Peter Willis from Dead Trees and Dye and editor of Limner Journal came in today to launch our year 1 self-publishing project. He started with a great talk contextualising self-publishing and establishing its value as a ‘space for ideas and experiences outside those represented by “mainstream” media outlets’. He showed lots of historical examples, starting with Johannes Gutenberg, the Biblia Pauperum, then onto Dada and surrealist publications… and stuff from Fluxus. I really enjoyed seeing Liberation News Service’s stark and directly communicated opposition to the Vietnam war juxta-posed with hippie publications from a similar period in 60’s/70’s. He suggests that this sort of DIY publishing can ‘provide a base around which communities can gather/form’ and used Factsheet 5 as an example of this. Some more recent stuff he showed included Bidoun Magazine, which features arts and culture from Middle East and Motto, which is a delightfully named shop / distributor in Europe. After lunch the students set about using research from earlier in the semester to begin the process of creating their own publications… There are all ready some really exciting ideas and ways of communicating emerging, which we’ll pop up on here when they are done. Meantime — BIG THANKS TO PETER!!! See you again in a couple of weeks