Printing Plant - Special Collaborations and Installations
23 November – 25 November 2018

Special Collaborations

Printing Plant x Amsterdam Art Weekend x ODAM
Amsterdam Art Weekend Gallery Night: a curated music event
23 November 20:00 – 21:00
‘Printing Plant’ is part of Amsterdam Art Weekend’s (AAW) official programme. This year, AAW joined forces with ODAM to present an extra special edition of their annual gallery night. ODAM regularly organises open gallery nights with live music, art debates and scavenger hunts throughout Amsterdam, opening up art exploration to new audiences. On November 23rd, ODAM will present a tailor-made event at Looiersgracht 60 for the opening night of ‘Printing Plant’. The curated music event showcases the works of two innovative, emerging artists: Eva Scheltema, lead singer of Dialogue and SOMEONE, a new project by singer and songwriter Tessa Rose Jackson. Combining the world of art books with nightlife elements, this event promises to be an exciting start to a very special weekend.

Printing Plant x Rijksakademie
A special selection of Artist Books
Throughout the weekend
In a special collaboration, the Rijksakademie and Looiersgracht 60 have worked together to present a number of artist books at the ‘Printing Plant’ book fair. With a view to stimulating research and experimentation, The Rijksakademie offers residencies to fifty artists at a time. Residents and alumni have been invited to present special limited-edition art books and book objects at the fair. The selected artists all step outside conventional boundaries to explore new concepts, challenging the content and traditional physical structure of books.
Participating artists: Aditya Mandayam, Alex Farrar, Arian de Vette, Arvo Leo, Bert Scholten, Boy & Erik Stappaerts, Ceel Mogami de Haas, Danielle van Vree, Eric Giraudet de Boudemange, Fahrettin Örenli, Florence Jung, Jeannoux van Deijck, Joris Martens, Josje Peters, Kiki Lamers, Marcus Bastel , Marijke de Vries, Marina Xenofontos, Maurice van Es, Mehraneh Atashi & Radna Rumping, Morgan Courtois, Nora Turato, Rein Jelle Terpstra, Remco Torenbosch, Riet Wijnen, Tine Melzer and Ton Martens.
RijksakademieOPEN is also taking place this weekend with the presentations at Looiersgracht 60 complementing the academy’s programming.

Printing Plant x Readers & Publishers
Official Launch of Online Directory
Throughout the weekend
We are very excited to be collaborating with My Bookcase who are launching their new project, Readers & Publishers at ‘Printing Plant’. Readers & Publishers is a much-needed online directory of independent publishers from across the globe. The platform connects publishers with one another, with readers, and with artists they may be interested in working with in the future. To mark their official launch, Readers & Publishers are producing ‘Open Book’, a bespoke publication that places the voices of independent publishers, writers, artists and readers at centre-stage. The publication considers independent art book publishing in terms of its current provocations, challenges and opportunities. ‘Open Book’ will continue to be written throughout the course of the fair, in dialogue with visitors and participants selected for the in-conversation event accompanying the launch on November 24th.
This project is an extension of the creative vision of My Bookcase, a social enterprise that explores the role of the book and its reader in today’s society. This event marks the first collaboration between Looiersgracht 60 and Readers & Publishers.

Printing Plant x San Serriffe
Tea Time Readings
Every afternoon at 15.30 – 16:30
Focusing on self-published material, Amsterdam based bookstore San Serriffe is a treasure trove of exceptional books on art, theory and design publications. It is also host to a vibrant weekly programme of book presentations, talks, performances and conversations concerning publishing culture. During Looiersgracht 60’s book fair ‘Printing Plant,’ San Serriffe is organising Tea Time Readings, an event where visitors are invited to take a break from the bustle of the fair and enjoy a cup of tea in the quiet office space at Looiersgracht 60. Here they will be accompanied by writers and publishers who will be reading from their recently published work. Tea Time Readings will take place on each of the three days and will present work by Asja Novak, Line-Gry Hørup, Phil Baber, Jonathan Aldenberg and Siân Robinson Davies.

Publication Focused Projects
‘Printing Plant’ is pleased to present a number of special publication focused projects by selected fair participants. The featured projects range from historical surveys and archival presentations to site-specific work and performances. The installations offer visitors new ways to question our relationship with the art book and to look at how art books can relate to a particular space.

