About Midstream

“The middle is not an average, but is, on the contrary, a place where things are accelerated. Between the things does not name any localizable relationship that goes from one to the other and back again, but rather a pendulum movement, a transversal movement, which goes in one and the other direction, a stream with no beginning or end, which hollows out both of its banks and flows faster and faster in the middle” (Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari).

Midstream challenges the concept of the audience as purely receptive figure. In an experimental setting with art institutions around Europe the two-year project aims at finding new hybrid “midstream” forms of publishing.

Midstream publishing goes beyond primarily focusing on the end product. It applies the broader viewpoint that publishing both starts from and generates specific social contexts for knowledge production.

Based on analyses of historical examples in the visual arts (from the historical avant-gardes to the current hype of 'selfpublishing' fairs) as well as critical experiments in post/social media and online social networks, Midstream aims to develop new concepts, strategies and practices. Following Deleuze and Guattari the project applies a concept of the middle which arises at various instances: between languages (text production and publishing between languages, not just translating into another language), as translocality, and also between electronic and print publishing which do not appear as separate possibilities but rather as a combined process.