A Special Issue is a tri-annually released publication created by the XPUB master's students, allowing students and staff to explore not only the individual themes of each edition, but also the definition of what is or can be a publication.
Each Special Issue addresses a specific "issue", often coordinated with outside events and collaborations, and culminates in a release party. The organisation, tools, and workflows are reset every trimester to both allow the rotation of roles within this publishing experiment, but also permit to explore novel collaborative methods beyond their archetypes and stereotypes.
Peripheral centers and feminist servers investigate multiple approaches to the conditions of serving. It interrupts the endless flow of data that fuels the economy, exposing the cracks and gaps of the techno-scientific paradigm imposed on society. Where commands are executed, connections made, trust exchanged, and resources shared.
This feminist data center brings to light the physical infrastructure and actual labour which enable the processes we perform every day. In this exploration, we think through feminist approaches that reveal the concealed layers of our on(off)line interactions. We broaden our understanding of how this tangible, energy-intensive infrastructure truly operates behind the seemingly innocent notion of the ‘cloud’.
The various projects within Peripheral centers and feminist servers expose their infrastructure, emphasizing the material conditions of their production. We advocate that the fairy tale of immateriality has real socio-economic-environmental consequences.
With Varia
In the middle of an on-going apocalypse what should be preserved, and what forgotten? In the efforts of scavenging and resurrecting a sonic archive. It is only a question of time until all will be lost. Lend an ear as we collectively explore, activate and transmit the archive of Worm community Radio. We must listen closely, we must decide what remains and how we can rebuild upon a fractured past. Become absorbed by a re-imagined reality through an archival deep-dive!
With Radio WORM.
XPUB is the Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental Publishing of the Piet Zwart Institute. XPUB focuses on the acts of making things public and creating publics in the age of post-digital networks. XPUB's interests in publishing are twofold:
first, publishing as the inquiry and participation into the technological frameworks, political context and cultural processes through which things are made public;
and second, how these are, or can be, used to create publics by expanding the means of discourse circulation beyond print media and its direct digital translation.