PrintRoom

The Protest Banner Lending Library has returned to Rotterdam! Join us at the Rijnhoutplein Festival to make your own banner during the Groot Rotterdams Atelierweekend at Het Archief.

16 September: Rijnhoutplein Festival / 13:00 – 17:00 
Rijnhoutplein, Rotterdam
(between West Kruiskade and Nieuwe Binnenweg)

15 September: Opening / 16:00 – 18:00 
16 & 17 September: GRAW / 13:00 – 17:00
Het Archief (former city archive)
Robert Fruinstraat 52, Rotterdam

On Saturday, September 16th PrintRoom joins the annual Rijnhoutplein Festival, co-organised with our colleague organisations and small businesses in the neighbourhood. You can expect a vibrant afternoon with live music, fashion shows, presentations and workshops.

PrintRoom will once again join forces with Patricia Fonseca Monteiro at her Invalid Atelier, where we will make protest banners for our branch of the Protest Banner Lending Library. You’re invited to join us and make a banner on a topic of your choice! 

More Information:

PrintRoom’s Protest Banner Lending Library, part of the larger Protest Banner Lending Library by US-based artist, writer and educator Aram Han Sifuentes was part of the Protest Processie Parade exhibition at the Zeeuws Museum in Middelburg. The end of the exhibition was heralded by a parade to the city station, with dozens of visitors displaying their self-made banners. From there they traveled back to Rotterdam.

During the Rijnhoutplein Festival both old and new banners will be presented on the square and at our headquarters. The banners are also part of the Groot Rotterdams Atelierweekend Rotterdam on September, 16 and 17 at Het Archief, where Herman Lamers curates a show. PrintRoom’s workshop space will be located in the basement of the building. 

What would your banner look like?

You can join the workshop at Rijnhoutplein on 16 September.
Send us your slogan and/or banner design.

Als je geïnteresseerd bent kun je hier meer informatie vinden.

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Books Are Bridges Art Book Fair, Juli 2023, Shelf Life of the Library, presentatie Mariana Lanari en Boek Klup#1, Alaa Abu Asad en Ulufer Çelik

The Fabulous Books Are Bridges Art Book Fest returns to SNV community gardens on

Sunday 9 July 2023 from 12.00 – 17.00

Roel Langerakweg 33, 3041 JK Rotterdam

Join our Fabulous Art Book Fest with over 30 international and local artist publishers, who present their latest publications at the Clubhouse of SNV community gardens in Rotterdam-West.

With: antoine lefebvre editions /Art Zines / Hon Books (Paris), Artists in Solidarity (Rotterdam), Beatrix Pang/ Zine Coop/ Small tune press (Hong Kong), Bebebooks (Gent), Bur-Rose (The Hague), Colorama (Berlin), Eleanor Vonne Brown / The Nose (Walton on the Naze),  F.G.A.(Rotterdam), Futura Resistenza (Rotterdam/Brussels), Gloria Glitzer (Berlin), Good Neighbour (Amsterdam), Heiba Lamara /OOMK (London), Jap Sam Books (Prinsenbeek), Jesse Presse (Amsterdam), Knust (Nijmegen), Limestone Books (Maastricht), Lu Lin / Not just a collective (Arnhem), Mono Rhetoric (The Hague), Nazir Fadzilah/ SVARA art journal/ Tintabudi Bookshop (Kuala Lumpur), Onomatopee (Eindhoven), Other Forms Berlin/Chicago, Pei-Ying Lin (Taiwan/Eindhoven), PrintRoom (Rotterdam), Priya Jay /iniva / STUART(London), Roots to Fruits (Arnhem), Rose Nordin / STUART/Rabbits Road Press (London), Sarmad Magazine (Rotterdam), Stefanie Leinhos (Leipzig), Tender Hand Press (Glasgow), Teuntje Fleur (Schiedam), The Eriskay Connection (Breda), This was a project… (Rotterdam), Unformed Informed (Rotterdam), Valiz (Amsterdam) and more

on the program:

