Mahler & LeWitt Studios and VIAINDUSTRIAE are pleased to present an Open Call opportunity for a publisher, artist publisher or artists involved in publishing to join their summer 2021 residency session in Spoleto, Italy, to develop new work and participate in Quasi-Book, a platform for disseminating and contextualising artists’ publishing practices during the Festival dei Due Mondi.

Open for the duration of the festival, Quasi-Book will be an experimental artist’s bookshop, events space and gallery, connected to the former studio of Sol LeWitt in the old town of Spoleto. As a prolific bookmaker and a co-founder of the Printed Matter bookstore in New York, LeWitt is closely identified with the book as an art form. The Festival dei Due Mondi is an international, multi-disciplinary arts festival founded by the composer Giancarlo Menotti in 1958.

Quasi-Book will act as a hub for the activities of the Mahler & LeWitt Studios and VIAINDUSTRIAE throughout the festival. It will be a hybrid space presenting studio activity, hosting events and exhibitions, as well as the daily running of a bookshop. Mahler & LeWitt Studios and VIAINDUSTRIAE are interested in supporting alternative and experimental approaches to artists’ publishing and bookshops.

The VIAINDUSTRIAE Archive and the connected De Donno Collection – which contain historic and contemporary collections of artist’s publications alongside related artworks and ephemera, dating from Futurism and with a focus on Italian art – will be made available for research during the residency period and as a resource for programming in Quasi-Book. VIAINDUSTRIAE is a projectspace and publishing group specialising in experimental, contemporary approaches to publishing.

The Mahler & LeWitt Studios / VIANDUSTRIAE programs provide artists, writers and curators with funded periods of research and development to explore new ways of working. It is with this in mind, with respect to alternative publishing methods and approaches – that they will consider proposals. In the context of the pandemic, wherein the Italian government considers books as ‘essential items’ and permits bookshops to remain open even in ‘red-zones’, Mahler & LeWitt Studios / VIANDUSTRIAE are interested in supporting experimental approaches to artists’ publishing which help to facilitate communal reflection and action. Quasi-Book embraces our need to make, read, use and distribute books as tools for artistic investigation. They are interested in the role publishing plays in creating discourse, disseminating ideas and encouraging debate, and in permitting co-generative, co-operative ways of working.

The opportunity is open to single applicants as well as combined (two person) applicants, submitted with one application. It is open to publishers and artist publishers irrespective of age or nationality.

Deadline to apply: 30 April 2021

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