In autumn 2020 ORINOCO books, a combination of secondhand bookshop and public library, was founded by a collective of neighbors answering the urged need for a book place specialized in non-German literatures. Since then we established a bookshop/library with events, readings, concerts as well as a place for the whole neighborhood to meet, exchange ideas and get together.
Initiated by Karel Ensing ORINOCO books became the home of some thousand books in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Arabic and more.
S i M M i N i books is a bookshop project with a curated selection of international literatures, with a focus on non-fiction: left-wing theory production, queer-feminist literature and theory, eco-criticism and nature writing, aesthetics and media theory as well as art and artists' books. Other focal points (in fiction, poetry, and theory) are mysticism, occultism, spiritualism and science fiction.
In addition to a small selection of publications by independent and small publishing houses or publishing projects, we keep in stock a selection of new publications that reflect the discourses and developments on the global book market.
To keep the curation and selection as polyphonic as possible, S i M M i N i books aims to be a participatory project of many, imagining curation as a dialogical process: please get involved, let us know what you are missing or what you would like to recommend.
for the next four months, we will be running the store rather improvised - that means everything is not yet established as it will be in the future. during this time, the selection of titles is still limited. In addition to a cooperation with ORINOCO books, there are more used books and some new titles from five independent publishing houses: AKI + August + Matthes & Seitz + März + Semiotext(e)
The “trans | discipline Simone Weil denkkollektiv” was founded in 2019 by Martina Bengert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Max Walther (Bauhaus Universität Weimar) and Thomas Sojer (Universität Erfurt). As an egalitarian, international platform, it connects scholars, students, artists and media workers in close cooperation with the American Weil Society and the Association pour l’Étude de la Pensée de Simone Weil.
The denʞkollektiv aims to build up an extensive network of people of various professions and interests working on the French philosopher-mystic Simone Weil (1909 – 1943). This network explores Weil’s œuvre from a transdisciplinary perspective, organising research projects and various events, such as the metaxy[l]ophon. In addition, the denʞkollektiv publishes contributions of diverse formats (e.g. podcasts and papers) on its homepage and organises discussion forums and reading groups in order to put collaborative research into practice. Different digital applications are used to support the denkkollektiv’s dialogue-based work (publication, debate and discussion), which transcends boundaries subject to space and time.
Spontaneously organized during the lock-down by Martina Bengert, Jörg Dünne, and Max Walther the triakontameron online publication experiment was meant to offer a virtual space of encounter and exchange. In a time everything stood still and everybody was rather limited in his/her social and intellectual life, something happened somewhere else: Every Day for three weeks a new short and often essayistic text was posted at triakontameron to find its readers. Inspired by Boccaccio’s Decamerone we imagined the homepage to be a (virtual) place for storytelling and listening with no restriction: anybody could join in, zoom out idiorrhytmically.
In the aftermath of the triacontameron Martina Bengert, Jörg Dünne and Max Walther continued their collaboration with the publication of a writing experiment: Together with Nocturne, a platform for new forms of knowledge production and distribution the three edited a volume with collaboratively written texts by ten authors. Inspired by the surrealist’s Cadavre exquis a form of writing together was tried out and realized.
Please contact Nocturne [info[at]nocturne-plattform.de] to get a copy of the book.
August Verlag was founded in August 2008 by Matthias Haase, David Horst, Maria Muhle, Francesca Raimondi and Dirk Setton as a forum for theory at the intersection of philosophy, politics and art. The aim was to give a place to a concept of theory beyond the boundaries of genre and discipline.
After publishing for more than ten years as an imprint of Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, the publishing house has now been an imprint of Matthes & Seitz Berlin since January 2021. Over the past eleven years, the program has developed along different focal points. With over 70 titles, it now includes life science studies, contributions to a contemporary political theory that strives for a radical renewal of perspectives and concepts, as well as texts on political aesthetics with a focus on film aesthetics and expanded literary studies.
The Kleine Edition is in the tradition of the essay, the genre of intervention that is too long for a journal and too short for a conventional book. Contemporary theory and modern classics are published in the Large Edition. The August Akademie is dedicated to the professional stubbornness of research-based reflection. It publishes more specialist studies that cultivate factual meticulousness.
The August Verlag program is curated by Alexandra Heimes, Maria Muhle, Morten Paul, David Weber and Max Walther.
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