SPRINT—Independent Publishers and Artists' Books Salon is an international platform dedicated to independent publishing and artists' books, born in 2013 from an idea by O’ non-profit association and curated by artist Dafne Boggeri. A transversal and sustainable platform for cultural debate since its inception, this year SPRINT inaugurated its 10th, in a new partnership with Slam Jam, supported for the first time by Fondazione Marcelo Burlon and confirming its cultural alliance with the Istituto Svizzero.
The 10th edition of SPRINT presents a selection of small self-produced experiences and more structured publishing houses, all with a common root: the freshness of their projects and research into content, formats, languages, insights and attitude. The 2022 edition will take place from 25th to 27th November with extensions until 10th December involving the spaces of Spazio Maiocchi [via Maiocchi, 5], Dropcity [via Sammartini, 60], Istituto Svizzero [via del Vecchio Politecnico 3], Superattico [via Eustachi, 40], Afterimage [digital platform by Spazio Maiocchi], with the aim of expanding the number of collaborations and of enhancing ideas, people and paths. Participation in the fair is free for all selected artists/publishers; access to the fair and side events is also free for the public [with the exception of participation in the Risograph workshop and the fundraising event].
The complete program of activities is available on the SPRINT website and on its social media channels.
EXHIBITIONS, TALK, SCREENING: SOME ANTICIPATIONS ON SPRINT22
The 10th edition of SPRINT opens on 25 November at Dropcity – a new center for Architecture and Design located inside the Magazzini Raccordati in Stazione Centrale – starting at 6 pm with the opening of MAKING WAVES, an exhibition that through more than 80 volumes traces an oblique and rhizomatic path between the experience of the Whole Earth Catalog [WEC 1968-1972] and the contemporary manual How to by تـ كيف Kayfa ta. The first edition of the Whole Earth Catalog appeared in the fall of 1968, conceived by its founder Stewart Brand, under the editorial direction of Lois Jennings, as a user-curated selection of the best hardware and ideas for living beyond the limits of suburban and corporate America. With its slogan 'Access to Tools', the iconoclastic, visionary and widely influential catalog soon became a symbol of thinking that looked at self-organization, do-it-yourself [DIY], ecology, alternative education, low-tech methods and holism. Through analogies and points of contact, the exhibition connects WEC legacy - charting the social and cultural revolutions of the period - to the present day, gliding in a new shape of complexity and intersectional vision, till the contemporary publishing house تـ كيف Kayfa ta, a non-profit Arab initiative base between Cairo and Amman, founded in 2012 by the artists/curators Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis, using the popular form of the how-to manual [how=kayfa, to=ta] to respond to present-day needs. A wide-ranging journey through the pages of original copies, facsimiles, maps and ephemera that address sustainability of resources, self-building and visionary architecture, interspecies inclusiveness, struggles for survival and social rights, to keep asking: how do we live together?
From 9.30 pm to 11.30 pm there will be the European premiere screening of WE ARE AS GODS [2022, 1'34'', US by OG score by Brian Eno], a documentary that delves into the visionary figure of Steward Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, the legendary publication that Steve Jobs called 'Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google existed' quoting also it’s sentence ‘Stay hungry. Stay foolish’. With his optimistic approach Brand was able to be at the center of cultural and technological shifts, from the 1960s ‘back to the land’ attitude to the cyberculture and the modern environmental movement. Now he is under fire from former allies who believe he’s gone too far in his approach to ‘future’ and who claim that: Pessimists serve a purpose too!
On Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 November the SPRINT Milano Art Book Fair [SMABF22] is hosted for the fourth consecutive year by Spazio Maiocchi, a creative center dedicated to trans-disciplinary and cross-media research co-founded by Slam Jam and Carhartt WIP. The non-profit fair of independent publishing and artists' books presents a selection of over 150 local and international artists and publishers from 22 different countries.
