1. Art Book Fairs co-create the public identities they seem merely to depict.

2. Art Book Fairs are / Miss Read is not only a venue for representing a separate, prior publishing scene, they are a space of care and a forum for constituting and nurturing a community around publishing as artistic practice.

3. If the 1960s and 1970s were the heyday of artists books, the 2010s (and 2020s) strike us as the heyday of publishing as (artistic) practice. Art Book Fairs are at the center of that.

4. Making public publishers, Art Book Fairs are meta-publishers. Or maybe not.

5. The jet-set around Art Book Fairs has a terrible carbon footprint. Virtual Art Book Fairs during Covid-19 were good at reducing that, but they missed the main point: The physical encounters.

6. Miss Read and most other Art Book Fairs are not economically viable. They operate as gift economies both on the ends of exhibitors and organizers. They do create symbolic capital.

7. Art Book Fairs gather the intellectual elite and provide intellectual fig leaves for the art world.

8. Art Book Fairs/ Miss Read as a singular public space is a phantom because its claim to be fully inclusive has always been an illusion.

9. Art Book Fairs as public spheres strive to be democratic only insofar as exclusions are taken into account and open to contestation – open to contestation as social and therefore mutable relations.

10. It remains questionable if Art Book Fairs reach beyond the demographic of upper and middle classes. 

11. Charging high table fees is a mistake as it preselects exhibitors for the wrong reasons. Anything more than 100 Euros is too much.²

12. Charging entrance fee is a mistake as it preselects visitors for the wrong reasons. Anything more that 0 (zero) is too much.

13. It remains questionable, if Art Book Fairs and the independent publishing scenes they depict are racialized and, possibly, reproduce what some theorists (A. Quijano) would call the colonial difference. It takes an active effort to work against it, towards decolonizing Art Book Fairs/Miss Read. Passport privilege is only part of the problem. 

14. If a FAIR is UNFAIR go for an ANTI-FAIR. (P. Obolo)

15. Social space is produced and structured by conflicts. With this recognition, a democratic spacial politics begin. (R. Deutsche)

16. Art Book Fairs / Miss Read (should) empower artists and writers who operate independently from the gallery system.

17. Blue chip galleries should be excluded ... from exhibiting at the same terms as self-publishers.

18. Every artist should have a cheap line. More than that: No artist should need to have an expensive line, in order to be considered serious, or to be considered at all.

19. We have reached a privileged historical moment when running a publishing house—or an Art Book Fair—can be (an) art work. At the same time, it is Sozialarbeit (social work), a mode of production analogous not to the creation of material goods but to the production of social contexts.

20. Art Book Fairs help to LEARN TO READ DIFFERENTLY.

1 The text has been re-written for its first printed version in OEI. It was first presented on August 24, 2021 at the round table The Politics of Art Book Fairs at Miss Read With: Sunny Iyer (Printed Matter Book Fairs), Qing Zhou (Shanghai Art Book Fair), Hedieh Ahmadi (Bazar Art Book Fair), Dan Mitchell (ASP London), Tokyo Art Book Fair (tbc), Noora Al Mualla (Sharjah Art Book Fair), Leon Muñoz Santini (rrreplica, Mexico City), Eveline Wüthrich (I Never Read, Basel), moderated by Pascale Obolo (African Art Book Fair) and Michalis Pichler (MISS READ)

2At this point, Miss Read is charging up to 200 Euro + Tax. Tables are given for 80 Euro to artists/authors and Zines. With magazines, there is an exchange-ad-system in place.