Counter Print: The Alternative Art Press in Britain After 1970 [Kietas viršelis]

The history of contemporary art is also a history of its newsletters, manifestos, magazines, pamphlets, and journals. Those periodical publications do not simply communicate or record ideas but have worked in exciting ways to shape art’s practices, histories and communities. As a new generation of artists, activists and scholars seek to uncover the histories of alternative publishing and artistic networks, this book gathers original archival discoveries while offering methodologies for studying and thinking with those artefacts. As the first essay collection to focus on the periodical art press and the ways we study it, Counter print offers readers an alternative route into the past fifty years of contemporary art, one that is defiantly collaborative, border crossing and disruptive.

This pioneering collection explores the vital role of newsletters, magazines, and journals in shaping contemporary art’s practices, histories, and communities. Through case studies of influential publications—ranging from Black Phoenix to e-flux—it uncovers the impact of queer, feminist, Black, and transnational networks on Britain’s cultural landscape. Blending archival discoveries with new methodologies, Counter Print offers a fresh perspective on alternative publishing and artistic media over the past fifty years.