Free Marketplace

New release 2020

There are no signs saying „Caution, Slip Hazard“ on the rainy wet steps of the career ladder, even though these steps hold surprises that one can slide into. The fantastic tale about starting-from-the-bottom-arriving-at-the-top (social advancement) seems questionable and implausible. Less steep ascents are less straining.
In Slippery Stairs/Glitschige Stufen Leonie Nagel combines texts with diagrams and photographs. The texts are concerned with wage labor experiences. The diagrams describe paths with start and finish points and the photographs show staircases on which one can retrace such paths. However, it is often unclear whether the highest number of steps will take you to the top and if the first step is really the beginning, since the starting point cannot be the same for everyone, as much as it would be desirable.
Making use of an extended translation technique, the book is published simultaneously in German and English.

Slippery Stairs

Published by the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux in collaboration with BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE, this reference book surveys the history of the independent publishing house Beau Geste Press (BGP) through the publications of its founding members Felipe Ehrenberg, Martha Hellion, David Mayor and Chris Welch, and of the numerous visitors to its rural outpost – visual poets, neo-Dadaists and artists affiliated with the Fluxus movement – from 1971 to 1976. A ‘catalogue dé-raisonné’ of all the printed matter produced by BGP, it is complemented by critical essays and first-hand texts that explore the working methods (economy and autonomy of production, distribution of books via post) and document the international influence of this short-lived ‘community of duplicators, printers, and artisans’.
Designed by Studio Manuel Raeder and edited by curator Alice Motard, this richly illustrated 472 page-book follows on from the exhibition Beau Geste Press, shown at CAPC from 2 February to 28 May 2017. This publication, which was long in the making, is in itself a collective labour of love that brings together a worldwide network of friends and collaborators: it is dedicated to them, to Beau Geste Press and to its extended family.

Beau Geste Press

Der Band stellt eine kritische Auswahl aus der Generation von Malern vor, die im Jahrzehnt vor der „Friedlichen Revolution“ geborenen wurden und die zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts in Leipzig an der renommierten Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst studiert haben. Er zeigt herausragende Arbeiten von Malte Masemann bis Maria Schumacher. Sie verdeutlichen zum einen, dass das oft beschworene „Ende der Malerei“ bis heute ausblieb und zum anderen stehen diese Maler für eine Aufhebung der vermeintlichen Gegensätzlichkeit von abstrakten und figürlichen Darstellungsformen innerhalb des Mediums.

Antipoden? Neueste Leipziger Schule

New release 2021

Publisher’s Choice

Students Selection

It’s a book 2021

welcome

Introduction: website 
Anne Dietzsch, Wolfgang Schöffel, Michael Seibert
Introduction: Studio 
Laura Hähnel, Hagen Tanneberger, Lukas Weber
Introduction: student competition 
Emil Kowalczyk, Merle Petsch

it’s a book introduction

Paul B. Preciado is the author of Counter-Sexual Manifesto, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics, Pornotopia, for which he was awarded the Sade Prize in France, and An Apartment on Uranus. Chronicles of the Crossing. He is currently Curator of Public Programmes at the Palais de Tokyo and lives in Paris.
The text “Our Screens Are Watching Each Other” is read with Preciado’s kind permission from his book An Apartment on Uranus (© An Apartment on Uranus, Paul. B. Preciado, translated by Charlotte Mandell, Fitzcarraldo Editions, London, 2020. Copyright © Paul B. Preciado, 2019. Translation copyright © Charlotte Mandell, 2020. Reproduced by permission of Fitzcarraldo Editions).

