«gathering / situating knowledges», HyperWerk / «Design in the Cracks», MA Publication Team 2024/25
IXDM.distro is a publishing platform operating across teaching and research at the Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM) at Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. It explores intersectional practices of rehearsing, documenting, publishing, and hacking while fostering public spheres of solidarity. Working transversally across disciplines, cultures, and worlds, it connects social, political, and environmental perspectives through experimental media and publishing formats.

For this year’s I Never Read, Art Book Fair Basel, running from 18–21 June in parallel to Art Basel, IXDM.distro will explore more-than-human publics. With a thematic selection of publications by students, faculty, researchers and collaborators from across the institute, IXDM.distro will highlight relational, ecological, and speculative publishing practices. Featured publications tackle the troubled relationship between ecosystems and technology, imagine neo-peasant and abolitionist futures, trace the flow of money and toxic leftovers, or question the conditions of production and resistance in collective work, art, design and academia.

During I Never Read, we’ll also celebrate the launch of two new publications that offer a rich plurality of perspectives and reflections on the intersected teaching and research practices at IXDM.

The new anthology “gathering/situating knowledges” follows the annual theme of the BA Process Design at HyperWerk, which unfolded in workshops, discussions, and practical exercises. The contributions brought together in the reader leave behind the idea of universal, objective knowledge and ask for more diverse, situated forms of knowledge such as embodied knowledge, collective memory, local practices, and digital and more-than-human networks.

“Design in the Cracks” is the first issue of the Transversal Design annual periodical publication, which emerges through situated practices, community thinking, and creative resistance. Created by students, faculty, and collaborators of the MA Transversal Design program, this peer-reviewed publication gathers reflections, tools, and stories to imagine and practice design otherwise — in the cracks of systems, disciplines, and dominant narratives. It is a shared space for growing connections, collecting voices and making archives, gently resisting, communing across difference, holding space, softening in harsh times and weaving loose ends.

Alongside the printed publication, MA Transversal Design also launches an online zine at transversaldesign.ch that will continue to evolve into a living web journal to accompany, document and reflect on the activities and practices of the study program.

Join us for the public launch celebrations with drinks on Thursday, 19 June, from 5–7 pm at the venue of I Never Read in the courtyard of Kaserne Basel.

After the launch, MA Transversal Design will also host a live reading titled “Voice cracks without crumbling down” at 7.30 pm, as part of the radio program of I Never Read that will be streamed online and on-site at the fair. Another reading by recent graduates of the BA Process Design will kick off the radio program on Wednesday, 18 June, at 7 pm, titled “Was bleibt – von Grosmüttern, Mustern und Verbundenheit”. The full side program can be found on the website of I Never Read.

Publications featured at the booth of IXDM.distro include