Publishing

Since it was founded, the nGbK has been publishing books – since 1987 mainly through its own publishing house. A total of over 450 titles have come out from this context, of which more than 170 are still available today. The common thread of nGbK’s projects is the question of what political function art can and should take on. Consequently, the publishing program reflects artistic debates on migration, feminism and gender, the city and public space, critique of capitalism and racism, social movements and ecology.

© Isabel Francos Hohmann

The publications – including exhibition catalogs, readers, collections of materials and experimental artists’ books – are conceived and co-edited by the members of the work groups. From the various decentralized contexts, the projects thus come together in the overall framework of a publishing program. For the last few years, the nGbK has also been publishing books that are not the result of its own projects but are closely tied to its ideas.

Members of the Kunstverein are also involved in the publications task force AK Publikationen where they discuss the strategic direction of the publishing house. The production of the books is coordinated and supported by the nGbK office.

The history of publishing in the nGbK regularly becomes an explicit research topic within the Kunstverein: The section Archive Matter, for instance, researches the exhibition and publication archive and makes these results accessible via short focus texts. By commissioning essays by changing authors, the nGbK actively participates in a debate on left-wing publishing practice. And furthermore, the two publishing directories published to date list the nGbK’s entire publication archive and provide an index to its discourse space.

Information on individual publications and ordering options can be found here.

Runge Verlagsauslieferung GmbH is responsible for the delivery of our books to the book trade.