The Samizdat workshop (January/April 2010), lead by Marco Balesteros and Sofia Goncalves, proposed the creation of a space for critique and practice in the context of self-publishing. Its central guidelines were the blurring of roles involved in editing / publishing,the designer as author/ editor / producer, an understanding of the workshop as a pedagogical model parallel to academia and as a catalyst for critical experimentation and content generation. This meta-design exploration was consolidated in a statement of intent, centered around 7 themes:
- Ideology(ies),
- Art/Publishing,
- Editing/Contents,
- Print Culture/Digital Culture,
- Meta-Media,
- Production,
- Distribution/Audience/Reader.
In turn, these issues led to a series of individual publications (authorial monologues) and collective contributions (panel discussions). The SAMIZDAT publication serves as a record of the workshop as well as an aggregator and an informal compendium about the key issues of self-publishing.
