Our Story

Publishing, making public – the crafting of a sharing-gesture. 
Line by line, step by step, and then back, tracing, retracing: publishing as an ecology of attention – to attend, to gather, to produce / reproduce: a multiplication or distribution that may underpin the making of community (what hands come to hold this book, passing it along…)
 Is not publishing a gesture contributing to a “poethical” practice (following Denise Ferreira da Silva)? 
From the writing and mapping of ideas and materials to the threading of lines and lives of connection – a genealogy of citation: a support structure for all that one may think and do – publishing is a nurturing and nourishing endeavor.

While we appreciate digital publishing, and the networked circulation of books and files, online libraries and open access, our practice stays close to printed matter, to the materiality of the book as a form that may lie on the table, be tucked under pillows at night, that may collect the sweat of eager hands, or the mud of streets as one accidentally drops it – we are convinced of the book as an entity that traverses worlds while collecting all the struggle and joy of situated time and space. The book as a palimpsest, collecting the marks and material frictions of its reading.

We started in Los Angeles, as an art project while studying at Cal Arts in the early 1990s. Errant Bodies was initially the title of a journal, focusing on the cross-over between art and writing, very much influenced by the writing scene of Los Angeles at that time (from Dick Hebdige and Amy Gerstler, the Beyond Baroque reading groups and poet series, LACE, Kathy Acker to Wanda Coleman). In 1995 we founded Errant Bodies as a press, continuing to publish our annual journal, and in 1999 we released our first publication, Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear, vol. 1.

From sound and spatial practices to experimental performance and noise, the Press has expanded to additionally focus on poetic and creative writing, artistic research practices and political speculative thought. In 2005 we launched the Surface Tension Working Group, as a way of initiating research and a range of collaborative exhibitions on spatial and sited practices, unfolding the publishing as a greater activity of cooperation and community building, where the book itself becomes both a document as well as a starting point – a beautiful generator of conversation and collaboration, from kitchen tables to cultural fora.

Based in Berlin since 2007, our activities have included the launching of the Errant Bodies project space in Prenzlauer Berg in 2010 (which now exists through the initiative of a collective of artists under the name Errant Sound), as well as launching the Dirty Ear Forum in 2013, an ongoing forum on sound and listening as the basis for collective practice. In 2015, we launched the Free Berlin newspaper in response to the looming questions of “the creative city”, and which continues today as a free paper addressing and capturing grass-roots initiatives, non-governmental work, and artistic activism spanning the globe.

As an independent, hands-on Press, we take joy in working closely with authors and artists, and are dedicated to being attentive to the hard work of others – it is a privilege to publish, to carry the words and thoughts and loving labor of others by way of the making of books, and to care for all the reverberations such work inspires and incites.

Thanks to everyone who has helped us along the way, and that continue to support our activities! We are eternally grateful.