Redaktörens blick och samlarens hand

Avantgardets redaktionella praktiker

Abstract

The Editor’s Gaze and the Collector’s Hand. The Editorial Practices of the Avant-Garde

The avant-garde has frequently been understood in terms of negation. This article seeks to convey a different picture through highlighting the editorial practices of the avant-garde. It is important to acknowledge how the avant-garde establishes a great number of independent publishing ventures since these constitute the avant-garde as a multitude, that is, as a network of connected but individual nodes. Moreover, the editorial practices of the avant-garde are highly visible on the level of the work through collaborative writing, experiments with typography and printing, appropriation and détournement of existing materials etc. The present article suggests that the avant-garde can be traced as a transnational tradition that works with the outside of art, or, differently put, with its material preconditions. Drawing attention to the continued importance of materiality throughout the different phases of the avant-garde, the article suggests that the editorial practices of the avant-garde permeates both publishing in a narrow sense and artistic production in a broader sense. The concept of editorial practice can be expanded as to include the avant-garde’s collection and regrouping of refuse from the city. These practices treat text and objects as if they were on the same ontological level. Under the editorial gaze of the avant-garde, the city emerges as an immanent system of objects, and as an autopoietic archive whose material and media technological components can be collected and reconfigured, privileging the role of the collector-editor rather than that of the individual author.