"Still loving books?" by Nicole Suzuki

The PhD in Practice invites to one of their Fantastic Wednesdays/Thursdays events where one of the candidates presents part of their artistic research to an open audience. Screenings, performances, discussions, and an open bar!

Ten years ago, I founded a publishing house in order to amplify marginalized writing and thought and build links between struggles. While the publishing house has released about 60 books so far, I have come to realize that established conceptions of writing/reading and books themselves are based on powerful norms, which, if unchallenged, serve to reproduce epistemic violence.

The performative lecture Still loving books? addresses the problem of epistemic change by expanding the focus beyond the textual content of books. Drawing on postcolonial theory and critically dissecting the politics of print and publishing, Still loving books? challenges unquestioned conventions of the medium and explores possibilities to include a multiplicity of knowledges. I will be sharing elements of my artistic practice that link knowledge production to its material conditions and engage in unsettling linearity and the concept of authorship.

The evening is an invitation to shift the boundaries of existing conversations on the art and politics of book publishing.

Nicole Suzuki works in different media on questions of knowledge production with a focus on the possibilities, violent histories and limitations of the book as a medium. Her work is in dialogue with postcolonial and queer of color critiques. She runs the publishing house Zaglossus and is an interdisciplinary artist, political scientist and a teacher.