Reading of Paul B. Preciado’s text “Our Screens Are Watching Each Other” by Paula Vogel  

Abstract: 
In the spirit of Preciado and his precursors, this lecture proposes to understand materiality not in opposition to a supposed immateriality of ‘the digital,’ but rather to conceive of it as a gradual phenomenon. Taking Preciado’s criticism of “the dualist epistemology of the West” as a starting point, different categories of materiality (literal, forensic, formal, distributed, performative, digital) will be reviewed with regards to the field of book design and publishing. 
A reassessed, ‘de-binarised’ concept of materiality allows for new ways of discussing analogue and digital publications beyond the common dichotomies, shifting our focus to “the strange space [&#8230;] between,” which can already be found in Derrida.
Bio: 
Hagen Verleger is a multidisciplinary designer, editor, researcher, and lecturer from Berlin. In his work, which often revolves around the practice and theory of editing and publishing, he explores themes such as power structures within institutions, collective models of authorship, and materially embedded ideologies.

hagen-verleger_1

Hagen-Verleger_1

Hagen Verleger: the strange space [...] between

Abstract:
I’ve noticed how websites disguise themselves by repeating the same structures and similar templates, and devices are getting vague by simplifying the design. Tools and platforms hide themselves by removing their own characteristics, blurring the border between real and virtual (web) space, and the border between contents. Under the concept of ‘user friendliness’ (which is considered to be the ideal design), most websites and devices use standardized design and interface conventions that don’t require the user to learn how to use a new interface – instead, users repeat the behavior they’ve been accustomed to. This automatic repetition of action causes people to lose their content awareness.
So, to counteract this, I am trying to create websites and tools that are more content-focused and expressive, with the web space strongly constructed and curated.
 
Bio:
Yehwan Song studied graphic design at Hongik University in Seoul (2014–2020), HDK Gothenburg University (2016) and the School For Poetic Computation in New York (2019). Through her design practice, she invents new methods and ways to use the web as a space for content awareness, always challenging interface conventions and standardized design. In this process, wonderfully interactive and playful approaches emerge.

yehwan_song

Yehwan_Song

Yehwan Song: Counteracting automatic repetition of action

Lina Ehrentraut hat ihre Lesung bei „It’s a book“ abgesagt.
Sie möchte aufgrund der aktuell teilweise sichtbar gewordenen Fälle von Machtmissbrauch an der HGB und aufgrund des derzeitigen öffentlichen Umgangs von Seiten der Hochschule mit diesen Vorkommnissen nicht mit der HGB kooperieren.

Lina Ehrentraut – abgesagt

Paul B. Preciado is the author of Counter-Sexual Manifesto, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopolitics, Pornotopia, for which he was awarded the Sade Prize in France, and An Apartment on Uranus. Chronicles of the Crossing. He is currently Curator of Public Programmes at the Palais de Tokyo and lives in Paris.

The text “After the Book, Lets Print on Flesh” is read with Preciado’s kind permission from his book An Apartment on Uranus (© An Apartment on Uranus, Paul. B. Preciado, translated by Charlotte Mandell, Fitzcarraldo Editions, London, 2020. Copyright © Paul B. Preciado, 2019. Translation copyright © Charlotte Mandell, 2020. Reproduced by permission of Fitzcarraldo Editions).

Reading of Paul B. Preciado’s text “After the Book, Lets Print on Flesh” by Philipp Adrian Djokic 

Abstract:
Was nehmen wir wahr und was sind unsere „blinden Flecke“? Kritische Gestaltung ist nicht nur eine Frage der Funktion oder des politischen Gehalts. Sie muss sich an der „sinnlichen Ordnung“ einer Gesellschaft abarbeiten, sprich: an den Konstellationen von Formen, mit denen wir täglich umgehen, und dem Wahrnehmungswissen, das sich mittels dieser Formen reproduziert. Nur so lassen sich Trans-Formen entwickeln, die ein anderes Wahrnehmen und andere Beziehungsweisen ermöglichen. Critical Design ist ästhetisch.
 
Bio:
Sophia Prinz ist Kultursoziologin und Kulturtheoretikerin. Nach dem Studium der Kulturwissenschaften (Universität Lüneburg/Leuphana), war sie wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin in Bereich Kultursoziologie (Universität Konstanz/Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt Oder). Sie promovierte mit einer Arbeit zur Praxistheorie der Wahrnehmung (2014 erschienen unter dem Titel Die Praxis des Sehens. Über das Zusammenspiel von Körpern, Artefakten und visueller Ordnung). Von 2018–2020 war sie Gastprofessorin für Theorie der Gestaltung/Gender Studies an der UdK Berlin. Neben ihrer universitären Tätigkeit war sie an zahlreichen Ausstellungsprojekten beteiligt (u.a. am Johann Jacobs Museum in Zürich und am MKG in Hamburg). Neben Praxis, Körper- und Wahrnehmungstheorien beschäftigt sie sich mit dem Wechselverhältnis von Gesellschaft und Gestaltung sowie der transkulturellen „Migration der Form“ in der globalen Moderne. Aktuell ist Sophia Prinz Fellow am Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study (HIAS) und wird ab August 2021 die Professur für Designtheorie und -geschichte an der ZHdK Zürich übernehmen.