13.00 – 15.00 Print the Garden workshop by PrintRoom and gardeners

14.00 – Dutch launch of NETbook Walton Flax Exchange with Shane Waltener + workshop

15.00 – Virus cookbook presentation by Pei-Ying Lin “Virophilia: The 2070 revised edition of the Postnatural Cookbook” & tasting of some of the recipes prepared by CHAxARTxRTM

16.00 – Workshop by Martin Laroche/ Good Neighbour: ‘ I remember’

+ All afternoon: Artists in Solidarity will serve snacks and sell artist editions. The proceeds will go to the victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

+ All afternoon: Music by Lucija Gregov, Cengiz Menguç and Futura Resistenza

Books are Bridges Art Book Fest 2022

The Fabulous Books Are Bridges Art Book Fest is part of the second Books Are Bridges Publishing Summit, which brings together and links international and local publishing platforms to exchange ideas and strengthen the support structures that we build to create a publishing community.

What models do we use to gather around publishing and zine-making and what do we wish to develop in the coming years? How can we (continue to) provide space and attention for not-so-loud voices? Together we will reflect on how to maintain and grow our networks and care for ourselves, so that we can continue to nourish our communities. Three days to share time and care: to think, make and play together during workshops, shared meals, presentations, conversations, and a Fabulous Art Book Fest.

The Books Are Bridges Publishing Summit is developed by PrintRoom (Karin de Jong and team) in collaboration with Rose Nordin and Eleanor Vonne Brown. The title Books Are Bridges is inspired by the publishing practice of Claudia de la Torre. The logo is designed by José Quintanar. The flyer, poster and booklet are designed by Dongyoung Lee.

PrintRoom will join Offprint London with a selection of our publications and works we presented in our programme. We will bring back new books and editions for our shop and archive in Rotterdam.

Open: 12 May from 2 – 7 pm, 13 May from 10 – 6 pm, 14 May from 10 – 6 pm

Join us if you can!

On Sunday 14 May 10.45. – 11.15 we launch our NETbook Walton Flax Exchange, with a talk by Shane Waltener and an introduction by Eleanor Vonne Brown, The Nose.

NETbooks are self-reliance publishing collaborations. Using flax, harested in Walton, Shane Waltener explains processing the crop from plant to linen.

~ Book presentation Against the Written Word

~ Live performance

by Ian F Svenonius

Celebrating the last days at PrintRoom with Alan Smart, Publisher in Residence in April, sharing some of our Archive stories and finds

27 April 2023

20:00 – 22:00 at PrintRoom

Calling all anarchists, royalty-rejectionists, and everyone else seeking an alternative to the capitalist deluge of King’s Day! Schlep your second-hand wares and revolutionary aspirations to PrintRoom, and join us for an evening programme celebrating resistance from past and present.

Artist and musician Ian F Svenonius will present his fourth and latest book AGAINST THE WRITTEN WORD. Deemed ‘the book to end all books’, this publication is the first of its kind to take a principled stance against literacy, which it describes as a ruling class conspiracy that renders workers as participants in their own oppression. Ian’s talk will include an encounter session with testimonials by former readers and a musical accompaniment from ESCAPE-ISM — the beneath-the-underground sensation that has been described as ‘an act of musical vandalism’.

New Babylon Times: Publishing in the Contested City is an exhibition by publisher-in-residence, Alan Smart. The exhibition, which evolved over the course of the residency, maps a chronology of counter-culture manifestos – including excerpts from Dadaist texts, the Situationist International, and Provo publications. This gathering of material retraces the evolution, dissonances, and interconnections between these movements, each articulating – through happenings, spatial interventions, and reimaginings of the urban sphere – a radical desire for new social and spatial paradigms. 

