Exhibition - Artists as Independent Publishers
Artists as Independent Publishers
Exhibition / 14. to 25. April 2021
Artists' books in a wide variety of formats, colors, and functions can actively absorb, explore, and help shape trends and possibilities in contemporary art. This is what "Artists as Independent Publishers" is showing for the second time at the Center for Artists' Publications, to be found at Bremen's Museum Weserburg. The exhibition is the result of an interdisciplinary cooperation project between six international art academies. Initiated by the HfK, it was supervised there by Stephan Baumkötter, Marion Bösen, Katrin von Maltzahn and Tania Prill. Other participating art schools are Geidai in Tokyo, the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Royal College London, the St. Lucas School of Arts Antwerp and Burg Giebichenstein in Halle.
The topics "artist's book" and "publishing as artistic practice" were dealt with individually at the participating universities. The exhibition shows over 100 work results, which were created from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020. For this purpose, the HfK organized a two-week workshop in November 2019 that was open to fine arts, design, and digital media students. Participants created artist books with freely chosen print media and content. The artist book was reflected upon as a means for critical inquiry, as a platform for communication between different artistic approaches, and as an autonomous form of artistic expression. It also addressed the question of the reasons why artists publish today.
The technical spectrum of the exhibited contributions ranges from traditional printing processes - such as letterpress, hand offset, silkscreen, etching, and risography - to current digital technologies. Some works sprawl object-like into the museum, others can be experienced as temporary pillow books, there are interplays of text and texture as well as unfoldable drawing series, some even refuse to be viewed linearly. The publications include language games, material explorations, visual experiments with printing presses, collages of content, archives, graphic novels, pop-ups, leporellos, unfoldable posters, and narratives of free text and image sequences.
Due to the corona-related lockdown, "Artists as Independent Publishers" will be published at Weserburg exclusively through digital channels, but will also be presented on the HfK homepage and the following channels:
www.instagram.com/aaip_international
www.instagram.com/sovc_hfkbremen
www.instagram.com/weserburg_museum
https://weserburg.de/ausstellung/artists-as-independent-publishers-3/
Podcast about the exhibition:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5wmJDYnOKWOVjTQ7sckFud?si=6Iro7gHqQM--Ggj4utEnoQ
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Also check out the projects partnering universities:
www.instagram.com/sintlucasantwerpen
www.instagram.com/dieangewandte
After the presentation in Bremen, the exhibition will go on tour. In the fall of 2021, it will travel to the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium - and then to the cities of the other participating universities.
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Apr. 14-25, 2021 – check the following website for news about opening hours: https://weserburg.de/ausstellung/artists-as-independent-publishers-3/
Center for Artists' Publications Museum Weserburg Bremen, Teerhof 20, 28199 Bremen
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Insights and works a.o. by: Jana Thiel,Yoriko Seto, Anastasiia Mololkina, Sara Mari Blom, Xutong Yuan, Maxime Buitink.
Photos: Bettina Brach
