Calendar

To the website

12 – 20 h Fair
1 – 6 p.m. Symposium with contributions by Nina Flaitz, Annette Gilbert, Boaz Levin, Hannah Pilgrim, Ines Schaber, and Jan Wenzel
– please note: due to a defect in the elevator, it's a book is unfortunately only partially barrier-free this year –

The annual gathering of independent publishing houses and publishers It’s a book, … will take place for the thirteenth time in 2023. Developed as a marketplace and as a space for the exchange of publications of various kinds as well as ideas and debates, It’s a book, … sees itself as an open space for dialog and as part of a community that makes itself visible.
All interconnected parts of It’s a book, … – book fair, publication, student competition, symposium and website – have now been developed for the tenth time in a row as part of a project seminar by students at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. In addition, many interested people support the project, among others through the Verein open book society, which will take over the sponsorship of It’s a book, … in the future.

During It’s a book, … the student-organized HGB Radio will host its reappearing live format Sonic Lobby with program around music, booky talks and readings. It will be streamed on its own channels and on the It’s a book, …-website.

Numerous publishers from Germany and abroad will present themselves at the fair; in addition, some classes at the HGB will show their tables – as will the invited projects of the student competition. This year, the It’s a book, …-team has again produced a publication that can be purchased at the fair and via the It’s a book, …-website. We welcome Nina Flaitz, Annette Gilbert, Boaz Levin, Hannah Pilgrim, Ines Schaber and Jan Wenzel to the symposium.

At the last It’s a book, … we talked about access, accessibility, creating access. Today, under the title “It’s a book, it’s a mess, it’s an urgent matter to address”, we ask: Who has access to resources and how do we deal with them? Production and value chains have changed a lot in recent times and many initiatives are changing these themselves in order to deal (more) responsibly with resources. The impact this has on our work sometimes makes us break new ground and look at new developments and research approaches in technology and science. Are we resting on our belief that technologies cannot do what we would expect and even urgently need them to do? Are recycling methods, digital versus offset print, print-on-demand, local production networks and digital alternatives to print media paths we should take or have already taken? How are economies of attention, distribution channels and social networks changing, also through the digital? And do the metaphors of fungi and rhizome have the effect of enchanting or disenchanting our networks in their reconsideration? We want to consider all these questions in our publication and explore them together in discussions at the fair and the symposium.

Programme Symposium

13:00 Welcome (en)
Agnes Wegner and the It’s a book, …-team. Introduction by Anna Breit

13:30 Lecture (de)
Hannah Pilgrim: Materielle Voraussetzungen des Lesens oder die Geschichten hinter den Geschichten. Host: Marika Fleischhauer

14:15 Lecture (de)
Annette Gilbert:
„Faire la perruque” – Hijacking der Druckindustrie im Dienste der Ökologie. Host: Helene Otto

15:00 Break

16:00 Lecture (de)
Nina Flaitz: Mycelium Resources. Host: Sabine Schmid

16:45 Lecture (eng)
Boaz Levin: Mining Photography: a case study in material histories. Host: Jan Wenzel

17:30 Conversation between (eng)
Boaz Levin and Ines Schaber. Host: Jan Wenzel

18:00 End