During the month of April, a series of research excavations and communal discussions will be undertaken in institutional and more independent archives and collections, harvesting both textual material and questions, stories, and shared contemporary perspectives on the historical corpus. Some of these gleanings will be reproduced and made available in our mail-out project, Holiday in the Archive, which will also draw on PrintRoom’s visit to the Interference Archive (NY, USA) and the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam, NL). If you would like to receive a copy of Holiday in the Archive in the post, please send us a mail at: info@printroom.org

Resistance between the margins

In dialogue with Alan Smart, Mariana Lanari, Heide Hinrichs & Elizabeth Haines 

19:00 – 21:00

Shelf Life of the Library reflects on what kind of artistic, activist and more broadly research strategies can be adopted in order to re-evaluate, and potentially expand the dominant narratives that frame how we understand past, present and future. We invite you to join Alan Smart, Mariana Lanari, Heide Hinrichs and Elizabeth Haines in exploring – provocatively, playfully, curiously – legacies of resistance and critical social action, and the contemporary negotiation of these histories in printed matter.

In the spirit of archival interventions, artist-researcher Mariana Lanari will reflect on her conceptual and spatial re-mediation of library infrastructures. Mariana’s practice explores processes of translation, both in regards to linguistics and broader cultural implications. Her research and artistic projects examine the negotiating role of libraries within the wider context of heritage preservation, as well as the mediation of the library itself in the surrounding social environment.

Heide Hinirchs and Elizabeth Haines will present the publication Shelf Documents: Art Library as Practice. The publication developed from the collaborative project second shelf, initiated in 2018 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The project sought to enable the integration of books by artists from marginal positions in the academy’s library. In this spirit, Shelf Documents departs from the question: ‘How can art libraries be generative resources and sites of action for all who identify as queer, as women, as Black, as Indigenous, as people of colour? What does it mean to consider the art library as a collective practice that spans multiple scales?

Alan Smart’s project, New Babylon Times: Publishing in the Contested City, physically inhabits PrintRoom’s presentation space as a cartographic display of posters, reminiscent of a picket line. Both visually and conceptually, the display also evokes an urban landscape – a site that sees the mundane choreography of life collide with restless ideals and revolutionary desire. The presentation draws on Alan’s critical interest in the intersection of political and social movements with architecture, design and urbanism. Alan Smart joins PrintRoom this month as publisher-in-residence, and during his residency he will facilitate collective encounters with archival sites, including the International Institute of Social History.

Alan Smart joins PrintRoom in April as publisher-in-residence, and will develop the project New Babylon Times: Publishing in the Contested City, exploring publishing-as-practice through the lens of historicity. 

Alan is an architect, researcher, publisher, and co-founder of the research and design platform OtherForms. In his practice, he examines the intersection of political and social movements with architecture, design and urbanism. He brings with him a selection from his collection of activist publications and documents, which will form part of an evolving exhibition in PrintRoom throughout the month. 

New Babylon Times: Publishing in the Contested City maps out a chronology of counter-culture manifestos – including excerpts from dada, the New Situationists, and PROVO. This gathering of material retraces the evolution, dissonances, and influences between these movements, each articulating – through happening, spatial interventions, and reimaginings of the urban sphere – a radical desire for a new social paradigm. 

During the month, Alan will both facilitate and participate in collective excavations in institutional and community collections, harvesting an abundance of questions, stories, and archival reproductions along the way. Some of these gleanings can also be glimpsed in our mail-out project, Holiday in the Archive, drawing on PrintRoom’s visit to the Interference Archive (NY, USA) and the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam, NL).If you would like to receive a copy of Holiday in the Archive in the post, please send us a mail at: info@printroom.org

18.03.2022 | 14:00 – 17:00

+ Performative interventions

19.03.2022 | 16:00 – 18:00

+ Artist talks

On the occasion of Art Central Rotterdam, we present Boek Klup #2 and #3, featuring artists Natalia Papaeva and Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva.

Inspired by Natalia’s encounter with linguistic slippages in her mother tongue, Saturday’s event presents a series of spontaneous performances in and around PrintRoom. These playful sequences emerge from questions such as: how to bridge communication when faced with linguistic limitations? How can we embrace misunderstandings and physical gestures as part of the process of understanding one another? These experimental, semi-improvised interventions reflect a gesture of thinking-in-progess — a re-imagining of language as a meandering medium, resisting all expectations of efficiency or precision. 

