Art Metropole

09 - 11 May 2013

There's more to life than books, but not much more

Public seminar, curated by Benjamin Thorel

Time

11:00am - 6:

Join us for a public three-day-seminar with Laure Giletti (castillo/corrales, Paraguay Press, Paris), Chris Lee (Scapegoat, Toronto), Anouk Pennel (Studio Feed, Montreal), Patricia No (Publication Studio Portland), Kajsa Ståhl (Åbäke, London/Paris), Maki Suzuki (Åbäke, Dent-De-Leone, London/Paris), Benjamin Thorel (castillo/corrales, Paraguay Press, Paris), and more. Including Lazy Susan, a rotating notation machine by Jp King (Toronto).

Seminar themes:

*Day One
(Thurs. May 9)*

The factory of the book, the situation of collaboration and the redefinition of author and (social) labour related to this.

*Day Two
(Fri. May 10)*

The practices of exchange and distribution and their spaces, “independent” institutions of the book: magazines, niche bookstores, for instance.

*Day Three
(Sat. May 11)*

The question of the public and of reading, along the famous formula according to which: “Publication is the making of a public.” (Matthew Stadler, Publication Studio)

The seminar is presented together with Publication Studio Toronto. The conversations taking place during these three days will be the catalyst for a publication, distributed by Art Metropole in association with Paraguay Press, printed by Colour Code Printing and Paper Pusher Printworks. These conversations will also inform a related exhibition to take place later in the Fall of 2013 at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (Hart House, University of Toronto).

There’s more to life than books, but not much more is a research project initiated by castillo/corrales, a co-operatively run contemporary art venue that includes an exhibition space, a bookstore (Section 7 Books) and a publishing house (Paraguay Press). Established in 2007 in Paris, it is managed by a group of artists, curators, writers and graphic designers. castillo/corrales was conceived as a new type of art institution, one that provides artists, professionals and audience with an intimate and informal environment conducive to experimentation, discussion and learning.

There’s more to life than books, but not much more develops as the Toronto iteration of a parallel project, The Social Life of the Book, that investigates the undertakings of some contemporary artists, publishers, writers, designers, booksellers, etc. that concern the circulation of texts and ideas in a multitude of ways besides the grand gesture of releasing a brand new book. It examines notably the economics and pragmatics of publishing and distributing books today; the social space of reading; the practices of scanning, bootlegging, translating, quoting, re-editing existing material; the ways texts can open up to events, actions, gestures, and other unforeseeable incidents. The Social Life of the Book develops a series of 16-page, saddle-stitched signatures , that aim to entice readers into a particular attention to printed material as such, as well as to the ecosystem of knowledge writing, publishing and distributing form together.

Benjamin Thorel is an art critic and curator, one of the members of castillo/corrales. He’s part of the editorial board of May, a journal dedicated to contemporary art and theory. He’s the author of Telle est la télé: L’Art contemporain et la télévision (Paris: Cercle d’art, 2007) and the editor of Lili Reynaud-Dewar: Interpretation (Paris: Paraguay Press, 2013). In 2012, he completed an MA research on artists’s editorial practices at the EHESS, Paris.

Image

Collected printed signatures from The Social Life of the Book series.

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