Sophia Prinz: Trans-Formen

Abstract:
Many familiar items can be turned into a playmate: bottles, slippers, household utensils. We accept them unchanged in their forms, and we give them a personality. With little money and time, a book turns into a lively character. 
Once one has become conscious of the possibilities, miniature things leap into view from the store shelves, and whole forests of trees can be seen in a weed. For this tenth Act, Bibliomania zooms to a very (un)realistic diorama — it’s a box, it’s a dream, it’s a book in-between.
 
Bio:
Bibliomania is an editorial puppet show for all ages, diversely narrated by Alexandru Balgiu &#038; Olivier Lebrun since 2015. About books and those who love them too much.

Alexandru Balgiu & Olivier Lebrun: Bibliomania, Act 10: You will need …

Unboxing Videos on Stream

Leibniz is like all these tabs you have open in your browser for months, the ones which you sometimes forget about but then open arbitrarily one day to find some pretty nice surprises inside.
Like Moritz Paul’s debut release on Fourth Wave, in 2013 whose wonky house grooves greet you like the Facebook profile of an old friend you wanted to write a while ago because you felt like you two should totally catch up. Or his subsequent records for labels like Uncanny Valley’s shtum and Rat Life series or Ortloff from Leipzig, where he used to live before relocating to Berlin. They were all a bit rougher, more technoid even, but all very much influenced by what you can read about in that comprehensive history of the hardcore continuum that you’d stumbled upon a while back when you had that “phase” in which you said “massive” way too often.
Eventually, you will open this one YouTube tutorial for something Ableton-related and recognise the voice talking about drum beats — you’ve totally heard that one before. Perhaps on Leibniz’s “Online” EP, the first release on hundert, the label he co-founded in 2017 with his partners in crime from DJ bwin and DJ OK. They draw from exactly the kind of theoretical ramblings about the internet, modern life and interpersonal communication in this age that you usually click around 4am, but then can’t get yourself to read because life’s too complex as it is already, isn’t it? Meanwhile, Leibniz himself is sampling all those bits and pieces, these alien human voices and sound artefacts from around the web to draw connections between people and things. He’s a bit like that kooky guy who sends you links to extensive political commentary, always shortly after six in the morning for some reason. You appreciate that, though, because who else is so consistent like that these days?
But finally, there’s Leibniz’s Soundcloud profile in which you can get lost more easily than if it were a constant stream of tumblr memes. There’s his more belting live sets, there’s his slew of remixes for other artists, his many B2B sets with friends and family or some teasers for the Fier nights he puts on with the hundert and PH17 crews at Berlin’s ://about:blank club. It’s as if you’d incidentally beatmatched three different tracks that started automatically after you accidentally clicked them — it all comes together here, it all suddenly makes sense. And you know what — you could just leave those running and close all other tabs, get on with your life and maybe, finally, take that shower.
(Text: Moritz Paul)
 
Saou Tanaka a.k.a SAOU TV is a VJ and Video Artist based in Leipzig. Born in Kawasaki in Japan and raised in Paris, she studied photography in Berlin before studying Multimedia / VR-Design at the Burg Giebichenstein Art University in Halle. Inspired by old TVs, youtube dog videos and old-school computer graphics, her VJ sets are colourful and mixed with found footages, 3D objects and glitches.

