Bergen Art Book Buffet
Fellesbordet.
BEK – Bergen senter for elektronisk kunst
BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts – is an interdisciplinary production centre for art and technology. BEK develops, produces and showcases projects in the intersection of contemporary art, technology, theory and social critique. BEK organises practical and theoretical workshops on artistic use of technology and offers advice and production support to artists. In its studios and production facilities, BEK hosts residencies for artists, focussing on artistic research and experimenting. BEK's discursive programme explores ethical and political aspects of technological development.
Shit Out Here Purple (booklet) by artist Roy Claire Potter (2024) is a booklet of detachable drawings that riff on the counter-cultural tradition of Eyeball Cards, made and shared at in-person meetings during the 1980s by users of the then-illegal Citizens Broadcast radio in the United Kingdom.
Structure and Synthesis: The Anatomy of Practice by multidisciplinary artist Mark Fell (Urbanomic, 2022) brings together diverse materials charting the development of Fell's practice.
A limited number of BEK's 20-year anniversary publication around which dissonant satellites cluster: 20 år med Bergen senter for elektronisk kunst (2021) are also available for purchase.
Den uferdige presse forlag (the unfinished press) is a small publisher of artistic conversations based in Bergen, Norway. Operated by Matias Grøttum and Sveinung Rudjord Unneland from the unfinished institution, Laksevåg.
"204 Art Academy Anxieties" is a book by Danish artist Rosa Marie Frang about her anxieties concerning the modern art academy.
"Meditations on X" is an essay written by Brandon LaBelle on the concept of X. A single letter he poses as an essential figure of the self-built.
Elisa Halvorsen Castillo (b. 1990) is a Chilean artist with Norwegian ancestry based in Oslo. Working with analog experimental techniques and self-published artists’ books, Elisa explores the concept of memory and its plasticity, a subject that interests her since she experienced short-term memory loss due to a period of illness in her mid 20s. Mixing analog photography processes with printmaking techniques (Riso printing, letterpress, linocuts), her work intends to break the walls between both practices.
Emil Perron
Lexie Owen is a Canadian-born, Oslo-based interdisciplinary artist who self-publishes artist books and zines, focusing primarily on risograph printing. Her publications are often an extention of her broader artistic practice, exploring questions of intimacy and care, collectivity and the boundaries of the self, and what it means to self-archive - both as an individual and community action. Over the past year she has been working to develop collective methodologies for creating printed matter, exploring ways to bring co-producers with limited knowledge of print practices into collaborative book making projects.
I’m a visual artist working mainly within mediums of photography, video and text. Things that inspire me usually reside in everyday life and human emotions. In my research, I take inspiration from psychology and sociology. I am interested in slow and meditative works. My intentions are often to ease the viewers, to give them a few minutes to relax and feel their surroundings. I want us to connect with senses neglected in the high-paced modern society, and to be able to perceive life in its entirety.
I am an artist that works with textile objects, and my practice deals with the object as a phenomenon. The books I have published are about objects as they exist freely in the world. One is about found objects, a second is about carrying objects in your hands and carrying words within you, and the third is about long textile objects slowly squirming in nature. These books combined are a part of a larger search, for a deeper understanding of the object and its purpose in this world.
Narda De La Flor
With her first publication printed in riso" Los Gatos de Bergen", Narda explores her unexpected encounters with cats on the streets of Bergen, creating visual memories of them through photography, which were categorized by place and date and distributed on the Bergen map. The self-publishing book arises as a remembrance of her cat, Yoda, as well as a way to value each encounter as a unique experience.
River Hongjie He and Eliza-Maria Voinea
"I'm Not Sure I'm Ready to Play" is a collaborative collage-making project between River Hongjie He (b. 1998) and Eliza Maria Voinea (b. 1996). Working with various mediums such as textile, photography, ink painting, Ai generators, Hongjie's art focus on the iteration of tools and it's interplay with image making. Maria has been working on creative literature projects after graduating from Comparative Literature at University of Oslo. Together, they embarked on textual collage, cutting words from publications like "The Times," "National Geographic," and exhibition catalogs, rearranging them into surrealist poetry that explores multiple themes like nature, politics, culture and art. These poetic texts served as prompts to generate images using AI, expanding collaboration beyond human interaction to include artificial intelligence. The resulting collages pay homage to the Dada period, embracing its ethos of absurdity, randomness, and anti-establishment sentiment. While employing traditional handcrafted binding techniques and wooden material, the work seeks to strike a balance between conceptuality and craftsmanship.
Our main working materiality is nature itself where we create land art installation followed and accompanied always with publications. Paper is a crucial material in our methodology. We communicate with each other in writings, exchanging reflections and ideas through letters which become an important addition to our visual works. Producing paper ourselves and being involved in the manufacturing of the books is what our works are all about. We both find a big inspiration in this way of working and we enjoy the process immensely.
