We are going to Tromsø. Far up north in Norway. Long time friends to gather, some virtually due to the current restrictions, but at least: Communication, exchange, and learning going on. Karmaklubb* and IGWTLI publishing is joining the ↗︎ Arctic Art Book Fair — an international art book fair and self-publishing festival. Free and open to the public, the first edition of the Arctic Art Book Fair is a multi-day celebration of artists’ and independent press featuring over 35 local, national and international publishers, as well as a diverse line-up of presentations, book readings and artists’ projects. Featured participants produce everything from books, magazines, zines and printed ephemera to digital, performative or other experimental forms of publication, committed to arctic content, with a focus on indigenous perspectives, marginalized voices and emphasizes on cross-border collaborations. And, yes, this year the fair is organized in Tromsø, Norway, by ↗︎ Mondo Books — an independent, artist-run book platform doing publishing, workshops, and distribution in the nordic region of Sápmi.

For the fair, Karmaklubb* will among many other things host a conversation with researcher, writer, publisher, lecturer, artist, amazing human being, and friend ↗︎ Delphine Bedel (FRA/NLD). Pronouns: she/her. Delphine asks: ‘Feminism — What’s in a word?’ She will present her research on the emergence of the term ‘feminism’ and its historical relation to publishing, in the 19th century heteropatriarchal and colonial society. From the invention of the Gutenberg press in 1450 to 1881, the law forbade women in France to access the profession of printer, publisher, or typographer — with a few exceptions. How did women’s emancipation movements arise worldwide in this context? Reclaiming the legacies of feminist publishing is an urgent and collective process. Delphine’s principal topics of interest are media, feminist publishing, politics of memory and the global circulation of images. Known for her cutting-edge publications and feminist education projects, she works with leading cultural institutions, photography festivals and art and design academies. She is the founder of ↗︎ META/BOOKS, and co-initiator of the ‘↗︎ Roadmap for Equality in the Arts’ in the Netherlands. She currently teaches Speculative Design at AKV St Joost, the Netherlands, and is a member of the German Photography Academy. Talk happening: Saturday, 14 November 2020 at 12 CET. ↗︎ More on the whole event here.

We will bring a few of the ↗︎ Polar Green (Mikrohaus ++) written with ↗︎ Tony Cokes as well as essays by Eva Rowson (GBR/NOR) and Sonia Fernández Pan (ESP/Berlin). *And* we will publish new texts in the occasion!!! 1) A conversation and virtual wine tasting with English multidiciplinary artist ↗︎ Adam Peacock on his ‘queer London’. This is a co-publication with our friends and companions in publishing, ↗︎ MELK. 2) A meeting — IRL (!) with ↗︎ Inish Hedén of ↗︎ SAGA, ↗︎ Transgender Awareness Week, QT, and a whole lot more. Promise, this will all be touching. 3) A trancript from a fresh performative written work — finally a collab. sort of IRL!!! — by amazing ↗︎ Kaeto Sweeney (ASTERISK). 4) A letter / art work by Becks (NOR). Future: A conversation with our Tromsø friends and colleagues — partners in publishing, perhaps even mindsets, and activist approach through language, written and spoken words as well as the arts — ↗︎ Tanya Busse (Mondo, the fair, and a lot more), ↗︎ Marion Bouvier (Open Out queer festival, NORK, Tvibit, the fair ++), and hopefully also Delphine. More info TBA ↗︎ here and ↗︎ here.

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Arctic Art Book Fair, established in 2020, is organized by ↗︎ Mondo Books and is the first art book fair to our knowledge that brings together producers from all over the circumpolar north; Alaska, Northern Canada, Greenland, Northern Scandinavia, and Russia. The bookfair, which will be hosted by a different arctic country in the following years, hopes to provide a sustainable meeting place and exhibition venue for arctic artistic communities and local audiences from the Barents region. It is also committed to arctic content, with a focus on indigenous perspectives, marginalised voices, and cross-border collaborations. They say: ‘The Arctic Art Book Fair brings together a diverse group of materials (artist books and small scale publishers) that both celebrate productions from the north and also show how printed matter connects with larger social movements. We have tried to highlight works and voices that have been left out of the canon — publishing, photography, literary works, etc. The north has historically been considered a periphery — and if it has been included at all, it is largely by outsiders (tourists, anthropologists, ethnographers) and is often mis-represented. We see the book fair as one little part of a larger decolonial process, which aims to highlight an area and perspectives that have, in one or another way, been under-represented.’

Team Mondo Books (NOR): Tanya Busse (CAN/NOR), Nicolas Siepen, Marion Stephen [ Marion Bouvier (FRA/NOR)], and Anne Lindgaard Møller. Architecture, design, and installation team: Joar Nango, Robert Julian Badenhope Hvistendahl, Erik Fallgren, Astrid Fadnes, and Mihály Stefanovicz. Graphic design by Martijn in’t Veld. Light master: Nicolas Horne. Audiovisual (AV) tech by Sebastian Olsen. Screenprints by Linn Horntvedt. AABF reinforcement crew: Nicolene McKenzie, Hakkyung Son
Kurant: Ruth Aitken, Andrea Conradsen, and Anna Näumann. The fair in 2020 is funded by the Arts Council Norway (Kulturråd), Troms og Finnmark county, ↗︎ BarentsKult, SpareBank1 Nord-Norge, Tromsø Kunstforening, and Small Projects gallery.