Badlands Unlimited


Badlands Unlimited was a New York-based independent publisher founded by the artist Paul Chan in 2010. The press published texts by and with other artists in the form of paperbacks, ebooks, digital group exhibitions, a stone book, and other various media. The press also consulted on projects related to digital publishing for art institutions. As of late 2019, Badlands Unlimited has "closed for good".

History

Paul Chan founded Badlands Unlimited in 2010 with the goal of "creating books in an expanded field." The company's flagship publications, The Essential and Incomplete Sade for Sade's Sake and Phaedrus Pron were authored by Chan himself and released as both paperback and e-books. With the publication of a book of poetry by choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, Badlands began its secondary mission of publishing "things no one knew existed."
Badlands continued its departure from traditional paperback books with Mans in the Mirror, a project that Badlands describes as a "first of its kind" 3D e-book. The staff of Badlands authored Mirror over the course of a single day while under the influence of mescaline. Existing solely in e-book format, publication would reinforce Badlands’ emphasis on digital publishing.
In 2012 Badlands published How to Download A Boyfriend, the "first-ever group show in the form of an e-book for the iPad." The show featured contributions from over 50 different artists and included interactive multiple-choice questions for the reader.
Later in 2012 Badlands Unlimited became the NY Art Book Fair's first primarily digital publisher. The press premiered Paul Chan's short story Holiday as both a digital e-book and on a sandstone tablet with its own ISBN.
Badlands further diversified the content of its publications with the release of AD BOOK by the art collective BFFA3AE in 2013. AD BOOK is a book consisting solely of advertisements by artists and institutions.
In keeping with its secondary mission to publish work revealing heretofore unknown sides of public figures, Badlands published a collection of essays On Democracy by Saddam Hussein, 22 years' worth of never before collected diagrams and notes by curator and Serpentine Gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist in Think Like Clouds, and never before published 1964 interviews with Marcel Duchamp by Calvin Tomkins in Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews. Badlands’ most recent publication adhering to this pursuit is The Best Most Useless Dress by poet and New York Times critic Claudia La Rocco.

Selected books and publications

Badlands Unlimited's participation in the 2010 NY Art Book Fair as the event's first publisher primarily focused on e-book publication ignited debate over whether the rise of e-books would mean the destruction of traditional paperback publications.
Apple temporarily removed How to Download a Boyfriend from its e-book store citing concerns over nudity in the book. The item has since been made available for purchase again.