Leibniz live Visuals by Saou Tanaka

Find all Videos on our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNQgfV0q0Q359wKO-suUMpQ">YouTube-Channel</a>

Unboxing Books Intro

Unboxing Edition No 6

Unboxing Edition No 7

Unboxing Edition No 8

Unboxing Edition No 9

Unboxing Edition No 10

Unboxing Edition No 11

Unboxing Edition No 12

Unboxing Edition No 13

Unboxing Edition No 14

Unboxing Edition No 15

Unboxing Edition No 16

Unboxing Edition No 17

Unboxing Edition No 18 + Outro

Die DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg ist ein international renommierter Anbieter von hochwertigen Druckerzeugnissen, insbesondere Architektur- und Kunstbüchern sowie Bildbänden. Mit über 400 Jahre Erfahrung, erarbeitet durch viele Generationen von Setzern, Druckern und Buchbindern, bieten wir induviduelle Lösungen für Produkte mit anspruchsvollen Charakter und hochwertiger Materialisierung an. Unsere spezialisierte Fertigung ermöglicht es, Druckprodukte exclusiv in Form, Grafik und Haptik in kleinen bis mittleren Auflagen herzustellen.

Title of video: 
PIST PROTTA THE MOVIE
Creators: 
Jesper Fabricius, Åse Eg Jørgensen, Emilia Michalsdotter
Text: 
The short film PIST PROTTA THE MOVIE. 
Starting point is the Danish art magazine PIST PROTTA. It appeared for the first time 40 years ago in 1981, and in all these years tried to be art in its own right and not only a magazine about art. PIST PROTTA changes size (and sometimes even shape) for every issue published. We see it as an experimental art magazine, which reflects the magazine as an idea, but also an experiment with different printing techniques, paper, bindings, typography, concepts etc. We hope to reflect this in film in such a way, that the film itself will be a work of art. 
The film consists of shots of pages from all issues of PIST PROTTA. The camera zooms in on the pages and in the editing we have speeded up everything. An exemplary representation of the magazine and a delirious time travel. On the soundtrack there are some discussions (in Danish) of PIST PROTTA and an attempt to make music. For clarification the soundtrack is also speeded up.

PistProtta TheMovie

Unboxing Edition No 1

Unboxing Edition No 2

Unboxing Edition No 3

Unboxing Edition No 5

Unboxing Edition No 4

it’s a book, it’s a screen, it’s a space in between 
virtual independent publishing fair 
29th may 2021

Kindly supported by Support-Büro der HGB Leipzig and DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg
A project by Prof. Markus Dreßen, Albrecht Gäbel and Dr. Sabine Schmid developed and implemented with students by HGB Leipzig and unfun (Wolfgang Schöffel and Michael Seibert)

Team

Gerrit Brocks, Tjaša Cizej, Anne Dietzsch, Nino Ducau, Max Gültig, Laura Hähnel, Basil Haug, Emil Kowalczyk, Julia Lackner, Paulina Mohr, Bastian Moosburger, Merle Petsch, Hagen Tanneberger, Luki Weber

poster

Tjaša Cizej, Max Gültig, Laura Hähnel, Basil Haug (design) 
Printed by HGB Graphic Workshops (Laura Hähnel and Johannes Oestringer)

Website

Anne Dietzsch, Albrecht Gäbel, Emil Kowalczyk, Paulina Mohr, UNFUN (concept), Anne Dietzsch (design), UNFUN (Wolfgang Schöffel, coding)

Project Management

Coordination publishers

Student competition

Program and symposium

Markus Dreßen, Albrecht Gäbel, Laura Hähnel, Julia Lackner, Bastian Moosburger, Merle Petsch, Sabine Schmid, Hagen Tanneberger, Luki Weber

Unboxing Videos

Luki Weber (production), Santiago Pastor Garcia &amp; Ciara Kennedy (hosts), Tim Stollberg (camera), Special thanks to Donna &amp; Mimi

Reading of texts by Paul B. Preciado

Philipp Adrian Djokic, Paula Vogel

Guests of the symposium

Alexandru Balgiu &amp; Olivier Lebrun, Philipp Adrian Djokic, Leibnitz, Lina Ehrentraut, Sophia Prinz, Yehwan Song, Hagen Verleger, Paula Vogel

Studio design

Hagen Tanneberger, Luki Weber (concept and installation)

Live event

Laura Hähnel, Luki Weber (direction), Moritz Paul (technical direction)

