On Wednesday June 6th, 2012 Matthew Stadler gave a really great lecture about small economies, multi-scalar assemblages (a group of people acting on every scale from the intimately local to the global) and growing an audience naturally, by word of mouth, one person at a time. This lecture was part of the Big Ideas in Art and Culture Lecture Series co-hosted by Musagetes and Cafka.

Stadler introduced Publication Studio (created with co-founder Patricia No), a print-on-demand publisher that serves as a space for publication in its fullest sense. He proposed that publishing doesn’t simply produce books, but also produces new publics through the shared experience of reading. Central to the studio’s philosophy is the creation of a digital commons, where anyone can read and annotate books for free; the dialogue formed by reading is carried into unique social events, such as dinners, symposia and puppet shows. This breathes life into the written word on paper, online and through discussion.

You can watch the video of the lecture above, or read it, print it, pore over it and write comments in the margins of your very own PDF copy, available here: “What is Publication Studio?” by Matthew Stadler.