Conversation in the MoMA Library

by kulturati

One of my reasons to come to New York was “to firsthand experience new developments in print media”, as I put it in my coverletter to study at The New School. Today I had such an experience while attending an interesting event, called “A Conversation on Independent Publishing as Practice” in the MoMA Library reading room.

The event, hosted by an online-based organization called Paperweight, was a conversation on independent artist publishing in the contemporary era by a panel of people from the field. Interesting was the comment of someone within the panel who said that (I paraphrase) while the commercial print industry is in a crisis the artist publishing scene is flourishing.

Paperweight fits into this image I have of New York’s current independent publishing scene (just like The New Inquiry and Triple Canopy for example) of twenty-somethings of the “over-educated yet underemployed” generation who gather in collectives, are influenced by online publications and have an aversion of commercial print media.