Changing Art from the Outside in by Charlotte Laubard will be available in bookshops on 1st April 2025.
This book, published by HEAD - Publishing, outlines the decentralizing approach needed to open up the art world and its institutions to greater diversity.

From the 1989 Magiciens de la Terre exhibition to the two latest editions of documenta and the Venice Biennale, the art world has become receptive to historically excluded creative practitioners, which has in turn generated some heated debate. While cultural circles over the past ten years have come to agree on the need to open up to a globalized, hyper-connected world, they are far from any consensus on how to go about it. Who deserves to be included? On what basis? Who does the selecting? Who remains left out?

Drawing on her experience as a mediator for the Nouveaux Commanditaires(New Patrons), the author argues that to be more inclusive, we need to make greater allowance for other ways of relating to artifacts than that of aesthetic contemplation, the dominant mode in Western art institutions. The very concept of art itself needs to be revised, even if that means rocking its foundations.

The collection
The editorial unit HEAD–Publishing, founded in 2021 by HEAD–Genève, publishes the Manifestes collection, which highlights opinions, reflections and actions devel- oped by art and design actors to address contemporary issues. HEAD–Publishing promotes a wide dissemination of knowledge by offering its publications in digital formats in free access (ePub, screen reading, PDF) or in print-on-demand on its website: head-publishing.ch, and through publications in paperback format sold at affordable prices in bookstores. The first seven titles in the Manifestes series have been published: Manifesto of Interiors: Thinking n the Expanded Media by Javier Fernández Contreras, Investigation/Design by Nicolas Nova, Ways to Leave Earth by Christophe Kihm, Jill Gasparina and Anne-Lyse Renon, MRIOIR MIOIRR by Carla Demierre, Artifical Design: Creation Versus Machine Learning by Anthony Masure, The Anthropocene Style by Philippe Rahm, and Why History Matters to Graphic Design by Clémence Imbert. These books are available in French and English. They are distributed in the French-speaking world by Paon Diffusion and in a network of international bookstores by Antenne Books and Public Knowledge Books.