“havermilk press” is a project initiated in the Summer of 2025 by Sebi Mitra. Over the course of this past year, they have published five books. In establishing the press, many questions have arisen. Most notably, why are so many artists turning to books as a medium and transforming their practice into acts of self-/small-publishing?
To understand this question, my master thesis explores how institutions (such as the art school, biennales, etc) push knowledge production and theory as part of an attempt at self-legitimization. This in turn demands new forms of contemporary artistic practice, in which using signifiers of a critical approach become necessary. At the same time, as artists internalize this institutionalized critique pushed by the institutions themselves, creating new, parallel institutions which draw from more subversive modes of engaging with artistic production. The increasing turn towards publishing becomes clearer: If knowledge production as well as institutional critique has become a core tenet of contemporary artistic production, the book as a form is a perceivable manifestation of it. Publishing also offers an attractive escape from the art world, as it offers a more tangible and even material way of conceptualizing artistic labour.
The master thesis takes form as a sort of guidebook. Not to self-publishing per se (as many already exist), but towards thinking through notions which are important when creating a publishing project. These have arisen from the personal experience of creating the havermilk press. Ultimately, it the paper proposes honest ways think about and contextualize self-publishing within the larger contemporary artistic sphere.