PABLO'S COPY CENTRE IN 'PRODUCIENDO REALIDAD' IN LUCCA

An information and copy center by Pablo León de la Barra. A low table serves as a platform for the presentation of a thematic cartography of self-published material by different artists and art groups coming from Latin America and who share a similar state of mind, that of contesting the dominating culture produced and distributed by the transnational publishing and music industries. CD’s are displayed for the visitor to listen and burn while a photocopy machine is available for the visitor to copy the material.

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Publications available for photocopy:
Landmark. Alora y Calzadilla. Puerto Rico 2003
Printed Material. Mariana Castillo. Mexico-Netherlands 2002-2004
Celeste Sucks. Artist Fanzines. 2002-2004
Museo Hawai. Rodrigo Quijano/Fernando Bryce. Peru 2002
Rejected Projects. 24/7 Gallery. London 2003
La Promesa. Fotonovela. Jesus [Bubu] Negron. Puerto Rico 2003.
Valdez. Bookzine. Colombia-New York-Paris 2003
Hangueando. Raimond Chavez. Newspaper. Colombia-Peru-Puerto Rico-Spain 2002-2004
Colegiala en Cinta. El Vicio. Magazine. Colombia. 2002
Instant City. Maria Ines Rodriguez and others. Newspaper. Paris 2003
Printed Material. Erick Beltran. Mexico-Netherlands 2002
Galeria Chilena. GCH Catalog. Chile-New York 2003
Capacete Entretenimentos. Capacete journal and Artists catalogues. Brasil 2002-2004
El Chino. Periodical Publication. Guadalajara, Mexico 2001-2004
Espacio La Culpable. Photocopied publication. Peru 2002-2004
Geometría Popular. Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle. Mexico-New York 2004.
Pulgar. Ocassional Publication. Venezuela 1999-2004
Velocidad Critica. Publication. Monterrey, Mexico 2000-2004
Terry Painter, L;Artiste. Comicbook. Miguel Calderon y Nick Walpington. Mexico-London 2003.
Juliana Periodista. Photocopied Interviews. Argentina 2003
Las Ilusiones Perdidas. Maria Ines Rodriguez. Colombia-Paris 2003
Resistencia. Book. PAC. Mexico 2004.
Mia. Teresa Serrano. Fotonovela. Mexico 2002
Ediciones Eloisa Cartonera. Argentina 2004
Lima, Peru. Gilda Mantilla. Postcards. 2003
Panama. Jonathan Harker. Postcards 2004.

Cds:
The Electric Mass Begins. Sonido Lasser Drakar. 2004
Menonita Rock. Los Fancy Free. 2004
Yo Fui Una Adolescente Terrosatanica. Ultrasonicas. 2003
Shajato Rock. Intestino Grueso/Miguel Calderon. 2000
Welcome to Chimpancingo. Silverio. 2002
Channelizing Paradise. Los Super Elegantes. 2002
Operacion Sandunga. Regeton. Puerto Rico. 2002
Con el agua por alante y atra. Potranka y Jail-A. 2004
Rapza 2. Mexico City. 2001
Hip Hop con Banda Norteño, Cumbia y Mas. 2004
Depois de Cristo. 509E. Hip Hop. Sao Paulo. 2002
Shanty Sounds. Carolina Caycedo. 2003
Silverio 2. 2004
Miki. 2004
Lasser Moderna. 2004
La China Tropical. B-Lo. 2004
Pau-Latina. Paulina Rubio. Pirate Version. 2004
Ellas. 24-7´s Music for the Oppressed Housewife. 2004.
Antologia. Los Prisioneros.
Infame. Babasonicos.
Quemalo. centrodearte.com. 2002
La musica de las Malas Amistades. 2000
Fortaleza Mix 1 y2. Colectivo Cambalache & Som Sobre Som Sanfrancisco. 2002

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Extract from a text by Santiago Garcia Navarro on the destiny of publications in Latin America:

"The picture García Canclini paints (in Latinoamericanos buscando lugar en este siglo (and the writer and literary critic Daniel Link seconds)) is more or less as follows. During the 90s, most of the big Latin American publishing houses were purchased by Spanish companies who had, in turn, been bought by multinational groups. The policy for the production and circulation of books suffered a series of metamorphoses due to the neo-liberal economic policy that was already underway in those years. What had once been local publishing houses that influenced the rest of Spanish-speaking America and the Iberian Penisula, had been turned into local branches of emporiums rooted in Spain. As a consequence of the neo-liberal mentality of rationalization and automatization, the system was broken down into national islands that have to provide books for their respective markets, mostly books by authors from that same country. This gave rise to a flood of products superficial in form and content; that is to say, an effect typical of neo-liberalism which encourages hyperinflation of matter and devaluation of thought. Meanwhile, the old craft of the editor as literary talent scout, dedicated to finding new writers, philosophers, sociologists, critics, etc., was replaced by the figure of the executive who must satisfy at any cost the demands of the publishers-entertainment companies, that generally set a three thousand copy minimum for any printing.

For the same reasons, second printings of publishers' catalogs were also dramatically reduced as was the distribution of these second printings to areas not considered profitable, even if these books had had readers in those areas over the decades. This is why for years it has been impossible to find books and essays as crucial as "Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproduction" by Benjamin or A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari in Buenos Aires, a city that was, along with Mexico City, the greatest publishing center in the Spanish speaking world until the 70s. (This last book is distributed in Spain but, if brought to Buenos Aires, it would be terribly expensive by local standards due to the exchange rate).

Logically, this series of shifts has led to a new cultural order that is decided on the other side of the Atlantic or, to put it more precisely, in an undefined supraterritoriality. I am not, however, crying over the loss of the influence of the nation-state (a loss that, in one way or another, has taken place all over the globe). I am, instead, trying to give evidence for something deeper, something that predates the State as an institution or, indeed, any other form of social control, and that is the loss of the capacity for self-production. This is the authentic loss, the loss of the possibility for a subject to constitute himself as the protagonist in his or her own development. This capacity has been rapidly diminishing on both the individual and the community level."
Santiago García Navarro, Buenos Aires, 28 March 2003
originally published in http://www.kunstverein-muenchen.de