The backbone of this week of presentations, panels and meetings will be made up of different methodologies, meta-languages and tools shaping the publishing process, which in its turn - as a resource - is becoming increasingly more collective and shared. The socio-politics of publishing affect the future distribution of information models: from writing as artistic practice, targeting readerships, fighting censorship, to the capitalization and enhancement of functional networks. We invite you to join us and unpack the mechanisms behind paper and pixel independent publishing, and become partners-in-crime for future collaborations.

Paper and Pixel is organised and hosted by Alessandro Ludovico (IT) and Nat Muller (NL) for the documenta 12 magazines project.

Tuesday 17 July

13:00-14:30 Lunch Lecture

How to Survive the Paper Industry

Participants: Simon Worthington (Mute, London), Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, Bari)
Moderator: Nat Muller (Rotterdam)

Ever since ink turned into toner and pixel, printed paper has been struggling to survive as a medium. Yet, stubborn independent editors are still producing the most endangered species of paper products: the independent magazine. By endlessly reinventing content, technical and economical strategies these magazines testimony to the distinct qualities of printed publications, such as periodicity, touch of paper and smell of copy. Yet, it is precisely the love for the speed of electrons, and an understanding of the potentials of networked media, that have inspired the cultural tactics of these magazines; from print-on-demand, collaborative editing, sharing content and knowledge, to surfing and playing up to new economical demands.

Thursday 19 July

13:00-14:30 Lunch Lecture

Processual Aesthetics, Processual Editing: Net-Working

Participants: Miren Eraso (Zehar, San Sebastian), Christina McPhee (-empyre-, Sydney), Patricia Canetti (Canal Contemporâneo, São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro)
Moderator: Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, Bari)

Cultural networking has been embodied in different forms through the various nets of independent publishers. We will focus on the aesthetics and practices of networking, collaborative editing and publishing and how that all ties into what has been called “processual aesthetics”, namely an aesthetics that recognizes the material and embodied dimensions of netculture. Strategies of connecting, sharing, improve altogether, meeting on shared goals and then terminating collaborations to start new ones as temporary autonomous zones of production and development. So how do editors really work on the net, and where is the locus of pixel and where is the locus of paper?

16:00-17:30 The Art of Blogging
Kabinett 2

A lecture by Régine Debatty (We-make-money-not-art.com, Berlin).

The art of blogging. How blogging is an art and how to make it successful. The queen of media art blogging Regine Debatty talks about the king of media art blogs. Ironically titled, 'we make money not art', the latter is a unique case in the world of digital art publishing successful, competent, engaging, and purely digital.

Saturday 21 July

13:00-14:30 Lunch Lecture
Publishing the Public: Contextualising Locality

Participants: Jaime Iregui (Esfera Pública, Bogotá), Fran Ilich (Sab0t, Mexico City), José-Carlos Mariátegui (Lima/London), Nebojsa Vilic (Concrete Reflection, Skopje)
Moderator: Nat Muller (Rotterdam)

In a time when the public sphere is shrinking and “things public” become convoluted with “things privat(ised)”, we would like to approach writing and publishing as a public act. Like curating, we would like to view publishing as an effort towards making this public, and in the service of various publics. What is public is of course shaped and moulded by the specificities of context. In a global era we insist to ask how we can work from a particular locality, and go beyond the standard (and by now tedious) “local vs. global” debate, but head to another (yet unknown