Lucie Kolb is a researcher, editor, and educator whose work unfolds through long-term editorial, curatorial, and publishing projects. She is a founding editor of Brand-New-Life, an open-access journal for art criticism that fosters collective writing and critical discourse on contemporary art and its socio-political contexts. She co-edits the ongoing series Material Marion von Osten, which periodically publishes selected archival documents from the late artist, curator, and theorist von Osten's projects, contextualized with new contributions to preserve and activate her legacy. Lucie also co-initiated distro, an educational platform that explores the circulation of independent publications, emphasizing alternative dissemination strategies and the politics of distribution. Her practice encompasses editing journals, commissioning texts, designing discursive frameworks, and curating publishing formats that traverse digital, print, and spatial mediums. Lucie teaches at IXDM, HGK Basel, where she is Professor of Critical Publishing in the MA Transversal Design program and leads the MAKE/SENSE PhD program.
Lucie Kolb, Jonas von Lenthe, Max Stocklosa (Eds.)
Material Marion von Osten Nr. 1: MoneyNations
Wirklichkeit Books, 2024
This inaugural volume in the Material Marion von Osten series revisits MoneyNations, a transdisciplinary project by Marion von Osten that unfolded at Shedhalle Zurich in the late 1999s. Merging archival materials with new conversations, the publication explores how the project operated as an evolving infrastructure—exhibition, webzine, radio, conference, and printed matter—addressing the complex entanglements of race, economic exploitation, and identity politics in post-Cold War Europe. With contributions by Sezgin Boynik (Rab-Rab Press), Ferdiansyah Thajib (KUNCI Study Forum & Collective), Eleanor Ivory Weber & Camilla Wills (Divided Publishing), the book reactivates von Osten’s methodologies of critique and organizing at the intersections of art, theory, and activism.
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IG Rote Fabrik, Lucie Kolb, Eva Weinmayr (Eds.)
Der radikale Katalog
Fabrikzeitung, 2021
This issue of Fabrikzeitung extends the discursive and pedagogical practices initiated in the 2021 exhibition Reading the Library at Sitterwerk St. Gallen. Framing the library catalog as a critical tool, the publication interrogates how classification systems shape access to knowledge and power structures. Through an intersectional lens, the editors and contributors—Emily Drabinski, Nora Schmidt, Shusha Niederberger, Karin K. Bühler, Sibylle Omlin, Roland Früh, Noemie Parisi, Feminist Search Tools, circuit, Eva Weinmayr, and Lucie Kolb—explore practices for making these hidden frameworks visible and subject to reimagining. The publication offers both theoretical reflections and practical interventions, and functions as an expanded syllabus for critical cataloging.
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Lucie Kolb (Ed.)
Artwork as Institution. Stephen Willats
Brand-New-Life, 2019
This publication brings together a selection of Stephen Willats’ Mosaic works from the 1990s, created across neighborhoods in Great Britain and Finland. Through these socially engaged projects, Willats reconceptualizes the role of the artist as a facilitator of collective knowledge production. Using books as relational tools, the works establish a dialogical field between artists, audiences, and institutional contexts. The publication considers how Willats’ artistic strategies prefigure contemporary debates on participatory practices and self-instituting art forms. With contributions by Willats himself and Elsa Himmer, the volume positions the artist’s work as a formative reference for rethinking the institutional logic of art.
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Lucie Kolb, Barbara Preisig, Pablo Müller, Judith Welter (Eds.)
Fandom
Brand-New-Life, 2018
Compiled from contributions published on Brand-New-Life between 2016 and 2018, Fandom engages with the productive tensions between fandom and critical distance. The volume brings together essays by artists and writers Mitchell Anderson, Mathis Gasser, Dorota Halina Gawęda, Lucie Kolb and Egle Kulbokaite, Stefan Geene, Eva Kenny, Elena Filipovic, Sarah Owens and Barbara Preisig, Regina Pfister, Ian Wooldridge, and Hannes Loichinger. It explores how fandom—as a practice of affective engagement—can generate new forms of critique, solidarity, and identification within and beyond the field of contemporary art. The editors foreground the political potential of writing that embraces subjectivity, collectivity, and the messy entanglements of affection and analysis.
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Lucie Kolb, Barbara Preisig, Judith Welter (Eds.)
