New strategies in post-truth times

Urgent Publishing

Urgent Publishing calls for insightful, quickly produced and well-positioned publications in an era where fake news, pseudoscience and other fact free features are broadcast to the world. On this opening night of a two-day conference speakers will discuss publishing in a post-truth era: how to publish effectively between fast populism and slow academia?

While the availability of publishing technologies have helped bring different voices onto the stage, connect new communities and identify hegemonic intersections of power, they have also played a role in bringing about what is known as the ‘post-truth era’. Critical interventions have mainly attracted the in-crowd of art and avantgarde publishing, while a disenchanted public is left behind to scavenge the rubble of breaking fake news stories, information pollution and broken links.

What is needed is a break with the old, closed pre-digital era of gatekeepers or high entry costs. Publishers, writers, researchers, designers and developers need new strategies for urgent publishing. What characteristics does this current post-truth media landscape have? And isn’t ‘post-truth’ just another word for propaganda or fake news? What role do the traditional media have to play in new strategies for digital publishing? Join us for an evening of talks, truth and urgency.

About the speakers

Padmini Ray Murray (IN) is a digital humanities academic with a background in publishing studies. She is the editor in chief of SHARP News and leads the Digital Humanities department of Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. Her research interests include archiving as feminist practice and video games as publishing.

Clara Balaguer (PH) is a cultural worker. Currently, she coordinates the Social Practices course at Willem de Kooning Academy and teaches Experimental Publishing at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. Clara has previously studied online ideological trolling by pro-Duterte trolls in the Philippines.

Morten Paul (DE) is editor at the humanities publishing house August Verlag Berlin. He has previously studied the so-called Suhrkamp culture in the West-German publishing sphere, and has written about the use of magazines in Germany after 1945.

Nikola Richter (DE) is a writer, journalist and publisher who has founded the publisher mikrotext, for contemporary literatures, such as essays, short stories, new journalism and web writing. Often publishing digital-only, Nikola will speak about strategies for online publishing.

The evening will be moderated by Florian Cramer (NL), lector in 21st Century Visual Culture/Autonomous Practices at Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, Netherlands. He specialises in Autonomous Practices, which is focused on DIY artist-run initiatives and self-organization as contemporary art.