Urgent Publishing After the Artist’s Book: Making Public in Movements Towards Liberation

Urgent Publishing After the Artist’s Book: Making Public in Movements Towards Liberation was a performative talk given by artist and designer Paul Soulellis during the the 2021 Contemporary Artist’s book Conference, hosted by the Center for Book Arts during the 2021 Printed Matter Virtual Art Book Fair. In attending this livestreamed talk, I was struck by the obvious intersections with my own work with GenderFail. While Paul was giving this lecture live, I emailed him as I listened and responded in the moment about my hopes in being able to publish Urgent Publishing After the Artist’s Book: Making Public in Movements Towards Liberation as a printed book. For this information to be engaged with in such a personal fashion, and further to disseminate it as a physical object, felt important in my position as a publisher. This book is a reproduction of the photographs and texts from the lecture by Paul Soulellis and risograph printed into a 112 page book. Taking only 11 days from the lecture on February 27th, 2021 to the finished book on March 10th, 2021, this book is an urgent publishing response to an urgent text. The book is an edition of 200 designed by Be Oakley and published by GenderFail. 25% of the book is invested in Queer.Archive.Work.