Special exchanges will also be activated in this context: SPRINT welcomes for the first time in Milan: MIGRA – Feria de Arte Impreso from Buenos Aires, that will curate a selection of South America’s publishing materials. This crossover will be relaunched in March 2023, when SPRINT will travel to Buenos Aires, presenting material from the Italian panorama in the MIGRA Art Book Fair. Another reality that will reach SPRINT for the first time is Se Imprime from Santiago [Chile] presenting the book preview: Euforia. Cuando Santiago era una Fiesta. These opportunities for sisterhoods, who will also have a voice during the Talks, are supported by Fondazione Marcelo Burlon.
During the salon will also be announced the winners of the new award SURPRIZE – SUPPORTING PUBLISHING PRACTICES, where three selected projects under development – to be published in 2023 by single artists or small houses – will receive funding for production and research, to nurture pathways and new imagery. SURPRIZE is promoted by SPRINT supported by Fondazione Marcelo Burlon.
The rich collateral programme includes a series of talks: Saturday 26 November, from 2 to 3 pm, with the participation of Luis Juárez founder of MIGRA – Feria de Arte Impreso in Buenos Aires, director of Rivista Balam as well as curator of the editorial section of Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina; from 4 to 5 pm Barbara Casavecchia, critic and independent curator, in a conversation with anthropologist Elisabeth A. Povinelli [live streaming] about her latest volume Routes/Worlds edited for e-flux Books, in which Elisabeth rearticulates large-scale systems of power and affect, even as–or precisely because–those systems stage increasingly novel forms of neglect; from 6 to 7 pm, Accartocciamoci will be the title/umbrella under which Habitat [Tredozio, FC], Landescape [Alcamo, TP], Robida [Topolò, UD] present their path in relation to the Italian territory and strategies of cultural and imaginific survival in a ways to ignite dialogue between global and local. Following this year's dimension of exchange, Sunday 27 November from 2 to 3 pm, Paul Casio from Santiago [Chile] will talk about Se Imprime and Fleyrchileno, an editorial project documenting the Chilean techno rave scene of the 90s, which is also the protagonist of a billboard in the courtyard of Spazio Maiocchi; from 4 to 5 pm, Page Not Found, a non-profit space for publishing as artistic practice based on The Hague [NE], will be introduced by the founder Sébastien Goy; from 6 to 7 pm Erin Honycutt will talk about the English language bookstore and publishing house Hopscotch Reading Room based in Berlin, centering non-western & diasporic.
Among the exhibitions during the two-day fair dedicated to independent publishing, at Artifact [Spazio Maiocchi project room] it will be possible to visit FONTANA, a group exhibition curated by graphic designers and publishers Félicité Landrivon [Ventoline fanzine] and Gaspare Balducci [Editions Biceps], whose link is experimental lettering typographic research in a stream of chain collaborations, with works by Virginia Genta [ITA], Julien Gobled [FR], Rudy Guedj & Nora Steenbergen [FR/NL], Ayasha Khan [FR/BE], Hélène Marian [FR], Nadja Meier [FR], Camille Potte [FR], Jules Rousselet [FR/BE], while the courtyard of Spazio Maiocchi [from 28 November to 10 December at Dropcity] will display the twenty-three titles awarded on the occasion of THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SWISS BOOKS, the prestigious annual prize organized by the Federal Office of Culture that brings together some of the best Swiss publications of the last year, displayed in a site-specific installation.
Moving to via Eustachi 40 just a few minutes away from Spazio Maiocchi, Giorgia Rachel Donna presents LE VAMPIRE DI CRESCENZAGO, an unpublished selection of drawings and installation inspired by suburban figures/environments and the tradition of B-horror movie, among deformed bodies, hallucinated gazes and in the background a Milan distorted in its nuances.
The evening of Saturday 26 November will conclude with SPRINT FUNDRAISING PARTY - A CHE PUNTO SIAMO DELLA NOTTE ?, from 11pm to 4am at Dropcity, curated by TOMBOYS DON'T CRY and DJ sets by La Diferencia [Rome] - forests, megacities, Andean cosmovision, diaspora, deserts, desolation - Rome-based Italian-Peruvian duo exploring new contemporary music from the other hemisphere; Sonora [London] Spanish-born performer and DJ based in London, composes magnetic techno sets accompanied by choreographies in which she activates laser devices; Sentimental Rave [Paris], French DJ and producer who experiments with the clutch of nervous sonic tangents, to express an existential impatience, an intimate universe colliding against sustained rhythms for syncopated dancing, in a journey between sound as a confession. Supported by Fondazione Marcelo Burlon, admission on a minimum donation of 10€ on the door.
