Jorinde Seijdel & Niels Schrader, editor-in-chief & designer of Open! are happy to announce they have just launched their new publishing platform and living archive, designed by Niels Schrader and Mind Design. The site should offer a truly dynamic, discursive environment that continues to focus on the changing conditions of the public domain and public sphere, and the consequences of privatisation, mediatisation and globalisation processes on our social, cultural and artistic practices. It includes the complete contents of Open: Cahier on Art & the Public Domain 2004–2012 and everything that has been published since then.

To optimise and enrich the online research and reading experiences, the new website allows the user to always retain a full overview of the volume of the archive, even while deeply immersed in the reading of an article. The content is presented next to three navigation columns that connect related pieces of texts via cross- and hyperlinks, provide additional explanations via definitions and include footnotes and references to literature. The site has also been optimised for desktop and tablet view.

How does one navigate the new Open! site? Well, you can browse through our content by: Year, Content type, Theme and / or Tag; you can also use the Timeline interface, the search engine or find texts via Contributors. You can access the latest articles by simply clicking Articles and browse through these linearly with the previous / next button. Under Timeline, you can easily browse through the chapters of any article you are reading.

If you still prefer reading in an analogue format, you can simply download texts as PDFs. Most of the contributions published in the period 2004–2012 can be found here. However, we request your patience as we continue to revise and digitise the archived images and texts. The Open! archive is alive and well – indeed.

Recently Open! published “Affect Space: Witnessing the ‘Movement(s) of the Squares’”, an in-depth article by media theorist Eric Kluitenberg. We continue our investigations of the theme Commonist Aesthetics in close collaboration with Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht and Sven Lütticken. The contributions by Casco, Marina Vishmidt, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Isabell Lorey and Sven Lütticken will soon be supplemented by new contributions from Andreas Siekmann / Alice Greischer, Metahaven, Matteo Pasquinelli and Gerald Raunig, among others. Upcoming research themes include: The Culture of Control and The Affective Image. Stay up-to-date on our latest publications by subscribing to our newsletter.

Last but not least, they have added a Donation / Support function. Since Open! is a non-profit organisation with no structural funding, it depends on all-important donations to enable it to maintain the Open! platform and share its content with you. A donation would be highly appreciated.

Open! welcomes your feedback at editors@onlineopen.org

Open! and DAI are partners and Open! is tutoring a year long course at the DAI: 

AFFECTIVE IMAGES: HOW PUBLIC IMAGES PRODUCE AFFECT IN A DIGITAL AGE