OEI at Publics, Helsinki
Friday September 24
5–7pm
Opening for the OEI exhibition:
staying with editing & localizing publishing
+ Helsinki release of OEI #90-91: Sickle of Syntax & Hammer of Tautology: Concrete and Visual Poetry in Yugoslavia, 1968-1983
Saturday September 25
12–3pm
Workshop & presentation:
OEI editors Jonas (J) Magnusson & Cecilia Grönberg on “staying with editing and localizing publishing” – editing & fieldwork; three-dimensional publishing and locality; counter-historiographies + talk on OEI #90-91 by Sezgin Boynik
PUBLICS
Sturenkatu 37-41
Helsinki
The Month of Books by PUBLICS is a month-long program focusing on book-related artistic practices and other bookish things. For four weeks, The Month of Books has a weekly program including an evolving exhibition of and about books, workshops, pop-up bookstores, readings, interventions, discussions, and book launches.
The Month of Books takes place in the context of PUBLICS Library – an ever-growing and evolving public library with a dedicated bookstore. At the beginning of every week, a scheduled program will be announced. After prolonged restrictions, PUBLICS Library gradually reopens its sliding doors with The Month of Books. PUBLICS Library is a research space dedicated to ‘art & publicness’, critical social thinking, learning and education – a place for coming together, discussing, reading and thinking about contemporary art and its many publics.
On Friday 24th, The Month of Books opens with Scaling Without Squeezing: a public workshopping with artist Kathrin Böhm, artist-educator Mick Wilson, and PUBLICS’ artistic director Paul O’Neill. Taking place as part of the editorial phase of their comprehensive publication exploring and profiling the ongoing practice of Böhm. The workshop makes public an extensive editorial process for the book (Sternberg, 2022); a hybrid between a critical reader and artist book, exploring the trajectory of a ‘social practice’. In 2021, Kathrin Böhm brought the physical remains of her entire artworks to The Showroom for the collaborative exhibition COMPOST, currently on show in London. In-the-making for many years, COMPOST is a desire to resist production. Instead, to set in motion a deep process of reflection on what to do next: what to continue, what to leave behind from our entangled interdependences. The workshop will leave textual traces on the walls for further composting behind as part of the exhibition at PUBLICS. The workshop will be followed by the book launch of Public Enquiries Park Lek and the Scandinavian Social Turn with artist Kerstin Bergendal and Mick Wilson.
The Month of Books continues with a selection of exhibited works and a editorial workshop with OEI, a Stockholm based magazine for extra-disciplinary spaces and de-disciplinizing moments. OEI has published 91 issues and the accompanying publishing structure OEI editör has released some hundred titles of investigative poetry, aesthetic documents, bookworks, theoretical and poetological essays.
At PUBLICS, OEI presents staying with editing & localizing publishing – a micro-environment or a ‘grove’ of editing, a small multi-direction space consisting of three “publishing tables” and three “editing placards.” These “editing placards” in plexiglass are printed with edited constellations of verbal and visual reflections and statements – from poetological remarks on montage to theoretical soundings of geological and cultural forms of layering; from images and one-liners to more elaborated paragraphs, deriving from editorial texts or different participants works in OEI issues.
The opening coincides with the Helsinki release of OEI #90-91: Sickle of Syntax & Hammer of Tautology: Concrete and Visual Poetry in Yugoslavia, 1968-1983 (guest edited by Sezgin Boynik from Rab-Rab). On Saturday 25th OEI editors Jonas (J) Magnusson & Cecilia Grönberg host a workshop and presentation on editing, montage, and publishing practices versus fieldwork, historiography, and locality.
The Month of Books includes: ACAB ~ Asiya Wadud, James Hoff (Primary Information) & DeForrest Brown Jr. and guests in collaboration with FCINY ~ Arctic Art Book Fair / Mondo Books ~ The Temporary Bookshelf ~ Jonas (J) Magnusson & Cecilia Grönberg (OEI) ~ Third Space collective ~ Eloise Sweetman (Shimmer) & Flis Holland ~ Sezgin Boynik (Rab-Rab) ~ Maarit Mustonen & James Prevett (Parties for Public Sculpture); Kathrin Böhm, Paul O’Neill, Mick Wilson & Kerstin Bergendal ~ Rooftop Press ~ Nick Thurston ~ Pierre Leguillon ~ Jonna Karanka & Sakari Tervo (Sorbus) ~ If I Can’t Dance… ~ In Character in collaboration with Index, Stockholm and Praksis, Oslo and their Teen Advisory Boards
And Books, and more Books, and many more readers.More info at: http://www.publics.fi/calendar/the-month-of-books/
OEI presentation is realised with support from Nordic Culture Point and we want to also thank Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation.
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