Open source publishing, in all its versions and mutations, is an area of research and media practice that has become much more popular recently. It is precisely because of this the questions it raises for cultural production are today all the more pressing. How does a form of media production where the good produced is given away to people sustain itself? How can it produce livelihoods for its associated “below the line” editorial workers, as well all the other associated forms of cultural labor undertaken in the production chain, from distribution to retail? This essay considers some of these questions, not from a general perspective, but rather from how they filter through and affect the nature of autonomous print cultures. For these print projects questions about labor, conditions and the sustainability of the project are all the more pressing because of how they relate to and are embedded within the goal of the social movement organizing that they emerge from.
Articles by Joanna Figiel
Joanna Figiel works and lives in Warszawa and London. She holds an MA in Creative Industry from the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths and recently completed her PhD at the Centre for Culture and the Creative Industries, University of London (“Unpaid work and internships within the cultural and creative sectors: Policy, popular culture, and resistance”). Her research focuses on the changing compositions of labour, precarity, and policy in the creative and cultural sectors. Joanna also works as a translator. She collaborates with Fundacja Bęc Zmiana and Minor Compositions, and in the past she has worked with groups including the Citizen’s Forum for Contemporary Art in Poland and the PWB in the UK, as well as the Free/Slow University of Warsaw and the ArtLeaks collective.