Public relations

Albrecht Gäbel, Laura Hähnel, Sabine Schmid

Dank

Alexandru Balgiu &amp; Olivier Lebrun, Prof. Dr. Romy Baumgarten, Prof. Dr. Beatrice von Bismarck, Julia Brodauf, Philipp Adrian Djokic, Donna &amp; Mimi, Leibnitz, Lina Ehrentraut, Meike Giebeler, Ilse Lafer, Johannes Oestringer, Santiago Pastor, Prof. Dr. Sophia Prinz, Wolfgang Schöffel, Michael Seibert, Jens Sippenauer (DZA), Yehwan Song, Hagen Verleger, Paula Vogel — und einfach an alle helfenden Hände und Gäst*innen

Imprint

Privacy Policy

Info
“It’s a book, …”, the annual meeting of producers in the field of independent publishing, takes place for the twelfth time in 2021. For the eighth year in a row, it is developed as part of a project seminar at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig. A group of students is conceiving, developing and preparing the event.
As we were in the final stages of preparing the last edition of the “It’s a book, …” in early March 2020, we were forced to cancel it due to the measures taken to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, the culture of independent publishing manifests itself especially through fairs and thus is currently facing difficult times. We were wondering in what form the “It’s a book, …” could take place this year. How can we create a place for the public under the current premises? How can we bundle the accumulated knowledge of the past symposia of the “It’s a book, …”? Which networks can we activate to perceive the distances no longer as spatial obstacles, but—with temporal shifts—as a positive meeting?
Beyond large gatherings of people that have become critical places, we are questioning and activating the digital space that has generally been activated in the cultural sphere the last year—in order to once again highlight the nature of the “It’s a book, …” as its real strength: as a place of encounter, as a marketplace for books and knowledge, and as a place for exchanging ideas and debates. For the first time we will host a purely digital event on a specially developed and designed website implemented in close collaboration with Berlin design studio UNFUN. This new website will remain online permanently as a new and growing platform with a non-commercial marketplace and has been conceived in intensive exchange and with great commitment from the publishers.
This year’s fair is called “It’s a book, it’s a screen, it’s a space in between”: What does this digital space look like? How do we create spaces that visitors can enter and leave? How do we simulate the possibility of active participation, of exchange and physical presence not only virtually, but also implement it factually in the virtual space?
The website is our container for the “It’s a book, …” 2021: It is a digital, non-commercial marketplace, it is a showcase for publishers, designers and bookstores and it is an international platform for producers and their programs. We reframed the student competition, critically evolved from the discussions at the last “It’s a book, &#8230;”, which focused the evaluation of books. Through unboxing videos we want to represent part of the tactile experience at book fairs that is clearly missing being a digital event. And we create the website as a space for our guests invited to the symposium; we are happy to welcome Alexandru Balgiu and Olivier Lebrun, Leibnitz, Lina Ehrentraut, Sophia Prinz, Yehwan Song and Hagen Verleger among others for their lectures and performances respectively.
The symposium and other formats will be partly recorded beforehand, partly broadcast live from our studio at the HGB. Altogether they will be transmitted to other parts of the world and they will be available in a media library later on. Our studio is part of “Broken relations – Infrastruktur und Unterbrechung Kunst unter pandemischen Bedingungen”, a project of the HGB Gallery in cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Our setup extends the project into the atrium of the HGB that is usually welcoming visitors at the fair with many exhibiting publishers—as a reference to the place where the “It’s a book, &#8230;” took place the last years. Certain aspects of the open and modular / reusable structure of the studio also connect with the design and the codes of the website.
For our thematic focus, we are looking at the philosopher Paul B. Preciado. His writings are the starting point for us to think about new forms of the public space. It is about understanding the change of the world not only through the restrictions we feel after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, but to consider this moment embedded in conflicts and struggles that were already there before. “It’s a book, it’s a screen, it’s a space in between”: The space in between refers to the situation of transition the world is currently in. Between book and screen, from a disciplinary society to a society of control, from a fixation on two genders to diversity, from power to participation.
Markus Dreßen, Albrecht Gäbel, Sabine Schmid, May 2021