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Café de Tannay Studio:
a publishing artist residency
Special interest residency for individual and collaborative publishing projects
SITUATED IN RURAL FRANCE SOME TWO+ HOURS SOUTH OF PARIS, the ‘Café de Tannay’ is a compact town house which dates back to the 19C for its café function — as a sign above the main door announces — and earlier, back to the building’s 16C origins when the then much larger town of Tannay had an important religious and wine trade position, even dating further back to the 12C. Today rather a medium sized village than a town, for its almost 600 inhabitants Tannay is still sufficiently equipped with daily conveniences and connected to the rest of the world by public transport and fast ADSL.
As a publishing house of sorts Café de Tannay Studio develops a residency program dedicated to contemporary publication. The house is exploited as a temporary home for individual or collaborative work on publishing (research) projects. Professionals from different affiliations (arts, design, writing, film, publishing, editing, translation, programming, printing, net-casting), working from various disciplines in different media, are invited to bring their research and production for a concentrated working period. The studio offers lodging and if desired professional accompaniment and advice. The residency program serves to bring together international expertise, to create a knowledge base and build a publishing memory.
Publishing beyond the book
A history of the artist book — book among books, a medium among media — as multiple as its definitions may be, contains every example of personal and experimental work on the ‘page’ — whether it be flipped or clicked, hand held or screened, intimately exposed or publicly projected. For a summary of what publications made by artists could be, we like to point to New York based Printed Matter’s statement, which wraps it up (see side note). Its website offers a Research Room for inquiry into the many resources of their unique support of artists’ publishing since 1976.
Special cultural-political significance lies in the many modes of ‘self publishing’, which came a long way from zines and small press printed works, to Internet publications, weblogs, et al. Whether as self-publishing or in institutionally or commercially supported projects, contemporary publishing results from a careful review of content, its material definition, medium of expression, method of conception and construction, its technology and production, not to forget its distribution. These prime criteria are closely related, not because ‘form follows function’ or because ‘the medium is the message’, but because first of all the short history of contemporary art is defined by content-form ambiguities and secondly because networked media increasingly offer alternatives for authoritarian modes of communication and learning (e.g. open source, or the ‘free’ movement).
Artist initiative
CdT Studio is an artist initiative. The project is closely related to the interests and experience of its curating artist Jouke Kleerebezem and informed by an intimate circle of advisors from the expanded publishing field. Scale and ambition of an artist’s practice are defined by concentration, experimentation, precision and generosity. Another defining property of the artist initiative is its collaboratory interest. While the private studio with its balanced private/public interaction comes close to being an ideal model for an artist residency initiative, the latter manages possible public participation differently from the individual studio. The bottom line however to an artist run residency is an absolute respect and every consideration with the visiting artist’s personal interests, whether his or her interest is radical reclusion or complete publicness.
Café de Tannay Studio log
Café de Tannay Studio describes the house’s careful yet radical restoration process. During over 20 months it has been rebuilt as a site for memory, for historical material and method to be weighed against contemporary cultural production, and updated for one of a media age’s first needs: an ex-centric site of production which invites permanent experimentation through peer review, knowledge building and steady product release.