SPRINT22 – EXTENDED: THE APPOINTMENTS
SATURDAY 05 NOVEMBER & SUNDAY 06 NOVEMBER: THE RISO CLUB In the run-up to the new edition of SPRINT on Saturday 05 and Sunday 06 November, THE RISO CLUB, a Risograph printing workshop aimed at the community of artists, photographers, designers, has been held at Spazio Maiocchi. The Risograph technique uses an eco-friendly system that combines the color result of screen printing with the softness of inkjet and the speed of photocopying, varying from uniform tones to dense meshes with an analogue appeal. The workshop was curated and led by Swiss designers Eilean Friis-Lund and Alice Vodoz, with the technical support of Studio ATTO. During the two-day workshop an editorial project was produced from a selection of visual material extracted from SPRINT22's inaugural exhibition, MAKING WAVESTo produce a nonlinear catalog.
UNTIL THE 10 OF DECEMBER
From 26 November to 10 December, the spaces of the Istituto Svizzero will host 744 KM - STORIES FROM THE SWISS-ITALIAN ALPINE FRONTLINE, a display of a selection of publications curated by VOLUMES Archive, a Zurich-based collective committed to supporting and promoting art publishing. The exhibition reflects on the idea of the border as a physical and mental space that metabolizes the shared histories and frictions between the two territories through the work of artists, independent, academic and mainstream publishing in recent decades. SPRINT and VOLUMES Archive in discussion with Maria Iorio, Raphaël Cuomo and Salvatore Vitale will come together in a talk on Saturday 3 December to continue talking about trajectories, border dynamics and ways of working.
With the continuation of the MAKING WAVES exhibition until 10 December, from Monday 28 November THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SWISS BOOKS moves to Dropcity together with a number of events that enrich the exhibitions, such as the screening of A STORY FROM CIRCOLO DELLA ROSA [2014] a film by Alex Martini Roe that traces and continues research into the genealogies of the ‘new feminist materialism’. The film is narrated by the voice of the artist, in the form of a letter addressed to a colleague, telling the story of two women, interweaving it with references to personal research and the experience of the Libreria delle Donne collective in Milan. On 29 November at 6 pm, art historian Medea Hoch [researcher and Phd ZHdK Zurich, editor with Walburga Krupp and Sigrid Schade of the volume Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Briefe 1905-1942, Nimbus Verlag] will host the talk SOPHIE TAEUBER-ARP AND THE EXPERIENCE OF MONTE VERITÀ, tracing relationships between Sophie’s artistic research and the avant-garde movements of the beginning of the century, in the context of the Monte Verità utopian community in Ascona [Canton Ticino, CH]. In parallel and for the entire duration of SPRINT's extended programme, Afterimage - Spazio Maiocchi's digital platform dedicated to moving images - will present a screening of the documentary DROP CITY [2012, 82', US, Italian Premiere] directed by Joan Grossman, a testimony of one of the first rural DIY communes of the 60s, founded in Colorado by artists inspired by Buckminster Fuller and Steve Baer architectural ideas and became known for their self-constructed domes/zome made out of recycled materials, experimenting on solar technology and anticipating sensitivity to energy conservation and waste. The free streaming is part of Making Waves exhibition contents.
Locations:Spazio Maiocchi [Via Maiocchi, 5] |FREEENTRY
Dropcity [via Sammartini, 60] |FREEENTRY–EXCEPTTHEFUNDRAISINGPARTY
Istituto Svizzero [via del Vecchio Politecnico, 3] |FREEENTRY
Superattico [via Eustachi, 40] |FREEENTRY
Afterimage [FREE digital platform by Spazio Maiocchi]
TO THE FULL PROGRAM HERE
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