Miren Eraso

Many of the magazines whose titles were so common in the 1980s are today only to be found on the shelves of press libraries.There are many reasons for a magazine's success or failure, though economic and political reasons are the ones most commonly cited.Taking a purely Darwinist approach, one might see the ones that survive as being the best; however if one is to take into account all the further elaborations on the theory of evolution, it might be more accurate to say that those that survive are not those that best compete, but rather that those that survive are considered to be the best. It is therefore with some irony that I would say that it is quite a feat to have reached the beginning of the twenty-first century publishing on paper (naturally, we have been aided by the circumstances).Starting from this premise, critical of the neo-liberal notion of development doctrine, which tends to propitiate mercantilist dynamics, we set out on the road of paper and pixel.

As we all know by now, in today's capitalist societies, flows and exchanges occur at high speed. Speed has now become a constituent part of our lives and we coexist with volumes of information which would have been inconceivable just three decades ago. At the same time, this contaminated reality can be seen to be bringing about major changes in the way consumer goods are produced and distributed. In general terms, all of these transformations help to adopt new ways of approaching strategies of communication and dissemination.

The Internet has played a leading role in this new panorama. Because it is an "accessible" technology, it has facilitated the creation of networks and flows of dynamic information, and promoted new and previously impossible relationship and working opportunities.Artists,groups,agents and institutions were quick to realise that the Internet would open up new possibilities, and were excited by the potential of this new medium. But, let us turn back the clock a bit further and see what artists expected from the emergence of television. Many video-creators pinned their hopes on this new medium, thinking it would allow them to make their names and disseminate their work. However, television failed to meet their expectations and video work ended up being exhibited on the same old art circuits- museums, galleries and video libraries. The advent of the Internet also sparked great hopes. Driven by the desire to work in an expanded space, with a certain autonomy and a greater degree of self-management, even the most critical artists and art agents saw this medium of communication, production and dissemination as offering the chance to create a new public sphere; a space which, in principle, would not be conditioned by political interests (through it was conditioned by economic interests), where "free" relations could be established between individuals and groups. In time, though, we have seen that there is no such thing as "universal" or "free" technologies.

Superflex "Karskrona 3", 1998

One could say that the most obvious difference between the analogical and the digital phase lies in the fact that analogue artists were looking for a medium of dissemination that would enable them to disseminate their work, whereas digital activists or artists are in charge of producing, publicising and distributing their work. Speaking about their "10-dencies" project, Knowbotic Research, said they were not seeking to develop technologies but to create events that would allow them to rethink urban planning.In doing so they were converting the medium into a project,and it is here that the true potential of the digital lies: any person or group can produce their own projects and disseminate them; this may not be a new idea, but its consequences are. Knowbotic Research designed a model for interactive participation: without the Internet, we would almost certainly never have been aware of the development of this interactive intervention. Obviously, though, this is not a linear narration in which the events happen chronologically. The Do It Yourself culture of the 1970s has now, oddly enough, been revived by the manufacturers of domestic appliances and computers who have lowered the price of the machines and brought out new models and accessories.This culture has installed itself, with all its paradoxes, in a context that fosters and favours the liberalisation of public services, and the promotion of culture as a spectacle. But cheaper digital apparatuses has led to more widespread use. And in the meantime, the hackers (one of the pillars of the development of Internet, as Manuel Castells notes) were toiling away in silence for a fairer world. Their philosophy has also been extended and popularised, and has come to create what we could term the culture of potlatch or hospitality, in which the freedom of usage is defended over and above the freedom of commercial exploitation, defended today by proponents of Copyleft.

The reticulate structure of the Internet has encouraged the creation of several organisations drawing people together around projects that are critical of contemporary culture. In recent years, organisations have sprung up promoting publishing projects that seek to spark critical debate, research and experimentation (in Spain, these include: www.irational.org Technologies to the people) http://www.e-tester.net, www.arteleku.net, www.aleph-arts.org, and critical platforms: www.valencia.org, www.barcelona.org, www.amarica.info and others.).These (generally not-for-profit) organisations are usually financed by public institutions or programmes and by subscriptions. However, those that are not publicly run tend to face economic difficulties that can endanger their very survival. To this extent, their situation is similar to that of traditional publishing projects: they have an uncertain life expectancy.

This is a story in which analogical and digital are combined, and in which decentralised and expansive horizontal organisational structures are springing from this alliance.These are network-designed projects, organised over the Internet and spreading as new complicities and projects aregenerated.This is explained on the website for Art and Electricity, a project developed by Fundación Rodríguez in coproduction with Arteleku: "From the outset, it was interested in looking for new paths of presentation, distribution, of publicising itself, without differentiating by areas or contexts, but rather reaching out to the places where it wants to be present, from an arts centre to an electronic music festival". Art and Electricity brought together 10 people working in different areas of creation: music, video, design, graphic arts, in different media and mostly with electronic tools. This group project, of shared authorship, sought to escape from art distribution channels and enter commercial distribution channels, in order to extend the dissemination of the project. Its CD was sold with the July 2001 edition of the trend magazine Neo 2.This marked an attempt to escape from the art circuit, to reach other spaces and obtain greater visibility.

[The Connected Crowd] workshop which took place at the International University of Andalucía (La Rábida), September, 2003

This is the keyword of this journey-visibility. We all know that the Internet is an immense space in which different types of interests concentrate and coexist. And it is here that we can define publishing work and establish the dynamics of visibility.While it is true that the Internet lowers productions costs (though not by that much), it also reduces social visibility, and it is therefore necessary to place greater stress on distribution.This has also been one of the problems faced by the print edition.The important thing is to intensify the effectiveness of distribution.The MagNet platform (Network of Electronic Cultural Publishers) was born out of the need to find new distribution channels based on the creation of structures of exchange. It includes six magazines and five affiliated organisations. Through this distribution platform the network seeks to define a space for new cultural forms, and offer a potential for negotiating cultural values.

Today, publishing on paper is a complex task (as it always was). Many different experiences and agents from different disciplines are putting forward new ways of dealing with information and experimenting with the development of non-standard ideas. The symbiosis between paper and pixel is gaining ground, enriching today's publishing landscape. Paper still has a place, for its versatility, its ease of handling, its adaptability, and its reproducibility, and although these features are not exclusive to the print medium, it is paper's physical presence that ultimately leads publishers to preserve it. In an exercise in combining media, Zehar (www.zehar.net) also seeks to link social and cultural practice, to face up to the changes that are occurring in different creative areas (design, architecture, visual arts, music, net-hacktivism, etc.), and to use experiences to approach specific contexts.These new ways of bringing theory and practice together are making it possible to break with the traditional idea of hierarchy in publication, allowing something which is nearer to day-to-day problems, and to a work which is structured in networks of collaboration.

Commons Service declares Zehar AGCS free zone

To conclude, the coordinates at which we stand today are different to those of previous decades and we can see that the changes that have occurred in capitalist societies have had a direct impact on production in publishing and art. A complex and aestheticised contemporary landscape has taken over the terrain that previously belonged to art. As Suely Rolnik notes in the editorial to Zehar 51,"Creation has now become the main value of capitalism.As a result, art has lost its autonomous status, and faced with this alliance, politics and art appear sadly to have become divorced". Let us say that we cannot achieve social and political transformation, but the task of publishers does consist of questioning, the deconstruction of the concepts acquired, and the search for new transforming ideas.