What Are Perhipheral Visions Cards?

Who Are The Cards From And Who Are They For?

Grounded in lived experience, these cards are designed to deepen reflections among people working in collaborative environments, especially in non-dominant peripheral spaces. They embrace nuances of artistic expression, and the challenges and triumphs of maintaining independence in the neoliberal market through mutual symbiosis. Peripheral Visions Cards reflect the experiences of a group of small independent publishers on the semi-periphery of Europe, some of which have worked together across two decades in various capacities. Whether you’re a writer, artist, designer, or editor, we hope that these cards can provide a platform for reflection, exploration, and growth within your collaborative endeavors.

On Publishing and Publishers

Navigating the world of publishing isn’t just about setting words on paper - it’s a dynamic practice that involves curating stories and formats, engaging with diverse constituents, and creating a public life for your work. We position the practice of publishing broadly, as an act of making one’s work public, of intentionally providing an avenue to share something of relevance with the world. Similarly, we consider a publisher any individual or collective who engages in sharing their work publicly. For that reason we refer to this expanded perspective through italicizing the words publishing and publisher. The three card decks of Peripheral Visions Cards are a result of conversations between the collectives engaged in this project, surfacing some common points of struggle and joy in collaborative and independent publishing on the semi-periphery of cultural production.

What Are The Cards For?

Each card offers a unique prompt or scenario crafted to provoke thought, encourage discussion, and inspire new perspectives on the process of bringing creative works into the public sphere. With topics ranging from fostering accountability to uncovering frictions, Peripheral Visions Cards offers a tapestry of distilled community based insights meant to support your creative journey. While the cards are primarily focused on collaborative work within a community (or communities), they are also applicable to individuals in their journey of working with people over a course of time. We invite you to use these cards while in brainstorming sessions, moments of creative blocks, or times of personal reflection to explore your inter-personal relationship with the project(s) you are currently focused on. We hope that you may find inspiration, resonance and humor in these cards to support you in the pursuit of sharing your creative vision with the world.