Isabel Reitemeyer blue cat/brown cat, 2017

CONCEPTUAL POETICS DAY 2025
Saturday, June 14, 2025

Miss Read Stage
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin
View Map

FREE ENTRY

PROGRAM

12:00 – 13:15 * FOCUS Clara Obligado, Nicole Hervás Ibañez (X Artists’ Books), Verónica Stedile Luna (EME Editorial)

all that grows: nature and writing

X Artists’ Books presents all that grows: nature and writing by Clara Obligado, translated from Spanish by Fiona Mackintosh. Join us for a reading and conversation with Obligado and Verónica Stedile Luna as they explore writing and publishing from the margins.

Spanish with English translation

13:30 –14:30 Regine Ehleiter (Universität Witten/Herdecke), Rebekah Smith (Ugly Duckling Presse), Mela Dávila Freire (Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg)

Rereading Mirtha Dermisache

Launching two new publications on Argentinian conceptual artist Mirtha Dermisache (1940–2012) by Ugly Duckling Presse and Textem Verlag. Regine Ehleiter and Rebekah Smith will join Mela Dávila Freire in a conversation about Dermisache’s radical approach to writing, publication, and circulation, the publishing practices of women artists in 1970s Latin America, and the ways in which Dermisache’s work continues to challenge conventional notions of reading.

15:00 – 15:45 * FOCUS Luisa Ungar, Catalina Vargas (Cajón de sastre)

The Deepest Silence

Join us for a performative and collective reading of the artist publication Score of Bones (Notes for a Reading of the Present) by Luisa Ungar, a Colombian artist based in Berlin. The book silently resonates, containing a series of drawings depicting vestiges and small bone fragments, alluding to musical scores or a secret code to be deciphered. The bone compositions mysteriously activate our ways of seeing and listening in the present.

16:00 – 16:45 * FOCUS Ipek Burçak (Well Gedacht Publishing), Eren Ileri (Well Gedacht Publishing)

Post-Platform Digital Publishing Toolkit

The participatory talk will explore current digital publishing tools and platforms/services most commonly used by publishers and artists (such as Wordpress, Shopify, PayPal, ChatGPT, etc.). We will look at alternative open source and decentralized options of these platforms and services, and challenge the individualistic privacy-centered discourse of data protection.

17:00 – 17:45 Jhen Chen (Limestone Books), Emily Shin-Jie Lee (Limestone Books)

Cross-border Publishing Co-op

“Print Local, Sell Local” is the foundational strategy behind Limestone Books’ publishing practice. Focused on non-Western perspectives the global imbalance in the distribution of print-based art publishing and knowledge gets recognized. In response, they aim to connect small-scale local hubs across borders—such as independent bookshops, RISO workshops, and artist-run space —through resource redistribution and localized distribution networks. Limestone Books will share examples from past practices and introduce its ongoing initiative, the “Cross-border Publishing Co-op.”

18:00 – 18:45 * FOCUS Gigi Argyropoulou (Οχτώ/Eight, Critical institute for arts and politics), Olga Schubert (Haus der Kulturen der Welt; From Now Curatorial Office), Bernd Scherer (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology)

Ecologies of Instituting

Following the example of an Italian network of farmers called Genuino Clandestino Andrea Ghelfi in his essay for the Instituting volume argues that agroecology can be understood as a movement that is trying to redefine the political, economic, and juridical space of action of organic food producers. How do we as artists, cultural workers, organizers and publishers institute ecologies that are based on practices of withdrawal and fugitivity from institutions, but at the same time create supportive, long-lasting, caring and ecological infrastructures?

19:00 – 20:15 * FOCUS Alessandro Ludovico (Neural), moderated by Michalis Pichler

Tactical Publishing

Alessandro Ludovico presents his latest book, Tactical Publishing: Using Senses, Software, and Archives in the Twenty-First Century (MIT Press) arguing for the importance of post-digital publishing in shaping and developing alternative directions for the current computational media landscape. By questioning the grammar of publishing, Ludovico invites us to de-scale, resist, reduce and restrict the endlessness paradigm created by the digital industry and perpetuated by us—to focus on what matters, to decentralize and re-center ourselves. Our task, he believes, is to develop an alternative publishing system, a new ecology of publishing that transcends the dichotomy between paper and digital media.

20:30 – 21:00 * FOCUS Lula Valletta (Bur-Rose), Felix Knöppel (Lichtspucker)

Concert: Bibliophile:The Metalmorph Manifesto

“Good luck deciphering this one, you metalhead! The cut-up technique passed on to us by William Burroughs was applied to around 70 lyrics, from all kinds of metal genres. After C.U.M. (The Cut-Up Manifesto consisting of 27 artists’ manifestos from the past 100 years or so all morphed into one) be prepared now for the Metalmorph Manifesto, carefully dissected and rearranged by yours truly.” Lula Valletta