Metronome (artists' and writers' organ)

Metronome is an artists' and writers' organ founded in 1996 by Clémentine Deliss.

It acts as alternative art publishing, because it has not a fixed editorial team and a fixed location. Its activity started with the publication of a sort of a magazine and in 2005 Deliss decided to build also an experimental publishing house called Metronome Press.

Metronome is a non-profit organisation, it is first of all an organ and a research methodology where artists, writers and curators collaborate to produce printed projects. Its first attempt is to work with fiction, mixing art and literature. For this reason professionals of aesthetic practice, such as the artist, the critic or the writer, overlap and change their role.

Fiction is a central component to all editions of Metronome, and in particular the latest productions with Metronome Press.

Metronome is more often compared to an artwork than a publication because it is both a collective artwork and a research methodology. Furthermore it cannot be considered an art magazine as such because it includes texts of fiction rather than criticism or theoretical texts written by art critics.

As a critical alternative to conventional art publishing, Metronome generates new works by artists and writers with the intention of creating new circuits of art scenes in different locations. It aims to create a neighbourhood between artists and writers of all over the world, stimulating a discussion on the art backstage that cannot take place in the public space as an exhibition. For this reason it is conceived as a creative tangent to an exhibition and an instrument for research.

"I might have been inspired by Deliss's mode of bringing people around a table and create an athmosphere [sic?] of sincere interest for each other, hers was an emotionally bonding project." (Ursula Biemann, artist and curator)

Each issue is the result of a research made in a number of different cities and locations of the world including Dakar, London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Oslo, Basel, Frankfurt, Vienna and others.

Every time the editor Clémentine Deliss creates a group of new collaborators related to the place.

"Metronome is an interpretational tool rather than a vehicle for the promotion of artists' works" (Clémentine Deliss)

Recent issues have been linked to "Future Academy", a research initiative that has been active since 2002 in the UK, Senegal, India, US, Australia, and Japan, and is currently based at Edinburgh College of Art.

This is a pilot issue of Metronome printed in Senegal that set the production of all future issues.

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Wikipedia