ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS.- Printing Matters - Kiosk XII - Modes of Multiplication will take place April 2 – 17, 2005. This is an event about independent publishing with book presentations, interventions, and panel discussions. With the Printing Matters event, Witte de With will be focusing on independent publishing for just over two weeks. The inspiration was the traveling exhibition KIOSK, an exceptional collection of independent publishing projects (artists’ books, periodicals, fanzines, record labels, and video and audio projects) assembled by Christoph Keller of Revolver publishers (Frankfurt). With this collection, Keller aims to present an overview of various models of multiplication and distribution for artistic publications or projects, focusing on the activities 'behind the scenes' (publishers, editors, multiplicators, distributors) and their driving forces, strategies and motivations . At each place it is presented, KIOSK takes on a new form.
At Witte de With, KIOSK is the point of reference for an event about independent work in printed form with L.A.T. (Amsterdam), PrintROOM (Rotterdam), Piet Zwart Institute (Rotterdam), and others. L.A.T. (Kees Maas, Kasper Andreasen, Tine Melzer) and PrintROOM (Karin de Jong and others) have been invited to respond to KIOSK in a presentation in the spaces of Witte de With.

Symposium - “The space is not the battlefield any more,” wrote Jorge Pardo in an early publication by Witte de With [Cahier #2, 1994]. “The images are finally going to stand in for the space, for the quality, of the object. I do not necessarily think of that as something which is eroding the quality of the work; it is more a condition.” Pardo provides an intriguing characterization of the transition from production to re-production that was evident in the art industry of the 1990s. This development is not exclusive to artistic production; within exhibition practice the publication has become an integral component of the impact, visibility and identity of exhibitions.

What prompted the proliferation of printed material? How does this printed matter relate to the production of installations, performances, film, video, and the globally accessible Internet? And what is the status of the collection of unsold publications, a growing entity stacked away in the storerooms of institutions and galleries? These are the some of the questions that will be addressed during Printing Matters.