PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (51): THE NEW MANIFESTO, SECOND ITERATION (2)

Work on the second iteration of The New Manifesto… continues, and the NewLights mission statement continues to be tweaked. Here’s the latest:

The NewLights Press is an independent printer & publisher of experimental writing and artists’ books, concentrating on where the two can and do overlap. All of the books are printed & bound “by hand,” using a variety of techniques, ranging from the obsolete (letterpress) to the utilitarian (laser printing) to the meditative (delamination). We try to maintain inclusive (& purposefully problematic) definitions of such mutable terms as “experimental writing,” “artists’ books,” and “printing techniques,” and to be similarly inclusive in the kinds of books that we produce, in an attempt to allow the different kinds of production to merge, separate, and converse with one another. We believe in the actual use value of art objects as soft, temporary spaces in and against which individuals & communities can envision & articulate their relationship to, and shape in, the world. We are not searching for the Ideal Book—we are looking hard at & reading closely from the book-in-the-world. We represent only one of the many geographical/historical meeting points of a vital and diverse community of active, thoughtful people, and our work would mean nothing without that community. The production of books is our own, weird way of saying to the world: we believe in you. & you & you & you & you & you & you & you & you & you & you […]