing. GLORIA’s publications have been called the “most thoughtfully designed and elegantly produced art and photography books in Aotearoa” (Metro, 2021) and “mind-opening publishing at its best” (Art New Zealand, 2021). Katie holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Canterbury and was previously a lecturer at Auckland University of Technology. She also has a hand in art book distributor Expensive Hobby.
Mirelle van Tulder
Mirelle van Tulder is the founder of Roots to Fruits. She is an artist, designer, and research associate at the Research Center for Material Culture (National Museum of World Cultures, Amsterdam). Mirelle has the ability to dig deep into archives, intuitively grasping the political and social dimension of these historical artifacts. She immediately translates this archival knowledge into a bold and urgent graphic language – publishing zines and newspapers, playfully pushing the archives into the streets (and vice versa). With cultural heritage at the center of her projects, she creates poetic interventions that confront the violent histories of European museums, its multiplicity in postcolonial identity, and the ongoing discourse about displacement, and belonging. Mirelle has been working as an image researcher for MacGuffin Magazine since 2019 (The Desk, The Rug, The Bottle, The Chain). She is currently a participant at Werkplaats Typografie (MA in Fine Art and Design).
Alessandro Ludovico
Alessandro Ludovico is a researcher, artist and chief editor of Neural magazine since 1993. He received his Ph.D. degree in English and Media from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK. He is Associate Professor at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. He has published and edited several books, and has lectured worldwide. He also served as an advisor for the Documenta 12’s Magazine Project. He is one of the authors of the award-winning Hacking Monopolism trilogy of artworks (Google Will Eat Itself, Amazon Noir, Face to Facebook).