Matthew So: Badlands Unlimited: We Make Books in an Expanded Field

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Matthew So handles sales, distribution and inventory operations at Badlands Unlimited. Founded in 2010 Badlands Unlimited publishes e-books, paper books, prints and artist works in digital and print forms, and even one book in stone, on a range of topics that do not cover specific genres. Their publications, So explained, render the dissolving distinction between books, files and artworks. They have no plan to start producing Moocs anytime soon, as “Ebooks are cheap and easy to make.” The basic aesthetic of their press is “whatever we can do on our own” as there are no developers or programmers working for Badlands.

Badlands Unlimited is run by the founder and artist Paul Chan and three staff member amongst which So himself. Chan had the ambition to start a press of his own, but was at loss as to what kind of books to publish apart from his own. He decided to publish the work of the artists he admired, starting with the poetry of Yvonne Rainer, that turned out to be one of their first publications.

The catalogue of Badlands Unlimited’s publication is small and remarkable and has included a .gif-filled e-book as an art-advertising White Pages, titled AD BOOK. AD BOOK consist entirely of ads for magazines made by various artists and art institutions. “That book paid for itself before it was on sale.” It is in part a response to the New York art scene “which seems to be concerned only with networking, marketing and money.”

Hell Tree by digital media artist Petra Cortright is another example of their extraordinary books. Hell Tree is made up of writings by Cortright and screenshots of Cortright’s desktop. Countless open widows with texts and images are juxtaposed; the desktop of a life saturated by media and media images. Hell Tree displays Cortright’s thoughts during the course of her workdays; to-do lists interlace with poems, texts and images pile and are superimposed.

Book trailer Hell Tree

On Democracy by Saddam Hussein is an English translation of three  essays on the purpose of democracy written by the late Iraqi dictator in his student days. Chan was gifted the essays and later obtained the rights for the Ebook. On Democracy shows the interest of Badlands Unlimited to press books that are unusual to say the least.

Other publications of Badlands Unlimited include:

The Afternoon Interviews – a series of formerly unpublished interviews with audio fragments of Marcel Duchamp by The New Yorker’s art critic Calvin Tomkins.

Think Like Clouds – a coffee table book composed of an accumulation of drawings, notes  and scribbles by the art curator and art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist.

How to Download a Boyfriend – a group art show turned into an interactive Ebook.

Book trailer How to Download a Boyfriend

Discussions on the book publishing, So argues, should not be about what the book is as an object or what it is not. “Books always evolve and change due to changes in it production and distribution methods and technology.” Badlands, So explained, embraces the fact that the book form has entered a digital life and advised bookmakers to explore and seek out what the new purposes of a book can be. The possibilities seem to be Unlimited indeed.

You can find a PDF of his original presentation here (unfortunately without the GIF’s): Presentation Matthew So

Badlands Unlimited website

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