Printed Matters - SAND, mikrotext and GIER
/On the 28th November we are hosting Printed Matters #1 - a celebration of Berlin’s indie publishing scene that we are very proud to be a part of. We are also very much aware than many of our readers are not in Berlin, and so we want to use the opportunity to present some of our friends here on the website. Today we bring you three very different publishing projects from Berlin:
With twelve issues under their belt, SAND is something of an institution in Berlin’s English-language literary scene. Published twice a year, SAND features prose and poetry as well as translations, art and photography. At the same time, they collaborate with musicians, literary festivals and artists cooperatives - and now us! - to hold regular events in the city. Their stated aim is to offer a printed space for art and literature in Berlin’s international community and beyond. Not only will the good folks from SAND be at Printed Matters with copies of their journal, author Lucy Renner Jones, who appears in issue 11 of SAND, will be joining us on stage for a reading
Every three months mikrotext publishes two ebooks that are thematically linked, focused on literary texts that comment on contemporary questions and offer insight for the future. The texts reflect global debates and are published in German, with selected titles also available in English. But what is an ebook publisher doing at Printed Matters? Well, they are also moving into print and will have some printed versions of their books available at the event. We are also extremely pleased that they will also be reading for us: Wie man mit einem Mann glücklich wird with Ruth Herzberg, and The Smartest Guy on Facebook by Aboud Saeed, read by Nikola Richter.
The brainchild of Diana Arnold and Natalie Stypa, who met in Berlin in 2003, GIER Magazin is a bilingual publication (German and English) that is dedicated to “opposing oppositions”, a cultural studies magazine interested in art, gender and feminism (among other topics) that intends to question binary thinking. In the words of their manifesto: Binary oppositions – e.g. Mann | Frau (man | woman) – function as categories that are filled with texts, images etc. which question or deconstruct the opposition. GIER starts with 3 such opposing pairs. More pairs will be added. Each pair will be filled with new contents (i.e. the categories aren't limited to only one text, image etc. each). We are extremely pleased to be welcoming GIER to Printed Matters, and we are sure there will be some interesting conversations to be had on Saturday afternoon!