Athens Art Book Fair 2024: International festival of artist publications

The city’s art book fair is back with its 5th edition

This year the Athens Art Book Fair comes out of the halls of culture and occupies the labyrinthine Stoa Tristrato in the centre of Athens (University metro, entrances to Stadiou 29, Aristidou 6 and Dragatsaniou 6).

Bringing the festival to the public space for the first time, the 5th edition of the AABF invites visitors to discover over 150 artists and publishers from Greece and 35 other countries.
Visitors will have the opportunity to explore the wide and polyphonic range of independent publishing practices: Fanzines, art publications, photo books, independent magazines, artistic monographs, poetry, research and critical discourse as well as other, uncategorizable publishing experiments.

The parallel Public Program with exhibitions and actions aimed at information and interactivity, presents with a fresh eye, the new wave of artists’ publications as well as mediums that act complementary to them such as sound, performance, poetry, experimental music and radio arts.

Things NOT to miss

The exhibition “Out Of The Grid” presents a selection of 100 Italian zines spanning from 1978 to 2006 and touching on a wide range of social, political, aesthetic and technological changes in self-publishing, reflecting the evolution of Italian society, especially youth culture, during the “post-movement” and “pre-internet 3.0” era.

The annual Collective Display showcases 70+ art publications from around the world as well as a first look at the Athens Art Book Library’s growing archive, while for the first time digital editions are presented, through the Digitally Native archive.

A big part of the practice of art book fairs is the creation of international artistic networks. This year the Athens Art Book Fair hosts SPRINT Art Book Fair (Italy), MIGRA Art Book Fair (Argentina), Sit and Read Art Book Fair (Romania) and Pagemasters (England). These fairs, much like AABF, are run by independent artists and publishers and aim to empower their local artistic scene and create space for practices that cannot easily enter the public sphere.

Of particular interest are the presentations of publications from Asian countries such as JOJO (India), NOS BOOKS (Taiwan) and Jiazazhi (China).

In case you are not in Athens, you can tune in to the online radio Fade Radio, which for the third year hosts a program of shows about independent publishing practices (you can listen to the shows of the past years here and here).

Exhibitors

51 Personae (Shanghai) 3 137 & Office of Hydrocommons (Athens) A) GLIMPSE) OF) (Athens) Arurkokk (Ioannina) Asparagus plumosa (Athens) Revista Balam (Buenos Aires) BAO BOOKS (La Marsa/Tunis) Big black mountain the darkness never ever comes (Athens) Blind Mind Editions (Athens) bog bodies press (Eindhoven) BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE (Berlin) Bored Wolves (Kraków) BPzines (Budapest) crater invertido/taller xd (Mexico city) Cube Art Editions (Athens) Danai Simou (Athens) Decadence Comics (Copenhagen) Deniz Beser / Heyt be! Fanzin (Vienna/Istanbul) Desired Landscapes (Athens) DITO Publishing (Rome) DOLCE Publishing (Athens) Editions JOJO (Mumbai) Eleni Poulou/Organza Ray (Berlin) Emergenze Publishing/Edicola 518 (Perugia) ENBAJADA / LA BALSA (Buenos Aires) FLEE Project (Paris/Athens) Folded City (Athens) Fred Afraid (Athens) FRMK (Athens) FUTURA (Athens) GUFO (Marseille) Homie House Press (Milano/Baltimore) Humboldt Books (Milan) Hurrikan Press (Budapest) HYPER HYPO (Athens) James Unsworth (Liverpool) Jiazazhi (Ningbo) K-Gold Temporary Gallery (Lesvos) Kati Akraio (Athens) KATSARIDA PRESS (Athens) KEDA*PRESS (Thessaloniki) Kudla Press (Prague) kyklàda.press & Time Based Editions (Athens) Kιουρί-ατ/Κiouri-at (Athens) Lalava (Athens) Lia Nalbantidou & L.LAB (Thessaloniki) Library Residency (Athens / New York) Local Gr0up (Berlin / Kyiv) Lonely Cooks Collected (Athens) MAAT (Athens) Margarita Athanasiou (Athens) Marusya Press (MA.P) (Oakland/Athens) Michalis Pichler (Berlin) MISC (Athens) MPATARIA (Athens) NERO (Rome) Never Brush My Teeth (Athens) Nos Books (Taipei) OAZA BOOKS (Zagreb) Oslo Crit Klubb (Oslo) PageMasters (London) Pararoja (Tirana) Perliiitas (Valparaíso) Pessima (Milan) Photoport (Bratislava) Pink house press (Syros) Pitzilein Books (Mexico City) PrivatePrint (Skopje) Profundo Ediciones (Berlin) SKAΒO UNIVERSE (Athens) SPRINT(Milan) Spyros Rennt (Berlin) SUN (New York) Sun Archive (Wrocław) sun/sun éditions (Montpellier/Athens) Synchron Magazine (Berlin) TEFRA90 (Athens) Tendai Rinos Mwanaka (Chitungwiza) Teuntje Fleur (Rotterdam) The Everyday Press aka Bunker Basement (London) The Secret Garden (Timisoara) These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things (Athens) tumbalacasa ediciones (Mexico City) two spiky gorillaz (Thessaloniki) Untitled-1 (Athens) Vabiropula (Athens) VOID (Athens) Wendys Subway (New York) YOUPRON (Paris) yusra (Athens) ZOETROPE ATHENS (Athens) Ουαπίτι (Athens) ΤΕΦΛΟΝ (Athens) Τοποβορος (Athens) φούιτ & τιλτ! (Thessaloniki)

For the full program of talks, performances and workshops go to www.athensartbookfair.gr