The city’s annual art book fair is back! Bringing the festival to the public space for the first time, the 5th edition of the Athens Art Book Fair, which will take place at Stoa Tritrato in the center of Athens from 4 to 6 October, invites visitors to discover over 150 artists and publishers from Greece and 35 other countries.

Founded in 2019 by Margarita Athanasiou and Michalis Pichler, Athens Art Book Fair is an artist-run initiative aiming to bring together and showcase artist publications produced in Greece as well as to create a link with publishing-based artistic practices (print, online and else) internationally. As with every instalment of the fair, the small team behind AABF toys with distinction between high and low art and curates an eclectic celebration of publishing as artistic practice. The fair hosts established publishing houses, experimental DIY publishing, micro-publishers, contemporary art spaces, queer collectives, riso studios and other representative parts of the parallel scenes that make up the spectrum of art publishing.

This year, 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.

©Lila Efremidou

Definitely worth attending is the exhibition “Out Of The Grid”, which 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 Displayshowcases 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 art book fairs 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.

©Lila Efremidou

Of particular interest 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.

Stay tuned and enjoy the festivities!

A.R.

TAGS: ARTS | LITERATURE & BOOKS | READING GREECE