We spent many weeks with the sheep Plato on Skomvær in August 2023. We observed, cared for and maintained his heard. Our contribution to BABF is a dedication to getting to know Plato, his environment, his heard, food cravings and the ruff, unsteady and ever-changing weather conditions he finds himself in.
Rui Liu
My master thesis and a book I made for the last BABF
Sofie Hviid Vinther is educated in fine arts and uses the work with artist books to combine writing and visual material. The publications presented at BABF 2024 are created with the expression "a real job" as a driving force and touch on themes such as doubt, stress, successes, performance anxiety, hierarchies, titles and functions.
The Lyrical Vehicle
The Lyrical Vehicle er en liten skrivegruppe/kollektiv på 4 stykk, bestående av musikkere, forfattere og en illustratør. Vi møtes ofte sammen for å utforske våres eget syn på livet gjennom ord og dikt. Jeg (Ivan Gratsov) har lenge tenkt på å prøve å illustrere flere av de diktene og gi dem mer fysisk form. Publikasjonene som vi har tenkt å ha er: - 1 stk ziner sammensatt av dikt og illustrasjoner på 8 sider hver - 1-2 stk prints på ca. A5 str - små stickers eller eventuelt en ekstra zine
Førstehjelpsskrin mot nyliberalisme er et tekstarbeid og en objektsamling om nyliberalismen og de sørgelige konsekvensene nyliberal ideologi har for individer, samfunn og miljø. Det er også et praktisk og avmaktsreduserende hjelpemiddel som kan brukes for å yte ulike former for motmakt. Skrinet er et resultat av kollektive prosesser, møter, foredrag, samtaler og workhops.
De som står bak Førstehjelpsskrin mot nyliberalisme er tidsskriftkollektivet Torggata Blad, ved Paul Brady, Hege Vadstein, Harald Lange, Stein Holte, Åse Karlsen m.fl. og Maria Vagle. Sammen driver vi Galleri Sagene Kunstsmie på Sagene.
Træsh Forlag
Tegneserieforlag som startet opp i Trondheim og publiserer aviser, fanziner og merch.
Bilde: Et godt sted av Zarina Saidova.
Studio violatipia
Book as an object. I want to make a book. Book as a bridge between authors and readers. Book as an object, not only discussing how we look and read a book, also discussing how a book feels. How does a book touch our hands? How does a book touch our eyes? How do the pages flip and fold? How I'd the color and ink on each page, impact and get deciphered by the human eye? A book is an outer world to tell our inner world. I want to make a book because it's a way to explain and show my inner thoughts, also a way to exchange ideas and experiences.
Subseri
Subseri is an artistic and diy oriented printing studio based in Milan, now animated by a dynamic duo. We curate and publish projects in collaboration with different artists and collectives. Our material is various, we got a wide selection of posters and different kind of prints, books and graphic zines. We mainly do screenprint but also incision, gum print, cyanotype. We distribute our printed work through independent publishing and illustration festivals. "Crack" in Rome, "Olè" in Bologna, "Caco" in Bari, "Vendetta" in Marseille, "Tropicana Dreams" in Palma de Mallorca, "Tenderete" in Valencia, "Novadoba" in Belgrade and many others.
Systrarnas förlag
Systrarnas förlag ble etablert i 2023 av Martina Lindh, Solveig Madsen og Gunhild Sannes. Det er et svnesk/norskt-forlag der Lindh og Madsen er basert i Sverige (Stockholm, Bjärka-Säby) og Sannes i Norge (Bergen). Forlagets fokus er poetiske prosjekter som kan være både bilde- og tekst-basert. Forlagets første utgivelse «Berg, vatten, blomma» av Martina Lindh inneholder tre poetiske meditasjoner med tilhørende malerier. Tekstene kan leses hver for seg, men bygger en helhet der ver tekst beskriver et aspekt av livet: det solide, det dynamiske, det levende og dødlige.
tekstallmenningen.no/butikk/kunst-kultur/martina-lindh-berg-vatten-blomma/
I'm an illustrator who works with traditional mediums like gouache and pencils. With passion for observational drawing and encouraging others to be creative. Outside of making illustrations for publications and products I started making small zines from my studio here in Bergen, at Isotop. I'd like to offer two zines, one based on nature sketches around Bergen, A6 format and 24 pages, full colour. Another one is a fiction zine in a diary format all about second hand shopping, one colour with two full colour spreads. Both handmade and hand bound by me. And one book called Drawing People, it's an interactive journal which I wrote and illustrated last year, published by Hardie Grant.