A scholarly symposium titled “After the Fold: Contemporary Approaches at the Intersection of Artists’ Books and Experimental Poetics“ will take place as part of the European project “Anthologies of Cooperation: Encounters in/through Artists’ Books and Experimental Poetry (AbeX)“.
The symposium will take place at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest on 28 and 29 September 2026.
The event aims to bring together scholars, researchers, artists, and poets to explore the intertwined legacies and possible futures of artists’ books and experimental poetry. Through a polyphony of voices from visual culture, literary practice, and critical theory, After the Fold aims to open an expansive space for theoretical reflection, historical reassessment, and forward-looking experimentation.
The symposium will include presentations, performances, artist talks, and workshops alongside opportunities for informal dialogue and live encounters with printed matter and experimental forms.
The fold — whether in a page, a thought, or a form — is both a gesture and a metaphor. In book making, it binds and structures; in poetic or artistic practice, it may rupture, conceal, or transform.
What comes after the fold? This symposium asks what unfolds when we move past conventional categories and forms — when artists’ books move beyond objecthood, when poetry turns spatial, performative, illegible, or algorithmic.
Looking at key concerns across theory, practice and transdisciplinary dialogue, the symposium will be organised into four thematic streams, whose aim is to bring to the fore the methodological and conceptual intersections of artists’ books and experimental poetry, as media of “rupture” – of traditional modes of production or presentation/reception, challenging the formal and material limits, authorship and the book itself.
Paper proposals for the Symposium may be sent to the email: abexsymposium2026@mnac.ro
The deadline for applications is 13 February 2026.
For more infromation about Symposium, applications and thematic frame, please see this document.
A GDPR notice can be downloaded here.
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The Anthologies of Cooperation: Encounters in/through Artists’ Books and Experimental Poetry (AbeX) project is co-financed by the European Union through the Creative Europe Programme.