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ABOUT THE INITIATIVE
¶ Café residency introduction
¶ Publishing beyond the book
¶ Artist initiative
¶ CdT Studio log
¶ Links
¶ Research and publishing proposals
¶ Whereabouts and who-is-who
¶ Rooms and facilities
curator
Jouke Kleerebezem
mail to artistresidency c/o cafedetannay dot com
LINKS
institutions — residencies
publishing and writing
IN FRANCE, AT THE CNEAI, the Floating House (‘maison flottante’) editorial office and residency:
¶ Centre national de l’estampe et de l’art imprimé; chatou, france
Two others, both in Canada, and completely different in scale and approach, that offer a writing-publishing residency in a visual arts context:
¶ the banff center literary arts; banff, canada
¶ islands fold; pender island, canada
institutions — residencies
general
ARTISTS’ RESIDENCIES GALORE at the main database of the world’s organizations offering all kinds of residencies, for any kind of artist:
¶ transartists information centre for international artist-in-residence programs; amsterdam, the netherlands
NEAREST BY THE CAFÉ DE TANNAY artist residency location, at a one hour drive:
¶ parc saint leger, centre d’art contemporain; pougues-les-eaux, france
institutions — publishing research
beyond the book
IF:BOOK IS A SMALL THINK-AND-DO TANK investigating the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens:
¶ the institute for the future of the book; the if:book blog
organizations and sources — publishing
link collections
THESE LINKS AWAIT REVIEW AND WILL RETURN HERE EDITED AND ANNOTATED since they were thrown together for previous projects, at del.icio.us:
del.icio.us/ubiscribe and del.icio.us/fabriquesensible_ibiliber
organizations and sources — publishing
artists’ publications
SINCE 1976 PRINTED MATTER HAS DEVELOPPED TO BE THE WORLD’S LARGEST non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of publications made by artists:
¶ printed matter, artists’ publications source; new york, us (quote):
The topic of artists’ books and artists’ publications can be a controversial one. If one were to ask a room filled with artists, collectors, scholars, critics, and members of the public to define the term “artist’s book” the conversation would quickly turn into a debate. Many think of artists’ publications in the context of early 20th century European “livres de luxe” — those finely produced, limited edition, precious volumes of Picasso, Matisse, and other decidedly European modern masters. Others might describe artists’ books as unique or limited edition craft-objects that formally resemble books, but that are actually closer to sculpture. Still others would place artists’ books at the intersection of fine arts and literature — in either limited or short-run editions — and would cite the collaborations between Max Ernst and Paul Eluard as exemplary. Finally, some might consider monographs or exhibition catalogues as artists’ books or artists’ publications.
Printed Matter’s founders subscribed to the idea of the artist’s book as “artwork for the page”, focusing particularly on those publications produced in editions of one hundred or more. They envisioned these publications as democratizing artworks — inexpensive artworks — that could be consumed alongside the more traditional output of paintings, drawings, sculptures or photography. These books were not simply catalogues of pre-existing artworks, but rather works in their own right, “narratives” intended to be seen in a printed, bound, and widely disseminated format.
Over the course of the last thirty years artists have expanded the terrain of the artist’s book to include ancillary forms such as vinyl records, audio tapes, video tapes, audio CDs, CD-ROMs, and various hybrids. (...) Printed Matter’s inventory spans generations of artists working in the field, and seeks to represent a community that is as diverse as possible in its range of expression.
ENCYCLOPEDIC INFORMATION ON THE GENRE’S HISTORY and ongoing debates:
¶ wikipedia on the artist’s book
organizations and sources — related interests
open culture
THE FOUNDATION FOR P2P ALTERNATIVES studies the impact of peer-to-peer technology and thought on society:
¶ The Foundation for P2P Alternatives
(awaiting inquiry):
¶ Centre des livres d’artistes; st. yrieix, france
¶ IMEC, institut mémoires de l’édition contemporaine; caen, france
¶ RGAP, Research Group for Artists Publications; cromford, united kingdom
¶ aCAP, Center for Artist Publishing; cromford, united kingdom
¶ Das Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen in the Neues Museum Weserburg; bremen, germany
¶ Archive for Small Press & Communication in the Neues Museum Weserburg; bremen, germany
¶ Journal of Artists Books JAB
(online documents):
¶ Umbrella art journal covering news and reviews of artist books, mail art and contemporary art and photography tradebooks.
¶ 1978-2005 Umbrella archive at the Digital Library of IUPUI University Library
(online collections):
¶ Illustrated descriptive index to the Artists' Book Collection, located in the Kohler Art Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison
(selected artists’ bookstores and dealers): to follow
(selected publishers): to follow
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