HumDrumPress

HumDrumPress is an expanded publishing project, based between Rotterdam and Berlin, that produces publications, hosts public gatherings, and evolves and maintains an experimental publishing practice.

HumDrumPress works, through collaborative means, to question the conventions of publishing. In doing so, exploring new, connected ways of documenting and circulating voices, ideas, and contexts, and better understanding the role of “publishing” and “publisher” within our current climates.

At the heart of HumDrumPress is the understanding of publishing as a commons, and as a public, community resource. Our publishing projects take the form of both print and digital publications. We publish with a broad range of authors and on subjects from a wide scope of disciplines, backgrounds and experiences. Some of whom are publishing for the first time, whilst others are seasoned writers, but all are connected in their interest in the ideas and methods surrounding “commons” and/or “commoning”.

Cooking Up Collectivity,

Why Read Together?,

How to Love Many in Many Ways,

Sepp Eckenhaussen, Goodbye Poverty Jetset: How Art Workers Make Solidarity Economies, HumDrumPress, 2026 © Sepp Eckenhaussen

The art economy makes some people filthy rich but leaves most people making art in poverty. How is that possible? And, more importantly, how can it be changed? Can we imagine and organise an art world that is economically sustainable for the people working in it?
Each chapter in Goodbye Poverty Jetset focuses on one alternative model that artworkers already practice, including commons, co-operatives, community currencies, basic income, infrastructural critique, fair payment guidelines, economically responsible art education, and social unions. A combination of case studies, theory, and historical reflections provide solid strategic insights into what works for the workers and what doesn’t.
This book is a toolbox for artists, designers, museum guards, curators, writers, tour guides, and art handlers – in short, for all the artworkers who want to change the system they live and work in, collectively.

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