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 therefore 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.
Read more on pzwart.nl XPUB Call for application 2023
Applications deadlines: March 7, 2023 (non-EU) and May 10, 2023 (EU)
Open days
Join us on Saturday 11th of February in person at the XPUB studio: we will be around from 10:00 to 15:00. You can find us on the 4th floor in the WdKA/PZI building at Wijnhaven 61, Rotterdam. More info…
Or join us on Monday 6th of February, 2023 online: we will host two online sessions at 10:00 (UTC+1) and 17:00 (UTC+1). You can register by writing to l.j.drost-robbins@hr.nl.
Special Issues
Special Issues are multi-form publications related to a theme initated by a guest editor and produced collectively by XPUB first year students.
Graduation projects and theses
Course wiki
Piet Zwart Institute
XPUB is one of six masters programs collectively known as the Piet Zwart Institute.
Willem de Kooning Academy
XPUB is a part of the Willem de Kooning academy, and can be found on the fourth floor of the Wijnhaven building, with convenient access to the many facilities of the Art academy.
Gitea
XPUB self-hosts a gitea code respository. This provides a public outlet to support the many code works done within the course such as this page.
Etherpad
The XPUB etherpad is another crucial piece of course self-hosted infrastructure. Etherpads are all about realtime group collaboration with a minimum of prescriptive structures. Pads are used heavily in the course as a means of collective note taking, planning, writing and annotation.
Hub
The xpub hub is a public relay to a collection of self-hosted and student-maintained local servers. Using a combination of VPN (virtual private network) and reverse proxy, the hub enables experimentation with self-hosting, server portability, local-first and low power infrastructure and convivial and feminist server practices.
Zulip
The zulip server functions as a private bulletin board system for the XPUB community, and as a self-hosted free software acts as an alternative to centralized proprietary services like Slack and Discord.
Hotline
The hotline is a self-hosted Jitsi Meet server, an alternative to proprietary services like Zoom, Teams, and Meet.
XPUB@zinecamp
XPUB was a proud participant in 2022’s edition of zinecamp Rotterdam @ WORM. Watch the video impression, featuring current and past XPUB/Media Design staff and students: Clara Balaguer, Aymeric Mansoux, Mara Karagianni, joak and a plotter, and more!
Walkie Talkie
The XPUB 2022 graduation was hosted at Worm and the academy.
Project pages and theses Special Issue #19: garden ? @ leeszaal
The most recent Special Issue was launched in December, 2023 at Leeszaal, a local library and community center in Rotterdam West.
Online publication Queerying Wikidata
XPUB, Anaïs Berck and queer artivist/wikimedian Z. Blace join forces to explore automatic writing experiments querying and queering Wikidata.
Paged.js Workshop
Julie Blanc and Julien Taquet from the paged.js project share their experiences at the intersection of design practice and technical standards.
Paged.js is a rendering tool for previewing, inspecting and designing a PDF in the browser, that is known for specifically accommodating designers using web-to-print techniques in their publications and book making practice. Julie and Julien both work (or have worked) as developers on the project, so the workshop gave students an opportunity to ask them about Paged.js as an open source project, and what it means to develop and maintain it. A nice example of paged.js in action is Walkie Talkie, the 2022 XPUB graduation catalog.
Workshop announcement X-unPub
XPUB first years students presented their work during Special Issue #18 at a residency in Paris.
SWAAT #00
Software with an Attitude (SWAAT), Issue #00
Zine edited by Manetta Berends and Michael Murtaugh reflecting on the experiences of teaching programming and alternative tools in the context of the XPUB Prototyping class.
Screen Walk with Aymeric Mansoux and Roel Roscam-Abbing
Online presentation by Aymeric Mansoux & Roel Roscam-Abbing including a description of XPUB as an example of making “systemic shifts” with alternative infrastructure.
Applications deadlines: March 7, 2023 (non-EU) and May 10, 2023 (EU)
Open days
Join us on Saturday 11th of February in person at the XPUB studio: we will be around from 10:00 to 15:00. You can find us on the 4th floor in the WdKA/PZI building at Wijnhaven 61, Rotterdam. More info…
Or join us on Monday 6th of February, 2023 online: we will host two online sessions at 10:00 (UTC+1) and 17:00 (UTC+1). You can register by writing to l.j.drost-robbins@hr.nl.
