Dominica
Dominica
Beginning in 2012, Dominica will begin a series of commissioned book-length monographs on art, design, literature and film written to foster and promote a critical dialogue between art and design within the Midwest and abroad. The series is a continuation of our work at Golden Age, an artist-run project space in the West Loop gallery district dedicated to sharing ideas through exhibitions, performances and printed matter. We have published twelve books under the Golden Age imprint. After nearly five years of operating a brick-and-mortar space, we have decided to close our storefront and focus on publishing.
Dominica takes precedent from "A Cultural Reader" an event that we organized at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2009, and again at MoMA PS1 in 2010, in which seven creatives were invited to present a seven- minute lecture on the topic of their choosing. These talks gave artists, designers and writers an occasion to develop ideas that were seemingly tangential to their practice into larger projects. The forthcoming book series will provide creative thinkers with a similar opportunity for innovation. The series will be a platform to publish long-form nonfiction writing and share that work with our large, dedicated audience.
Each Cultural Reader event had over a hundred attendees, the corresponding catalogs sold out immediately and we were inundated with requests for audio/video recordings. Due to this overwhelmingly positive response, we feel there is a need for sustained critical dialogue between art, design and contemporary culture. We are particularly interested in using the series to engage the tension between iconoclasm and convention. We are specifically inspired by Occasional Papers, a non-profit, London-based publishing house that is devoted to the unpopular histories of architecture, art, design, film and literature.
The series of black- and-white, text-based books will be published using print-on-demand technology in an edition of 1000. Each release will be promoted with a corresponding event at a related venue. The publications will be available online through the Dominica website.
