International festival of artist publications
Athens’ Art Book Fair is back with its 5th edition on October 4th , 5th and 6th at Stoa Tristrato in the center of Athens.
This year the Athens Art Book Fair comes out of the halls of culture and occupies the labyrinthine Stoa Tristrato in the centre of Athens (University metro, entrances to Stadiou 29, Aristidou 6 and Dragatsaniou 6).
Bringing the Athens’ Art Book Fair to the public space for the first time, the 5th edition of the AABF invites visitors to discover over 150 artists and publishers from Greece and 35 other countries.
Visitors will have the opportunity to explore the wide and polyphonic range of independent publishing practices: Fanzines, art publications, photo books, independent magazines, artistic monographs, poetry, research and critical discourse as well as other, uncategorizable publishing experiments.
The parallel Public Program with exhibitions and actions aimed at information and interactivity, presents with a fresh eye, the new wave of artists’ publications as well as mediums that act complementary to them such as sound, performance, poetry, experimental music and radio arts.
Don’t miss during the Art Book Fair
The exhibition “Out Of The Grid” presents a selection of 100 Italian zines spanning from 1978 to 2006 and touching on a wide range of social, political, aesthetic and technological changes in self-publishing, reflecting the evolution of Italian society, especially youth culture, during the “post-movement” and “pre-internet 3.0” era. The exhibition is implemented in collaboration with the Italian Educational Institute.
The annual Collective Display showcases 70+ art publications from around the world as well as a first look at the Athens Art Book Library‘s growing archive, while for the first time digital editions are presented, through the Digitally Native archive.
A big part of the practice of the Art Book Fair is the creation of international artistic networks. This year the Athens Art Book Fair hosts SPRINT Art Book Fair (Italy), MIGRA Art Book Fair (Argentina), Sit and Read Art Book Fair (Romania) and Pagemasters (England). These fairs, much like AABF, are run by independent artists and publishers and aim to empower their local artistic scene and create space for practices that cannot easily enter the public sphere.
Of particular interest during the Athens Art Book Fair, are the presentations of publications from Asian countries such as JOJO (India), Jiazazhi (China) and AABF’s first collaboration with Taiwan, a curated table exhibiting works by the publishing house NOS BOOKS (with the generous support of the Taipei Representative Office in Athens).
In case you are not in Athens, you can tune in to the online radio Fade Radio, which for the third year hosts a program of shows about independent publishing practices (you can listen to the shows of the past years here and here).
