"How to recover": technical projects to inspire independent publishers

Carrion says that the book must be an autonomous fact, in which the text is part of everyone and bears the responsibility of publishing it in all its stages. As for the language of the book, it is not necessary to seek eloquence and communicate the feelings of the writer, nor to be too literate, as much as to create a integrated structure with other elements and artistic signs that together form an independent artistic work.

The organizers of the exhibition, Carrion's text, and the exhibition guide, printed in the same way and in the same size, have made the text appear as another guide to understanding the mentality of coordinators, Maha Mamoun and Ala Younis, in the selection of works, To light them.

The exhibition is part of the KTV project, which initially aimed to publish a series of books using popular "guides" to deal with some current needs, "skills, ideas, perceptions or feelings". These books combine "technical and conceptual". Between education and instinctive, and between real and imaginary. "The first book of the project, founded in 2012, was" How to Disappear "by Haytham al-Wardani, and after him" How do you know what's really going on? " a series of titles for Arab writers and artists from around the world, before the extension of the project today, to the general interest of publishing, making this exhibition a guide to help independent publishers find new ways to their work by illuminating more than 40 projects and related works.

The purpose of the exhibition is to "restore the author's ability to influence the resulting relationships for publication, to consider the balance of power and the means of availability, as well as the efforts of individuals to restore the right to publish … by presenting projects that reflect the traditional publishing systems that Desire to participate in public space on their own terms ".

The exhibition, founded by Lebanese artist Simon Fattal in San Francisco in the early 1980s, became the largest space dedicated to the publication of Post Apollo Press. The exhibition presents the complete collection of the house, its archive collections and some of the cover designs designed by Fattal, from the drawings of Itil Adnan (Adnan's drawings have been placed in most books of the house). Fattal also organized a symposium in which she told the story of the house since the publication of "Six Mary Rose" by Itel Adnan, in which thousands of copies were printed in a few months and transformed into a university reference in the United States on the Middle East and the Lebanese civil war. The European and American names are important, making the house's identity specialized in experimental poetry and prose. For decades, it has been a cornerstone of the literary landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area, home to a large number of publishing houses and literary centers.

The exhibition presented a number of research projects, including "98 weeks" (Marwa and Mirren Arsanios), which allowed to reread numerous publications on art and culture produced and distributed in the Arab world from 1930s, focusing on modernity in translation, new models, utopian literature provided by these publications. As well as a project for Hala al-Bizri, focused on the history of the book in Lebanon and the Levant, and dates back to the beginning of the emergence of the press and maps the emergence of 39, ideas and ideologies parallel to the movement of printing in the region. The exhibition highlighted a project entitled "Index of Publishing Practice" founded by three young Syrians in Berlin in 2015 and examines the ways of publishing, archives and circulation mechanisms, as well as the emergence and disappearance of the book. The publication and distribution movement near the Hejaz station in Damascus, part of which has been transformed into a book fair and a mobile knowledge space in the city center, has contributed to the transmission of the infection to the adjacent neighborhood. at the station. Paper, printing presses, bookstores, bookstores and archivists.

One of the most important research projects highlighted by the exhibition is Bernard Sheila, who created an Arabic version of his previous work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, starting by launching an invitation open to send unnumbered books in accordance with the International Standard Book Number (ISBN). An electronic record of 1,800 publications in "Exceptional Works Removing from International Systems of Book Trade and Distribution". In designating the exhibition, Sheila produced an Arabic version of her project, which helps to identify the publishing effort in the Arab region and its new and emerging trends and its electronic alternatives for publishing. editing and reading.

The exhibition also places us in front of interesting experiences that have seen the cooperation of many parties to overcome the obstacles that the market or system impose on independent publishing, including a series of stories written by publishers who have decided to make against repressive regimes by publishing and distributing banned texts and politically sensitive statements from home and with the help of their families and circles of their boyfriends. Stories based on real events take place in three cities: Tehran in 2009, Riyadh in 1987 and Palermo in spring 1992.

The exhibition also presented the experience of Turkish publishers, in 1988, to circumvent the prevention of the pbadage of a book Henry Miller "Madar al-Gadi" because of its badual content. On the same day, 40 Turkish publishers agreed, without the knowledge of the publisher and the translator of the book, to produce copies of the book, covering the banned pages in black and accompanying the text of the decision of the court. Another of the other experiences of the exhibition was a light book distribution project, which wove a network of readers – travelers – carriers, ready to use more space and more weight in their luggage to carry small volumes of independent publications.

The exhibition also includes works by Arab writers on topics related to publishing, including the history of Jabbour al-Duwahei "Printed in Beirut", which tells the story of a young man who came to Beirut to publish his novel but which was rejected by several publishers before becoming an employee of a publishing house. Exhibition paintings documenting the characters of the novel). In addition to the story of Adib al-Shabab, the Egyptian author and author Mahmoud Abdel Razzaq became famous in the 1980s because of his commercials, which he deposited himself on walls of Cairo streets or carrying banners in stadiums of football matches. There is also the story of the creation of God Ibrahim in the political prison between 1954 and 1964, which saw the creation of a library of inmates hidden under the walls of the prison and the exhibition Books and bookmaking experiments conducted inside the prison with the help of material available inside.