Counterpath is a publisher, gallery, event space, and bookstore. Counterpath was founded in 2006 and has published nearly 50 titles to date. Its gallery and event space opened in late 2010 in Denver, Colorado, hosting over 160 exhibitions, performances, and events. Counterpath’s new venue, at 7935 East 14th Avenue in Denver, is currently under renovation but will be open to the public in 2015. I recently spoke to Tim Roberts via email.
Alexis Almeida: How did Counterpath get started? What was your initial vision for the press?
Tim Roberts: That’s an interesting assumption, that we had a vision, or that a press needs a vision. The implications are many: that we, for some reason, saw something we wanted to accomplish, that we believed needed to be done, something to create that didn’t yet exist, or that was outside what already existed. In some way we believed we could operate, by our own decision, in a way separate from what we might already do automatically— separate from a need to make a living, to not get pummeled by the weather, to bring food to one’s mouth. This was just about a decade back, and I’m not sure I’m prepared at the moment to sketch out lines of developmental continuity that might not make any sense next week or next month. I think you could say we did something in the media, at a time when media was shifting. I think you could say we took something with vaguely personal motives and said this is public, impersonal, objectively valuable, in some way, at some demarcation point, by fiat. We set ourselves up to be believed. Like anyone else, we had an idea of how media works, and how it would work for us. We had an idea of what reading was.
AA: In addition to the books you publish, I know your performance space/bookstore is a crucial part of Counterpath. Can you talk a bit about how it works in conjunction with your titles, and what you hope to do with the space?
TR: Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what you could say is the techno-epistemological imperialism of capital—how it’s possible to say that we’re not in the service of that. This is a point at which Counterpath would like to achieve a balance. It has nothing whatsoever to do with format, at least to the extent that format isn’t the starting point for any project. So I can confidently say we’re not here to publish books, have a gallery show, host a performance, have a bookstore. These all qualify as available outputs or relations between people, and Counterpath would see itself as this thing that accommodates as many of those as possible.
We’ve been doing this for a little while now, looking (along with lots of other folks) at how a book is a performance, or installation. This question could be seen as the driving force behind pretty much all of what we do. So we want to ask what the contemporary manifestations of this question might be, how this question works. For instance, what are the economic forces behind the creation of any book, from how much it costs to create to whose careers will benefit from its publication. Or, why is the content in a book taking whatever form it takes, why isn’t it a blog post, why is it always already born digital? What is it forgoing by taking the book form? I think that once we start asking questions like these we come back to a place of relevance and community involvement that perhaps precedes or preempts decisions that lead us to delimit what we’re doing to fit things into book form.
AA: On your website you mention that “Counterpath is interested in linguistic and visual interventions in contemporary global culture…” What do you mean by “intervention” here, and how do you see Counterpath, or perhaps small presses in general, being able to stage one?
TR: I love that word “intervention,” since it gets us right into a whole area of rich thinking—with Hardt and Negri or Ranciere—related to attempts at systemic reconfigurations, remappings, or redistributions. We’re within the “imperial biopolitical machine” but also against it, continually hypothesizing figures of resistance. We’re putting together an antagonistic and creative positivity that is not format-specific. And yes, you’re exactly right to choose this moment to talk about the small press: I think it’s these kinds of proto-corporate, micro organizations that can create a form of intervention that can claim to not yet be beholden to larger economic forces. But we’re at another place too, where blogs and social media like Facebook are, of course, small presses on a mass scale, and we need to think about the corporatization of the impulse to share in the first place—how the act of saying what we’re saying to each other plays into or has been picked up by network culture, how sharing, or even looking, is an internalization.
AA: When did you start publishing books in translation? What kind of work are you drawn to?
TR: We have absolutely no commitment to translation for the sake of translation. I think we’re probably far more interested in the problematic of translation’s failure, at the same time as translation’s (or failure’s) urgent necessity. Two points: the number of potential projects we can engage creates a kind of vertigo; the problematic of translation is the same as the problematic of work itself.
AA: What’s ahead for you guys? Are there any forthcoming titles you’re particularly excited about?
Counterpath just secured 7935 East 14th Avenue as its new base in Denver, so we’re excited about that, and more to come.
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Alexis Almeida lives in Denver. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in TYPO, Vinyl Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Divine Magnet, Oversound, and elsewhere. Her translation of Florencia Castellano’s Propiedades vigiladas is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse. A finalist for the Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, she was recently awarded a Fulbright grant to Argentina and will be traveling to Buenos Aires in 2016. You can find her at alexisfalmeida.tumblr.com.
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