172 Classon Avenue, e-flux

Publishers Noted: in which our publisher reviews the building of another publisher.

Since I first signed up for e-flux about six years ago, the publishing platform has graced my inbox to the tune of about ten emails a day. Over the course of a few days this June, I received emails inviting me to exhibition openings in Stuttgart, Houston, San Francisco, Weimar, Maryland, and Tokyo; announcing the beginning of biennials in Beijing and Helsinki; calling for pitches for art to be displayed in Bodø, a Norwegian town just north of the Arctic Circle; asking for proposals for a book to be published by a gallery in the Czech Republic; announcing the opening for applications to a master’s program in painting and digital art in Como, Italy, and two containing critical essays. Given this evocation of the rootless cosmopolitan, it surprised me that e-flux has an office at all, much less deep roots in New York City. Its founder, Anton Vidokle, arrived in Lower Manhattan as a child, when his family left the Soviet Union, and stayed put until very recently, when he moved to Brooklyn…