Paratexte. Zwischen Produktion, Vermittlung und Rezeption
Diaphanes, 2018
This edited volume investigates how contemporary art extends beyond conventional formats into paratextual spaces—catalogues, invitations, editorial formats, and online platforms. Drawing on Gérard Genette’s concept of the paratext, the book considers these forms as active sites of artistic, curatorial, and theoretical negotiation. With contributions by scholars and practitioners Beatrice von Bismarck, Annette Gilbert, Eva Kernbauer, Lucie Kolb, Antje Krause-Wahl, Rachel Mader, Barbara Preisig, and Judith Welter, Paratexte challenges the boundaries between production, mediation, and reception. It invites readers to reconsider how art is made legible and how the context becomes an integral part of the work’s meaning and circulation.
Lucie Kolb, Christoph Lang, Wolfgang Ullrich, Judith Welter (Eds.)
Art Handling. Partituren der Logistik
JRP|Ringier, 2016
This comprehensive reader explores the hidden infrastructures and logistical frameworks that undergird the art world—handling, transportation, storage, installation, and documentation. Originating from a symposium at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst (Zurich), the book highlights how these operational systems have become increasingly complex in response to the demands of contemporary, ephemeral, and performative practices. Essays by Monika Dommann, Peter Schneemann, Tobias Vogt, and Beat Wyss critically examine how logistical protocols not only support but actively shape artistic production. Art Handling foregrounds the material, institutional, and epistemic implications of logistics as a curatorial and artistic concern.
Gabriel Flückiger, Lucie Kolb (Eds.)
On Curating, Nr. 21, (New) Institution(alism)
2014
This issue of On Curating revisits New Institutionalism—a curatorial and artistic framework that emerged around the 2000s to reconceptualize the role of art institutions as spaces of critical research and social engagement. In light of shifting cultural policies and economic constraints across Europe, the publication reflects on the legacy and transformation of these practices. Contributions span historical analysis and contemporary critique, offering a nuanced understanding of how New Institutionalism continues to inform, haunt, and complicate the organization of art today. The issue aims to foster differentiated approaches to institutional critique through a multiplicity of voices and perspectives.
Online Issue
Corinn Gerber, HIT, Lucie Kolb, Romy Rüegger (Eds.)
We would like to learn and we are working on a book…
Passenger Books, 2012
This experimental publication frames the book as a pedagogical space—a classroom in which contributors adopt multiple roles: student, professor, friend, reader, and more. Structured around the formal elements of book design (index, margins, preface, layout), the project invites engagement through textual and visual contributions by Ellen Blumenstein, bolwerK, Vincent Bonin, Irina Dumitrescu, Eva Egermann + Elke Krasny, Dani Gal + Achim Lengerer, Maaike Grouwenberg, Max Jorge Hinderer, Egija Inzule + Maja Wismer, Karl Larsson, Falke Pisano, Kristina Lee Podesva, Simone Schardt, Robin Simpson, Andrea Thal, Danna Vajda, and Jacob Wren. It opens a site for collective inquiry that challenges traditional hierarchies of knowledge and authorship. Drawing on performative and discursive strategies, the book stages itself as an open-ended, participatory learning environment. It reflects a shared commitment to publishing as a tool for radical pedagogy.
distro
Lucie Kolb and Philipp Messner, since 2023
distro.infospace.ch
distro is a self-organized educational platform situated within Infospace—a collective exhibition and information initiative focused on resource sharing. With regular opening hours, exhibitions, and events, distro explores experimental publishing as a practice that intersects with urgent social, political, and ecological questions. Engaging with modes of distribution, access, and circulation, distro supports alternative economies of knowledge production and investigates the critical potential of print and digital media. The project positions publishing not only as a means of dissemination but as an active site for research, dialogue, and solidarity. distro cultivates new publics and promotes infrastructural thinking through publishing.
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Brand-New-Life. Magazin für Kunstkritik
Lucie Kolb, Lara Kothe, Pablo Müller, Barbara Preisig, Judith Welter, since 2015
www.brand-new-life.org
Brand-New-Life is an open access magazine transversing visual art, art criticism, and practice-oriented research to focus on the complexities and ambivalences of worlds in transition. It provides a platform for analytical and experimental forms of writing that engage with the complexities of contemporary art and its socio-political entanglements. Through thematic issues, commissioned texts, and curated contributions, Brand-New-Life fosters a translocal network of critical exchange.
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Teaching the Radical Catalogue. A Syllabus
Lucie Kolb and Eva Weinmayr, since 2021
syllabus.radicalcatalogue.net
Developed from Emily Drabinski’s homonymous foundational text on critical cataloging, this syllabus investigates the politics of library infrastructure from an intersectional and decolonial perspective. Through workshops, interviews, and discursive formats, the program explores practices of naming, searching, and organizing knowledge. Initiatives like Feminist Search Tools, The Rewrite, Intersectional Manoeuvres, Constant and Library of Inclusions and Omissions introduce alternative methodologies that challenge dominant cataloging norms. Teaching the Radical Catalogue fosters pedagogical spaces that create an awareness and an understanding of the underlying structural biases so that they can be addressed. The syllabus functions as both a critical toolkit and an evolving platform for collective study.
