dear bernadette press
is
an experimental publishing project whose (annual) program consists of six issues, each of which is completed within two months. Each month, a collection of texts is conceived in the form of dialogical, egalitarian, collective author- and editorship whereby the contributions are collected, translated, arranged and the issue is printed and put together collectively on site.
Each issue is dedicated to one writer/theorist, with three issues always having a common focus – loose/associative. The authors addressed have in common that they are rather peripherally known: neither firmly established in the canon, nor completely unknown/unpublished. The aim of the joint publication work is to create openings in the discourse and make texts/material more widely accessible.
The issues deal with similarly marginalized figures, even on the fringes, between university discourse or academic knowledge production and artistic articulation. Instead of performing a writing about, as is all too often the case in university/art theory discourse, the experimental series by the dear bernadette press aims to attempt a situated, involved writing along or writing up with.
Although the resulting texts should be taken seriously as forms of knowledge (re)production and knowledge transfer, they do not have to conform to academic standards. The aim of the project is to find innovative formats of expression and other ways of speaking out. The direct, letter-like address in the title is intended as a marker for this: It is about a writing to and along and not in the format of a distanced about.
Explicitly positioning oneself against an expert discourse means allowing oneself relative freedom in the negotiation, publication and transfer of knowledge: the marginal freedom of the hobbyist, the collagist, the layperson. The 'knowledge' of the hobbyists is not stable, not always secure, but remains dynamic and thus the subject of further disputes and subsequent negotiations and discussions.
A list of possible first addresses:
- Dear Bernadette: Bernadette Mayer
- Dear Fanny: Fanny Howe
- Dear bell: bell hooks
- Dear Sylvia: Sylvia Wynter
- Dear Etel: Etel Adnan
- Dear Rosemary: Rosemary Mayer
- Dear Kathy: Kathy Acker
- Dear Carla: Carla Lonzi
- Dear Simone: Simone Weil
- Dear Maxie: Maxie Wander
- Dear Simone (2): Simone Fattal
- Dear Maggie: Maggie Nelson
- Dear Mckenzie: Mckenzie Wark
- Dear Hannah: Hannah Wilke
- Dear Yvonne: Yvonne Rainer
- Dear Maria: Maria Lassnig
- Dear Susan: Susan Taubes
- Dear Alejandra: Alejandra Pizarnik
- …