I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Thursday March 27th — —

“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Thursday March 27th — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Thursday March 27th — —

Facing Pages

We are avid fans of independent magazines and even collected first editions of every magazine we could get our hands on at one point. Therefore we support any significant stage that is given to the beautiful printed products. The largest stage for indie magazines in Europe is Facing Pages: a biennale in the Dutch city of Arnhem celebrating every aspect of the independent magazine, of which the third installment will start the 28th of March. During the festival the city centre of the city, known for its fashion academy, will be transformed into a free haven for magazine makers and lovers. In this year’s edition with the theme ‘Make magazines not War’, a great selection of interesting individuals will participate, focussing on the power of magazines to be a tool for change. Among them are Patrick Waterhouse, creative director at COLORS Magazine, Matthew Holroyd and Jonathan Baron of the beautiful Baron Magazine, Rachel Maria Taylor and Jody Daunton of Another Escape, Francesco Franchi the writer of ‘Designing News’ and from the Netherlands: Jeroen Boot of Soigneur.

Facing Pages was founded in 2010 by Joost van der Steen and William van Giessen; graphic designers at O.K. Parking and publishers of independent magazines. After Colophon in Luxembourg was discontinued in 2009, the two Dutchmen felt the urge to continue giving independent magazines a proper stage out of which eventually Facing Pages was born. Early in the process Tanja Koning joined the team, with a background as a cultural programmer and project leader she is the perfect addition to the core team. The three of them curate the speakers programme, exhibitions and side-programme.

The exhibition at the Dutch Art Insitute is the beating heart of Facing Pages. An open call was written out for everyone to send in their magazine this year, making the exhibition somewhat of a library with a very broad collection of independent magazines from all over the world. Within the exhibition there are curated sections highlighting personal favorites with one of them by William and Joost, another section is by the online platform: Magpile. The last section is a selection by the Amsterdam-based Athenaeum News Centre, which offers the most unique collection of magazines in the Netherlands and was also responsible for the extraordinary pop-up store during the MoBA which took place in Arnhem last year.

The symposium with its interesting speakers takes place at the Showroom Arnhem which is a walking distance away from the main exhibition. And also WUFT, the small press comics publishing house is only a little walk away. During Facing Pages they will enlighten Arnhem with their Wuft-crew and invite the audience to make new magazines with their bizarre magazine apparatus: the S-I-M-M-M (Spectacular-Interactive-Mini-Magazine-Machine).

For more information and to order tickets for Facing Pages see here.

(Via fontanel)