call to artists: collage publishing workshop

A five-week, virtual/online workshop with Kolaj Institute in November & December 2023

Deadline: Sunday, 15 October 2023

Consider this: The book, not the gallery, is the best place to experience collage. This sentiment has broad implications for how collage artists work and how their work is received by an art world whose orientation is decidedly fixed on the gallery wall. Can the book provide for the functions that the exhibition has provided to artists for so long? Will the public accept a book as an experience of artwork or even as an object of art in and of itself? Unlike an exhibition where only original work is on display, a book depends on reproduction for its distribution. And if we now accept the book as on par with the exhibition, how does that affect how we think of the history of art publishing that has come before? These are the questions we seek to answer. As we will see, collage artists are not alone in this endeavor. Artists have been wrestling with how to make the book work for over a century, often returning to the same questions that we are asking.

In this five-week workshop, artists will turn a body of work or a project into a zine, art catalog, monograph, or book. We will explore different models of publishing and types of book projects. We will walk through the steps and support one another as we create publishing projects and prepare to put them out into the world. Artists will either develop a publishing project during the workshop or create a plan for one. While we acknowledge the book can be an art object in and of itself, the focus of this workshop will be on artists who want to create a publishing project that is mass-produced and distributed.

This workshop is part of Kolaj Institute’s Collage Books project, which began as a directory and resulted in the October 2019 symposium on The Book as a Place of Collage at Volume 2 MTL and a publication. So much of collage is experienced in printed, published form. Collage Books is Kolaj Institute’s tool for organizing, documenting, and cataloging books in which collage plays an important role. We take a broad view of collage books and include trade editions, art criticism, coffee table books, ‘zines, artist books, catalogs, and literary endeavors that feature collage.