The collaborative process draws on the artists’ shared interest in the crucial role of language in shaping collective identity and personal memory. On Sunday, Natalia and Masha will engage in a conversation, examining the complexity of language in relation to identity, intergenerational relations, and reclaiming heritage.

Masha’s new publication Colonial Banality will also be on show in a group exhibition at Baanhof from 17 March – 9 April. More information can be found on Art Central Rotterdam’s website. It will also be available for sale in PrintRoom. Proceeds from the sale of the publication will be donated to humanitarian aid support in Ukraine. 

Through ethnographic recollections and illustrations, Colonial Banality critically scrutinises the impact of colonial mechanisms on ethnic minority communities throughout Russia’s history. As the child of a Tartar-Bashkir mother and a Russian father, Masha’s family history intimately reflects the everyday powerplays of nationalist politics. Her illustrations recount the collision of childhood naivety and the realisation of colonial violence. In the words of Ukrainian director Oleksiy Radynski: “Russian culture deserves a much harsher punishment than a boycott. It deserves deconstruction. To deconstruct Russian-speaking culture is to question the existing pantheon…’ Colonial Banality is Masha’s deconstruction of the imperialist culture and intolerance that surrounded her childhood.

About the artists

Born and raised in a mountainous region in the west of Buryatia, visual and performance artist Natalia Papaeva has been living and working in the Netherlands since 2013. Buryat-Mongolian oral tradition is central to her practice, helping her create poignant artworks that address such themes as loss and mourning, land and climate, language, racism, and identity. Drawing from her own memories and experiences, she creates performances, in which she combines singing, the spoken word, and storytelling.

Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva is a visual artist and illustrator, based in Rotterdam since 2009. She grew up in Ufa, the capital of  Bashkortostan – a region that became occupied by the Russian Empire in the 16th Century. She describes her practice as a crossover of fine art and illustration, working as both an editorial illustrator for international publishing houses and as an independent artist for galleries and museums. Since 2019 she teaches illustration at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, NL. 

Join us on Museumnacht 010 for the launch of Boek Klup with artists Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva, Alaa Abu Asad & Ulufer Çelik!

+ Book Launch: Colonial Banality by Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva

+ Draw, translate, play with Alaa Abu Asad & Ulufer Çelik

+ Make your own recycled riso-print notebook

+ Polyglot karaoké 

Boek Klup is a collaborative project that explores language and translation through the practice of independent publishing. For our first event, Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva will launch her new book, Colonial Banality, and Alaa Abu Asad & Ulufer Çelik invite you join in their translation-memory game, based on their publication I love it when translation can be found to agree with our weird desires. 

Throughout the evening, you are invited to share your first, second and perhaps even third language through drawing, play and song. At our bookbinding station you can make a Nootboek to collect your (mis)translations and memories. Join our polyglot karaoké — sing your favourite lyrics in your mother tongue and dance the night away!

19:15 – 20:00: Introduction and artist talks

20:00 onwards: Bookbinding station

20:00 – 21:00: Drawing session

21:00 – 22:00: Memory game: translate and play

22:00 – 00:00: Polyglot karaoké and music

Proceeds from sales will be donated to the earthquake recovery efforts in Turkey and Syria, and humanitarian support for Ukraine. Donations can be given throughout the entire night — please give generously!

Artist, researcher and photographer Alaa Abu Asad develops alternative trajectories in which (re)presentation, translation, looking, reading and understanding can intersect. His work takes form in writing, image making and interactive installations, in which he visualises his research and methodology of exploring the boundaries of languages. 

Ulufer Çelik is a Turkish artist, who lives and works in Rotterdam. Her artistic practice explores the potentialities of narrative and myth-making, that is expressed through moving image, poetry, memory and sound. She is a part of Eat-House Food Collective, and a member of Putsebocht 3 and W1555 Artist Community that are located in Rotterdam South.

Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva is a visual artist and illustrator, currently based in Rotterdam, NL, born in Ufa, RU. She describes her practice as a crossover of fine art and illustration. During her career, she has worked both as an editorial, commercial illustrator for publishing houses around the world, and as an independent artist for galleries and museums. Since 2019 she teaches illustration at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, NL.