Artists’ Books Cooperative
Interview realised in winter 2022
ABC, for Artists’ Books Cooperative, is a group of artists working with books made of nearly 12 persons from all over Europe. How did you came out with this idea of creating this collective, and when?
Actually there are currently 18 of us, based mainly in Europe but we also have four members living in the US. The German artist, Joachim Schmid, founded the cooperative in 2009 as the new technology of Print-on-Demand (PoD) arrived on the scene. He foresaw the explosion of self-publishing that was to ensue and was inspired to communicate and collaborate with early adopters through the establishment of our cooperative. Since then we have expanded beyond those initial parameters and our members engage in a broad range of book-making practices but the impulse to subvert traditional models of publishing remains.
Being dispatched internationally is kind of unique, although, I was wondering how you were working together?
ABC sporadically opens its doors to the public, providing an anonymous work environment at the ABC Office. Similar to the ABC Office, which was temporarily installed at DZIALDOV in Berlin (2022) and Filet Gallery in London (2023), ABC operates without a fixed base and instead travels. Communication takes place through online forums such as Slack and WhatsApp, and book fairs serve as meeting points for creating and discussing new projects.
One thing we can notice about ABC, is the fact that you are very active and produce collective projects (publications/bookfairs) regularly. The question may sound dumb, but how do they come on the table? Are they initiated by a single person who proposes a project and whom wants to take part in does?
ABC project ideas can come from a number of places; an individual wanting to make something that benefits from collaboration, a group debate or discussion of a shared interest, a half-joke made after being sat behind a book fair table for 7 hours. Participation is never compulsory, but is always open to all members and often extended to external artists when possible. As an example, our recent project ABC Stampa, which pays homage to Ulises Carrión’s Stampa Newspaper, was instigated by ABC member Louis Porter. Louis had an interest in Carrión’s unfinished newspaper, and brought his idea to ‘‘finish’’ the work to a general meeting. The rest of the cooperative were invited to participate, and volunteer for duties of co-curation, exhibition installation and printing. In addition to members, international artists were invited by Louis and George Gibson, and this co-curation lead to a collaboration with new friends from Venezuela, France, Indonesia, Peru, Canada and Lebanon amongst other countries.
To me ABC looks like a network that brings creative people around publishing questions. Was it the intention?
I think that’s right, but the questions are always changing, and so must the discussion that we are having. When Joachim started the process, Print-on-Demand and how it might change the scales and economies of publishing was in the foreground. Technologies still interest a lot of us, but it is fair to say that it has also taken a kind of backseat more recently, to the book as an object, the book as a collaborative vessel, and even publishing as a collaborative activity. Today for me one of the most interesting realisations is that ABC contains lots of people who also act as publishers, supporting the work of others: how publishing generates constructive eco-systems is something really important, and who better to answer these questions than creative people who also solve problems.
One particularity of ABC is the fact you regularly occupy booths during art book fairs. How does it work?
The fairs we decide to attend vary depending on interest at the time and our members’ availability. We try to go to one or two of the big fairs every year, ones that are relatively good for sales and catching up with colleagues, curators, librarians, collectors, etc. These fairs also serve as a good opportunity to get together as a group and have a bit of fun, meet prospective new members and discuss group projects. Outside the big fairs if one or two members want to try something new we always encourage it, that’s the benefit of the collective money pot (see below), it lets us experiment without too much stress. Over the years we’ve taken very different approaches to how we present our books at fairs, from simple table cloths to elaborately constructed bespoke display systems, to submerging books in a fish tank and even turning our table into a makeshift public bar.
A point I’d like to talk about is also the financial of being artists who are working with publications. How do you deal with that part?
ABC members contribute 100 euros per year to the ABC ‘‘kitty.’’ This covers applying for book fairs and individual expenditure in regard to group shows and projects – for example, ABC member John Maclean bought our prized ABC lanyards and was refunded the costs, and a new ABC tablecloth was purchased by ABC member Monika Orpik and the fund paid her back. Generally all applications and purchases are agreed by the group in our online meetings. ABC member Wil van Iersel holds the ABC purse and updates us on when subscriptions need paying and, if or when our financial account runs dry. In regard to ABC’s latest project, Stampa (a homage to Ulises Carrión) initiated by ABC members Louis Porter and George Grace Gibson, we all paid for our own stamps and the reserve paid for guest artists to take part, the paper and the inks. If we make a collective ject, recently purchased by the Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, then the proceeds get divided amongst the members who took part.
For a group publication ABC collective pays, however individual publications, objects and projects are financed 100% by the individual ABC member. The artist then independently prices their own work for the ABC table and receives all sales proceeds, minus a small charge for the card machine. The ABC table is pretty democratic – nothing is refused and the quantity and quality of publications can vary for each art fair, depending on availability of publications and members schedules.
When checking at the work of all of you, we can easily notice the different types of orientations, subjects and forms all the members are working on, on their own. Because, this is the point of ABC, and this is also what I found interesting in your group is the fact you all are artists and publishers, working on their own, that also gather and work with other people from time to time.
Sure, though we are not just a random collection either. There’s an integrity to the group that may not be so simple to pin down. The origins of book fairs had something to do with their convenience as means of dissemination, and a way artists could relate to each other directly, without the institutional barriers. With the internet emerging in the 1990s that logic became superfluous but the fairs continued regardless. There’s a danger that the organisations involved come to represent a new orthodoxy. To some degree that has indeed happened. There’s an important tension within ABC between that respect for the traditions that emerged and our continuing arseyness and interest in ‘‘institutional critique.’’ We are not for too much salivating over the qualities of paper, of stylised book production, or adhering to yesterday’s design principles and so on. The same tension or contradiction was technologically palpable with the emergence of Print-on-Demand referred to already. Also a group of us met via our interest in appropriation, the use of online imagery, hacking of a sort, and creating PoD books, at around the time of Les Recontres d’Arles 2011. The show a number of us were part of, From Here On, had faults, it was curated by five prominent male practitioners, and, arguably, that imbalance was reflected in what resulted, but it remains an important historical event, if not a groundbreaking one. Sean O’Hagan was foolish to dismiss its signifcance as he did at the time,
which is ironic because he lauds street photography which broke the rules of the game at another point in time. The possibility of Print-on-Demand meant that anyone could publish easily but ironically this served also to keep old formats, and hardcopy book production, alive at a time when everything was meant to be going digital. Anyway, that was long ago, and who knows what will determine our next turn?