Performance for the Book
Performance by An Onghena
Friday at 17:30 and 18:30
The opening of Looiersgracht 60’s book fair ‘Printing Plant’ will be accompanied by a performance by the Belgian artist, An Onghena. ‘Performance for the Book’ was developed during a one-year residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie. The work looks at a number of aspects related to book making as well as both the love of paper and the feelings of frustration related to it. In her work, Onghena explores the contents of books and their physical features such as the folding, binding and cover. Her performance is a visual experiment in giving life to paper, offering a living, human dimension to the fair and an artist’s insight into what books mean for their makers. During the course of her performance Onghena reads out a series of instructions that are executed by a performer. Through this process, a performer and a regular, large piece of paper become partners in a dance, forming sculptures and pushing the boundaries of each other’s physical capacities as they go along.

The 19thCentury Digested
Installation by Nicolò Degiorgis
Looiersgracht 60 is excited to present a site-specific work by artist Nicolò Degiorgis, created especially for this year’s ‘Printing Plant’.Also an independent publisher (Rorhof), Degiorgis regularly realises exhibitions and workshops aimed at promoting the art of book making.Alongside his participation as a publisher at ‘Printing Plant,’ Degiorgis has created an installation in Looiersgracht 60’s basement with reproductions of books from the 19th century. By editing the content of a hundred books and reprinting them in the form of fanzines, this installation offers an unmediated view into various subcultures. A selection of zines will be available for purchase and for browsing through.

Marginalia
Installation by Anja Lutz
Book designer and co-founder of THE GREEN BOX, Anja Lutz, is presenting her project ‘Marginalia’. The book-works presented, shed light on often overlooked elements in carefully designed books. By removing the parts we typically focus on – the text, the images – ‘Marginalia’ reveals the support structures: the margins, the edges, the backgrounds, the spaces between the lines – a multitude of unique and meticulously chosen details. Lutz dissects her books with a surgical precision leaving behind filigree grids, fragments of images and traces of the layout that form intricate compositions of voids.
Marginalia is a personal interpretation of books designed by Anja Lutz with and for the following artists: Kader Attia, Sonia Boyce, Angela Bulloch, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Christine Hill, Hannah Höch, Hella Jongerius, Loriot, J. Mayer H., Laercio Redondo, Julian Rosefeldt, Lawrence Weinerand many more.

One Liner
Artist Book by Amie Dicke
Dutch artist Amie Dicke’s process lies between collection and attrition. Collected images and objects incrementally find their way into her studio from a wide variety of sources which stand trial as the artist selects elements to be sandpapered away, blotched, spattered, covered with makeup or surgically incised. Through this process of collection, selection and removal, Dicke allows unexpected aspects of the image to come into focus. ‘Printing Plant’ has the pleasure of presenting a book from her new project One Liner, consisting of pictures of a series of images mounted on a specific spot on the wall of her studio. These image-compositions comprising fragments of images Dicke found in books and magazines, or snapshot she took on the street, are an investigation of how the cut-out details of existing images resonate with their surroundings.One Liner is as much an exploration of the images themselves as it is of the negative space within and between them; with each sequence forming a new line, perhaps the line of a poem, or just a line of images, instead of words.

Sucking Stones
Limited-edition artworks by Amie Dicke
In 2016, Looiersgracht 60 invited artist Amie Dicke to produce 14 limited-edition artworks in conjunction with her solo exhibition ‘Sucking Stones’ at the space. Dicke carefully selected 14 of her favourite books, including notable art historical and philosophical titles. For each particular artwork Dicke intervened with the cover of the books. By removing or reworking the cover with black ink, the correction fluid Tipp-Ex, red nail polish, tape and postcards, she created wonderful limited-edition artworks of which are there two series so far. The second series, created in 2018, will be on view for the first time during the fair.

Glossy Garments
Garments by Warehouse
Alongside their publications, Warehouse is presenting a series of garments, as part of Femke de Vries’ research on the use of language in fashion and fashion media. According to de Vries, language may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about fashion. It is nevertheless an influential tool within the construct of fashion. It’s in the captions and titles in fashion magazines, printed text on garments and the act of speaking about fashion that we can examine how fashion produces value, how it mystifies and how it connects to a broader social and political context.
At ‘Printing Plant’, Warehouse will present a new series, ‘Glossy Garments’,with items of clothing printed with outspoken texts from fashion magazines (aka ‘glossies’) and fragments of newspaper pages. By printing a text about fashion, such as ‘Miuccia Prada’s collection aimed to embolden “The strength of women going out in the violence” (Vogue UK, Oct 2018)the garment literally functions as a medium to communicate about fashion.Glossy Garments brings together, as Roland Barthes would describe ‘real clothing, written clothing and image clothing’, indicating that not just printed matter, but garments too are a powerful tool to convey messages with.