8:00 pm
Waiting Trajectory
Lecture-Performance by Fehras Publishing Practices
45 minutes
The movement and circulation of publications along parts of the Hijaz Railway can still be perceived from the train station in Damascus, which was built in 1907. Even after the construction of the railway stopped following the First World War, the station still operated until it was transformed into a library and book museum in recent years. The act of transformation and the shift of meaning turned the station into a mobile space for knowledge, not only encompassing the station itself but also the station’s surroundings, where streets of book and paper traders, publishers and printers come together. Today the area reflects the history of modern publishing in the region and the mechanisms for the circulation, appearance and disappearance of books. Waiting Trajectory will reconstruct the station and its surroundings through three personal narrations that enter into dialogue with the music of Al Rahbani Brothers and Fairuz's musical play Al Mahata [The Station].
Community Programming and Workshops:
5:00 pm–8:00 pm
Workshop: DIY Illustrated Sketchbooks
6:00 pm
Presentation and Book Launch of Ibrahim El-Salahi: Prison Notebook with Dr Salah M. Hassan (Goldwin Smith Professor and Director, Institute for Comparative Modernities, Cornell University and academic advisor to The Africa Institute).
Published by Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) in association with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, the original volume of the book was released this summer in New York and will be launched at FOCAL POINT alongside a full Arabic edition.
Community Programming and Workshops:
Friday, 9 November
4:00 pm–7:00 pm Workshop: Bookbinding
4:30 pm–6:30 pm Sketch Artist Meetup
6:00 pm–8:00 pm Workshop: Botanical Impressions
10:00 am–4:45 pm
SYMPOSIUM
It Begins with a Story: Artists, Writers and Periodicals in Asia (FOCAL POINT Edition)
Developed by the Hong Kong-based Asia Art Archive, this symposium will look towards the histories and present of publishing in the wider Asia region.
Schedule
9:30 am Registration
10:00 am Writing and Design in Twentieth Century Journals
Panelists: Spandan Bhattacharya, Noopur Desai, Michael Erdman and Samina Iqbal Moderator: John Tain
12:00 pm Lunch break
1:00 pm The Serial Impulse: Contemporary Publishing from Asia
Panelists: Koh Nguang How, Michelle Wong, Merve Unsal and Helen Ku
Moderator: Özge Ersoy
3:00 pm Crossing Borders: Art and Artists’ Writings Across Languages
In conversation: Dossiers editors Sneha Ragavan, Santhosh Sadanandan, Vidya Shivadas and Sabih Ahmed
Moderator: John Tain
4:45 pm Closing Remarks
Community Programming and Workshops:
10:00 am–12:00 pm Children’s Workshop: How to Make a Personal Calendar
11:00 am–2:00 pm Workshop: Printmaking Without a Press
12:00 pm–2:00 pm Workshop: Papermaking
3:00 pm–6:00 pm Workshop: Make a Zine
5:00 pm–9:00 pm Live Music by Arfoud Brothers
Installation and book presentation
Fehras Publishing Practices, Disappearances. Appearances. Publishing
The installation Disappearances. Appearances. Publishing and the book When the Library Was Stolen examine the private library of the well-known modern Arab novelist Abd Al-Rahman Munif and reread its holdings. Munif spent most of his life in exile, constantly migrating between a number of Arab and European cities. A passionate reader and writer, he collected books and publications during his travels and founded libraries that were fated to either disappear, shrink or migrate.
The installation presents a re-reading of Munif’s library-archive through statistical interpretation and photographs that attempt to trace its movement, holdings and stories. This research is based on an inventory that catalogues and documents the approximately 10,000 publications in the library.
Film
Ibrahim El-Salahi: Prison Notebook, 2011 (45:20 minutes)
In voice-overs, Ibrahim El-Salahi talks about the illustrations and images in his book Prison Notebook.
Short Film
Creation: Making a Handmade Book (Tara Books), 2016 (7:18 minutes)
This film by Tara Books documents the accumulative process of screen printing a book. It begins with an image being exposed onto tightly woven silk and moves on to the mixing of the ink and scoring of pages for alignment. The film finishes with the binding of the book.
Open Studio
Artist Nasir Nasrallah will open his studio to the public all three days of the art book fair. On the final day, Nasrallah’s studio will become a social and communal space where visitors can meet and converse with the artist about storytelling and his work in book design.