Rabble, an imprint of Insert Blanc Press was a series of print single author issues of critical essays of about 1500 words on a subject of the author’s choosing, co-edited by Holly Myers and Mathew Timmons. The subjects related to artwork (or series of artworks), but remained broadly defined: visual art, literature, music, architecture, film, design; contemporary or historical. The essays were printed in pamphlet form, with room for a couple full color images, and distributed at a reasonable price.
Rabble was conceived as a venue through which to interrogate the nature of criticism, a laboratory for prodding at the boundaries of criticism as a form. The idea was to begin with a framework that reduces criticism down to its two fundamental components—the thing that's been made and the person who responds to the thing that's been made (i.e., the art work and the critic)—and invite each writer to take it from there. We weren't looking for the average book or exhibition review, but something that tested out a new direction, whatever that meant to the individual author.
We have great confidence in the potential of Rabble to make a lasting contribution to the cultural discourse on the West Coast and beyond. It is our hope that, in charting a path between the two prevailing poles of the genre—the ever-narrowing shutters of print journalism on the one hand and the ponderous obscurity of the academy on the other—Rabble will go some way in restoring the sheer excitement of criticism.