Type of site | Digital library |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Editor | Kenneth Goldsmith |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | no |
| Registration | none |
| Current status | Online |
UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, created by poet Kenneth Goldsmith and active from 1996 to 2023. It offered visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives.[1][2]
In January 2024, UbuWeb announced it was no longer active, posting: "As of 2024, UbuWeb is no longer active. The archive is preserved for perpetuity, in its entirety."[3]
UbuWeb was founded in response to the marginal distribution of crucial avant-garde material. It remains non-commercial and operates on a gift economy.[4] UbuWeb ensures educational open access to out-of-print works that find a second life through digital art reprint while also representing the work of contemporaries. It addresses problems in the distribution of and access to intellectual materials.
UbuWeb does not distribute commercially viable works but rather resurrects avant-garde sound art, video and textual works through their translation into a digital art web environment - re-contextualising them with current academic commentary and contemporary practice.[5] It houses and distributes freely the entire archive of the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine project. In 2020, Kenneth Goldsmith wrote in his book Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of Ubuweb that “Perhaps no collection of audio inspired UbuWeb more than the Tellus cassettes….”[6]
Beyond its repository of works, UbuWeb features curated sections including /ubu Editions book-length editions of contemporary poetry, selected and introduced by the poet Brian Kim Stefans. UbuWeb: Ethnopoetics, curated by Jerome Rothenberg, is fusing the avant-garde with traditional ethnic practices. UbuWeb: Papers is a series of contextual academic essays. UbuWeb:Outsiders considers the legitimization of Outsider works and features The 365 Days Project curated by Otis Fodder.
UbuWeb is not affiliated to any academic institution, instead relying on alliances of interest and benefiting from bandwidth donations from its partnerships with GreyLodge, WFMU, PennSound, The Electronic Poetry Center, The Center for Literary Computing, and ArtMob.
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