What Problems Can Artist Publishers Solve?

By Temporary Services with PrintRoom, and contributions from: Josh MacPhee, Eric Von Haynes, Tim Devin, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Richard Lee / Booklyn, Press Press, Llano del Rio Collective, Thick Press, Alex Arzt, AND Publishing, Jan Steinbach, antoine lefebvre editions, Simon Worthington, Freek Lomme / Onomatopee, Clara Balaguer / Hardworking Goodlooking, Nina Prader / Lady Liberty Press, and Eleanor Vonne Brown.
Chicago, IL, Fort Wayne, IN, Temporary Services, 2018
Pages: 40
Dimensions: 5.5 in X 8.5 in
Cover: Paper
Binding: staplebound
Process: Risograph 
Color: full Four-color Risograph
Edition size: 701 (second printing of 491 additional copies produced in January 2020, 3rd printing of 501 copies in August 2022)
ISBN: none

Temporary Services booklet #118 is a collaboration with our old friends at PrintRoom in Rotterdam, produced in advance of a mini-showing of our Self-Reliance Library in July 2018. For this booklet we invited 17 artist publishers to respond to the question: Thinking locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally: What are some social, political, economic and ecological problems that artist publishers are equipped to address or solve using their knowledge, skills, and resources?

The result is a strong collection of texts (and images) with two pages given over to each contributor. To us, these represent some particularly vital thoughts about what artist publishers are capable of in this particular moment, with some great calls for solidarity, generosity, sharing, and experimentation.

Here is some more from the introduction that we wrote:

This is our 118th publication. While we continue to exhibit our art work as Temporary Services, it is increasingly common that we move from one artist-book-focused event to another, placing our publications directly into the hands of readers. We spend far more time talking to people when we visit cities for book fairs and a lot less time installing our work in exhibition spaces. We meet a lot of other publishers, artists, writers, readers, librarians, and activists at these events and we try to stay connected. Often we meet up again at other book fairs and friendships develop and continue over the course of many years.

We first met Karin de Jong from PrintRoom at the New York Art Book Fair some years ago. We are excited that we are finally collaborating on a project together and launching it at her home base in Rotterdam. Some of the participants in this booklet have been friends for a long time; we are just getting to know others after meeting them in similar ways. Karin has also pulled in some publishers we did not know beforehand. We are excited to share their work and ideas with you. 

We are still understanding the potentials for how we might harness the contributions of others in this highly independent publishing community. This booklet can be thought of as one step for how we can create together, support each other, and sustain ourselves into the future, which looks more uncertain all the time.