In fact, I would suggest that Library of the Printed Web, housed in a simple wooden box on wheels, is an archive devoted to archives. It's an accumulation of accumulations, a tightly curated collection that frames a particular view of culture as it exists right now, on the web, through print publishing. By documenting these found landscapes and re-framing them in a new context, the collection demands new questions and ideas.
Library of the Printed Web is new — but it isn't. All of the work in the collection has been created since 2008, much of it within the last year. But I believe the project owes a more long-term significance to a compelling twentieth-century trajectory. This is a narrative that begins with the readymade exactly one hundred years ago, passing through all manners of appropriation, conceptual art, zine culture, self-publishing, Lucy Lippard's democratic multiple and net art, to web-to-print practice today.
We can also see Library of the Printed Web as a phenomenon that's entirely contemporary and of this moment: a real enthusiasm for self-publishing, even as its mechanisms continue to evolve. We could even characterize it as mania, one that's come about because of the rise of automated print-on-demand technology, ebooks, networked production and easy distribution.