BOOKED: 香港藝術書展 Hong Kong Art Book Fair Tai Kwun Contemporary 大館當代美術館

It is truth universal that a truly sophisticated lady can walk gracefully with a book balanced on her head. Taking the circus as inspiration, the performance artists Jing Pang and Florence Lam (BASE Performance) walk through the art book fair and interact acrobatically with books—which, as a metaphor for knowledge, can symbolise the sublimation of the feminine. In this way, the artists confront and embrace society's stereotype of the female body and of feminine behaviour and posture.

A new wave of place-based books/zines has been proliferating in Taiwan and Japan in the last decade, producing publications with particular aesthetics and ideas about place-writing. In Hong Kong, similar attempts are emerging. Ani Syu, an editor actively producing place-writing zines/books in Taiwan, will be sharing her experiences while The Islanders (from the island of Peng Chau in Hong Kong) will be sharing their thoughts on the future of place-based research and imagination. This conversation will be moderated by Hong Kong urbanist Sampson Wong.

Free to register

Thank you, next is an archaeological exploration of materiality, meanings of heritage, urban forms and geometries, as well as personal and historical narratives—and thus offering alternative frames of reference on the built, demolished, and natural environment of Hong Kong. While noticing city’s relentless growth, this work aims to tell the story of material flows and construction currents in the context of space production and landscape ecology.

BOOKED: participants Reading Room and Display Distribute will gather with a few other members of Lumbung Kios and the Lumbung of Publishers, two networked ecosystem projects which have emerged from the experiment of documenta fifteen led by Jakarta collective ruangrupa. With the Kios focusing upon artist-made goods and the Lumbung of Publishers focusing on independent publishing practices, both projects strive to develop a sustainable and collective network incorporating interlocal artistic practices with their sales and distribution.

Free to register

By chance, Hong Kong-based artist Kurt Tong came into possession of a trunk filled with documents, letters, photographs, notes and books belonging to a stranger, a man called Franklin Lung. Intrigued by the life into which he had glimpsed, Tong began to research and piece together the story of Franklin Lung over several months.

In “Dear Franklin,” Tong takes the reader into this life. Through fragments and photographs and, crucially, letters, Lung’s story as a man who began life in a modest family and came to settle in Shanghai. As the book continues and the years change from the 1930s to the 1950s, Tong weaves historical narratives—about China, about the world, about the rise of fascism around the world, about the China diaspora—into Lung’s personal story. Over time, the photographs and notes and letters reveal not only a love story but the unfolding of China’s political and social history of the early 20th century.

The story was published as a book in 2022 but this is the first time the trunk will be shown alongside some of its content, artefacts and vintage photographs in public.

Free to register

For this casual gathering, Sounds Like Print curators Dr Edward Sanderson and Ingrid Pui Yee Chu will be inviting special guests, including publishers of “sound and print” from BOOKED:. Join them as they press “play” and count down through 10 select items from the display, sharing music on vinyl, cassette, and CD, while giving their reactions to how sound and packaging work together to encapsulate precious moments, sensory feelings, and meaningful messages.

Free to register

Interweaving the history of Berlin and Hong Kong, the near and the far, as well as existence and disappearance, the artists Dorothy Wong Ka Chung and Benjamin Ryser (o!sland) bring their ongoing community art research project from Berlin back to Hong Kong in the form of a guided city walk—with photos, audios and texts, which continue their tracing of Hong Kong's migration across the world.

In this walk for BOOKED:, from the artist table and display in the book fair to playgrounds in the public spaces near Tai Kwun (or vice versa), audiences will experience a series of personal stories from both Hong Kong people in Berlin and Berlin people who witnessed the Berlin Wall’s division—about forgotten playgrounds, pigeons in the streets, connections of these cities’ monuments “Victoria/ Viktoria/ 維多利亞” and freedom.

Free to register

What are some examples of artist-parents’ projects that engage their kids? What are fun and challenging aspects of rethinking a family as a collective? Is non-hierarchical interaction really possible in traditional familial structures? In this conversation co-presented by Asia Art Archive, Rooftop Institute, and Tai Kwun Contemporary, we explore family-initiated collective learning and creativity with three artist-parents across the globe.

Yannick Dauby discusses his family’s residency in a remote village in Taiwan, including his two “professional children.” David Horvitz introduces Change the Name of the Days, a project originating from lessons he wrote for his daughter, which grew into a curriculum of thirty-two mailed activities received weekly by 120 people during the height of the pandemic. Chow Yik Lam speaks about her experience publishing illustrated poetry books, and opening and living out of a bookstore on an outlying island in Hong Kong, inspired by both the challenges and rewards of being a full-time mother.

In 2021, Rooftop Institute initiated the collective publishing project Event Scores by Artist-Parents. Hong Kong–based artists who are also parents were invited to contribute “event scores” about how parents can accompany, interact, communicate with, or observe their children. This year, the project will expand to include contributions from artist-parents of diverse cultural contexts to inspire discussion and encourage imaginative approaches for family education through art.

This conversation will be held both onsite and on Zoom, moderated by artist-parent, researcher, and educator Doris Wong.

Free to register

For more than a decade, Raffaella della Olga has worked exclusively with a typewriting machine, a tool with which she has found a way to write and draw her own path to abstraction. What started as a concept of experimentation as an “analogue artist” in the digital age (and to find freedom through mechanical gestures) has rapidly turned into an infinite exploration of the page.

A conversation between the publishers Three Star Books and Raffaella della Olga will be moderated by Billy Tang, in which the artist will explain her working process, while the publishers present case studies of working in close collaborations with artists to develop their unique artist books.

Founded in 2007, Paris-based Three Star Books publishes books and editions with the finest contemporary artists. They collaborate closely with artists to present a full spectrum of possibilities, choosing the most suitable techniques in making a book that is as close as possible to their original vision. At Three Star Books, the Artist is Everything. At BOOKED #5, they will be presenting new works by Raffaella della Olga.

Free to register

Through paper, colour, needle, and thread, we express our thoughts. Starting from one single word in creating a zine, we will be exploring the ways to transform ideas through recording, constructing, directing, designing, experimentation, before folding or sewing everything into a zine and placing it inside a capsule.

Free to register

The conversation invites Hannah Dunsmore, project manager at Self Publish, Be Happy, to discuss the facilitation of publishing photobooks with artists. The talk touches on the conceptualisation and process of transforming photographic works into the form of a book, and discusses storytelling in and of contemporary living conditions. The talk is moderated by Chloe Chow, WMA’s Head of Exhibitions and Programmes

Free to register

Texts cannot fully interpret scents, while scents cannot totally be expressed through words. In this workshop, books and scents take on a complementary role, where we will be trying to read with our nose. We shall be adding the right scents into words in this sensual experience of reading.

Free to register

For this durational performance corresponding with Coffee Table Music, Samson Young uses the final day of BOOKED: being Labour Day to serve as “page turner” for a rotating set of pianists who play the musical score from the Hong Kong artist's algorithmically-generated “songbooks”—one published for each day the work is presented in the Artists’ Book Library.

Pianists: Shelley Ng and Linda Yim; Special thanks to Hong Kong New Music Ensemble (HKNME) and Tom Lee Music.