Wir publizieren
Franziska Bauer, Lukas Cvitak, Lucie Kolb, Lara Kothe, Robert Lzicar, Tine Melzer, Daniela Mirabella, Tania Prill, Rejane Salzmann, Studio Harris Blondman, Saskia van der Meer, Andreas Vogel, 2018-2023
www.wir-publizieren.ch
Wir publizieren was a research, exhibition, and teaching project investigating the histories and futures of independent publishing in Switzerland. Drawing on an archive of grassroots publications from the 1960s to today, the project examined how non-institutional practices have engaged with cultural, political, and aesthetic issues. Created at Bern University of the Arts (2018–2023), it foregrounded publishing as a form of situated knowledge, shaped by self-organization, experimentation, and resistance. Through workshops, exhibitions, and the archive itself, Wir publizieren facilitated inquiry into how modes of reproduction, design, and distribution reflect and challenge social dynamics across generations.
Allmendstrasse 151
Ann-Kathrin Eickhoff and Lucie Kolb, 2018
www.151allmendstrasse.ch
Allmendstrasse 151 was a temporary bookshop and event space located in Zurich-Manegg, active during summer 2018. The project brought together independent publishing initiatives and curated public programs, creating a space for encounter, conversation, and informal dissemination with contributions by Jessica Aimufua, Kathrin Bentele, Nicolas Brulhart, continent., Annemarie Hösli, Milena Maffei, Philipp Messner, Christoph Schifferli, Geraldine Tedder, Ramaya Tegegne and Stephen Willats. Run in collaboration with ORAIBI + BECKBOOKS, the bookshop featured publications that explored experimental forms of writing, visual culture, and critical theory. Allmendstrasse 151 acted as a performative archive, extending the bookshop into a discursive and artistic platform.
radio arthur
Franziska Glozer, Lucie Kolb, and Valentina Stieger, 2007-2013
www.radioarthur.ch
Broadcast monthly from 2007–2013 on Radio LoRa 97.5 MHz, radio arthur was a radio project at the intersection of contemporary art, discourse, and sound. Each episode brought together conversations, experimental audio, interviews, and sonic essays that challenged conventional radio formats and explored the medium’s potential as an artistic and critical tool. Contributors included artists and theorists such as San Keller, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Georg Gatsas, Marthe van Dessel, Steven Parrino/Oliver Mosset, Peter Friedl/Jan Manucska, FSK, Daniel Baumann, IFF, Beni Bischof, Hito Steyerl, Burkard Meltzer, Cathérine Hug, Andrea Thal, Jutta Koether, Anne Käthi Wehrli, Marcel Broodthaers, Kai Althoff, Riikka Tauriainen, Art & Language, Barbara Preisig, Quinn Latimer, Maja Wismer, Ernst Karel, Hannah Weinberger, Paulina Olowska & Lucy McKenzie, Tris Vonna-Michell, Avigail Moss, Annette Wehrmann, Karl Holmqvist, Michael Riedel, Seth Price, Judith Welter, Philipp Messner, Dominique Koch, John Cage, Marlie Mul, Egija Inzule & Tobias Kaspar, Ines Kleesattel, James Hoff, and Lauris Paulus. By emphasizing voice and orality, the project foregrounded the performative and affective dimensions of knowledge production. radio arthur also featured in exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthaus Glarus, Z33 Hasselt and others.
With With
Lucie Kolb, Romy Rüegger, 2011-2013
www.withwith.ch
With With was a lecture and performance series (2011–2013) that invited artists, theorists, and writers to reflect on essayistic and performative practices in contemporary art. Hosted by institutions across Europe—including Les Complices*, sic! Raum für Kunst, X Marks the Bökship and Depot Vienna—the series explored how lectures and performances operate as “vocal settings” that suspend knowledge hierarchies and enable critical self-positioning. Participants such as bolwerK, Koen Brams, Dani Gal, Max Jorge Hinderer, Will Holder, Karl Larsson, Susanne Leeb, Achim Lengerer, Eva Meyer, Mara Montoya, Falke Pisano, Eran Schaerf, Kerstin Stakemeier, and Hito Steyerl engaged with methods of historical analysis, discursive interruption, and collective authorship. With With staged the lecture as both form and critique, bridging reflection and enactment.
