In this studio you will explore "tactical publishing" in order to develop your own, unique self-publishing practice which moves beyond the binary thinking of physical/digital.

Each week you will participate in a series of practical activities and design experiments as you ideate, design and publish experimental publications. You will also engage in group discussions on and around publishing and publication design in order to ask:

What does it mean to publish or “make public” in the context of networked culture and social media?

What new methods and techniques can we use in our “tactical publishing”?

What are the available means of production for publishing, and how can we “seize them”?

What are the critical discourses around publishing and design and how can these be extended in the age of AI?

This studio will engage with research in the field of experimental and art-publishing through the study of historically significant and contemporary practitioners.

You will also engage with recent discourses on the impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning on cultural production, specifically writing, reading and the communities of the book. Including access to one of our (Donnachie & Simionato) Nonhuman reading machines to create your own DIY nonhuman books...

Publishing is above all a collective process and the publisher/designer cannot work in isolation. So a primary activity of the studio will be developing ways of organising ourselves around processes of exchange, including the installation of situational libraries and archives around the school.

Throughout the semester, you will design, produce and publish a series of new (book)works both individually and as a group. These publications will be prompted through class-discussions as well as your own extended research outside the studio. The works will be distributed in and around the studio environment and documented in a dedicated website.

Excursions include the State library, local libraries and bookshops and the MABF at the NGV. Special incursions with designers and researchers, including Alessandro Ludovico, author of the MIT Press book “Tactical Publishing” (2024) and “Post-digital Print” (2013).

Task 1 (due Week 5) Tactical Publishing Manifesto

Task 2 (due Week 11) Tactical Publishing Project

Task 3 (due Week 13) Unbound reReader –SKO*

Please check out the Library of Artistic Print on Demand before attending the first class...

Atomic Activity Books is an experimental publishing concern founded in 2008 by Karen ann Donnachie and Andy Simionato, the artist-duo sometimes known as Donnachie, Simionato and Sons, makers of the on– and off–line macro-project called This is a magazine (about nothing). "We publish experimental deviations and non-standard behaviours."

*Each week we will gather to engage in group discussions (= theory), develop methods for making (= practice) and try stuff out that we haven't tried before (= experimentation). All students will be expected to engage in the studio’s research topics and activities and contribute to group discussions throughout the semester.  Your SKO will consist of a curated documentation of this theory/practice/experimentation.