Schwarzer Markt Rote Bücher

Class struggle over copyright. A contemporary perspective on the pirate publishing movement of the 1960s.

The ‘Black Market for Red Books’ project is part of a Germany-wide initiative to research pirate publications – initiated by Prof. Dr Annette Gilbert, a literary scholar at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. Students on the Integrated Design course at the University of the Arts (HfK) Bremen took part in the project during the winter semester 2025/26 and the summer semester 2026, under the guidance of Jasper Otto Eisenecker, lecturer in Visual Communication, and Tania Prill, HfK professor of typography.

Drawing on the collection of ‘grey literature’ and pirated books held by the State and University Library of Bremen (SuUB), as well as research in the Archive of Independent Publishing (AIP) at the HfK Bremen, 13 multimedia works were created that explore issues of intellectual property, accessibility, digitisation and collective knowledge production, whilst addressing the historical phenomenon of pirated printing. A field that has so far received little academic attention is being explored, reinterpreted and recontextualised through design. This has given rise to the exhibition ‘Black Market, Red Books’, organised in cooperation with the SuUB, which can be seen there until 8 October 2026.

Thanks to student and left-wing movements, pirated publications reached their peak in the 1960s. The concept of knowledge as collective property was held up as a counterpoint to bourgeois copyright law. These low-cost publications enabled a broader section of the population to access literature that was predominantly critical of capitalism, philosophical or feminist in nature. Due to the subsequent criminalisation of the pirated printing movement, its publications now exist only as a marginal phenomenon within academic and archival contexts.

The works on display take the pirated printing movement as their starting point in order to translate its concerns and practices into the present day. They engage with digital infrastructures and contemporary forms of copying, as well as with the visual language of pirated prints, their paratexts and their function as social and political objects. The exhibition is intended as a subjective reinterpretation of this movement.

With contributions from Janne Paula Hecker, Lukas Hoppe, Yonca Floria Hadassa Jakubowski, Lenya Johanning, Jaehyung Kim, Finn Knutzen, Mira Langer, Olivia Müller, Nadja Reinhart, Joana Rohde, Yannik Roswora, Elizabeth Rusche, Lilli Schnitger, Finja Tineke Schulze Buschhoff, Hanayumi Thomann and Lina Walk

Concept and production of the exhibition: Greta Brockmann, Zhifei Chen, Janina Fiebig, Jan Habbo Poppinga, Lukas Hoppe, Finn Knutzen, Oona Patronen, Jos Jorma Rohls, Yannick Roswora and Hanayumi Thomann

In collaboration with the SuUB and the Friends of the SuUB.