VIVA VIVA

Join us for VIVA VIVA – Rijksakademie Art Book Fair. Find unique printed matter, and support our artist community!

For this second edition, our building will be filled with booths from more than 70 alumni, residents and special guests, showing and selling self-made publications, prints, posters, records, cassettes, and unexpected publication formats. The day includes a full programme of talks, performances and workshops.

56 hours + Pupapot, ABC [Artists’ Books Cooperative], Ahmed Sarsour, Alex Farrar, Alex Walker, Angga Cipta (Kasih Graphic), Anook Cléonne, Avril Corroon, Biquini Wax EPS, Bram Faber & Ursula Metzler, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Chathuri Nissansala Jayasiriwardena Degambadage Dona, Chupan Atashi, CPR, Daniëlle van Ark / Dark Editions, Deniz Eroglu, Devika Chotoe & Ciro Monoarfa Goudsmit, Dianne Hagen, Elwina Situmorang, Erik Tlaseca, Erna Gultom, Fatemeh Towhidlou, Framer Framed, Frederique Jonker, Golrokh Nafisi, Guido van der Werve, Hannah Rose Whittle, Harriet Rose Morley, Hogehilweg_artlab, Ilya Rabinovich, If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution, Joanne Igbuwe, Joris Martens, Josje Peters, Kiki Papers, Learning Palestine, Lies Verdenius, Lili Huston-Herterich, Limestone Books & Jan van Eyck Academie, LiSA DiAMETR, Marcelino Stuhmer, Marjo Postma, Meiliana Yumi, Micha Patiniott, Michal Jurys, Mira Asriningtyas, Mita Paramita, Mr.& Mrs. Berkeley, Nadine Ghandour, Naré Eloyan, Nastaran Khanbabaei, Neda Mirhosseini, Nazif Lopulissa, No Other Option, Not Yet, Off Course and Friends, Our Rags Magazine, özgür atlagan, Page not Found, Papaya, Reading Vigil for Palestine, Red Sheep, Reza Afisina, Rietlanden Women's Office, Ro Buur, Ryder Books - An imprint of BYOB, Sam Samiee, Sarojini Lewis & Razia Barsatie, Silvia Gatti, Smári Róbertsson, SOC, Spookstad, Susanne Khalil Yusef, Stichting la Jetée, Terang Press, The Blue Orange, The Hakoura Collective, Ton Martens, Uitgeverij dt duidelijke taal, United Fried Front, Varia, vo ezn && hackers & designers, Winnie Herbstein, Wouter van Riessen, and more! 

Rooted in the Latin word vivere (‘to live’), viva has long been part of artistic and cultural expressions: a call in the streets, in protests, in celebrations, and in moments of togetherness. In a time of fragmented narratives and institutional fatigue, VIVA VIVA occupies a space between joy, resistance, and insistence, offering a platform to affirm values and practices that we as artists and collectives consider meaningful.   

VIVA VIVA is both a statement of presence and a call for continuity: to recognise, hear, and share the stories that shape our lives and communities. It is a space to engage with peers and the public, amplifying our individual and collective voice.  

VIVA VIVA is an initiative of artist and Rijksakademie alum Reyhan Lál in collaboration with Rijksakademie residents, alumni, team and special guests. ⁣

During the Rijksakademie Art Book Fair we host a fundraiser booth initiated by the resident community, supporting women, queer and trans communities in Sri Lanka and on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, both currently devastated by flooding, landslides and infrastructure collapse. You’ll find the booth in the Print Workshop. Please consider purchasing one of the art publications generously donated for this cause, or contributing a direct donation.

11.00 –11.10
→ Print Workshop
Welcome

11.10 –11.20
→ Print Workshop
Dianne Hagen / performance

Live reading of 3 poems; ‘What’s Up, and Thus and Time’ in one fluent set underlined and intertwined by a soundscape. What is it… It is suggestive, guiding, non-linear, without facts, opinionating with an open end, with pathetic interpretations and space.

11.40 –12.00
→ Reading Room
Marcelino Stuhmer / reading

Marcelino Stuhmer presents OFF-TIMES, a conceptual art newspaper and exhibition in the form of a newspaper. He will read his short fiction piece from OFF-TIMES, ‘Vermeer’s Paradox: Experts Baffled by Impossible Photo Found in Saleman’s Case’. OFF-TIMES operates as both publication and collective exhibition in print. Rooted in the Fluxus tradition, it explores the shifting boundaries between fact, fiction, and logic- reflecting on what it means to create during an “off-time”.

12.20 –12.40
→ Reading Room
Mira Asriningtyas / book presentation

Institution-Making on Moving Ground: A Case Study of 900mdpl (2017– 2022)

A book (hybrid) presentation, introduces a self-reflective enquiry into the evolving practices of 900mdpl, a multifaceted institution rooted in Kaliurang, Indonesia. Through the lens of laku, an embodied Javanese mode of learning, the book explores how local cultural values shape decolonial approaches to institution-making. Mira Asriningtyas invites readers to consider new vocabularies for understanding the interplay between place, contemporary art, and curatorial practice.

12.50 –13.20
→ Meeting point: Hall West
Rijksakademie Tech Fellows 2025 / exhibition tour

After a year of research and training in the Rijksakademie, current tech fellows Nadine Ghandour (library), Harriet Rose Morley (construction workshop), Viki Nagy (ceramics workshop), Dmytro Tentiuk (media lab) and Alex Walker (print workshop) present their research results.

13.00 –13.20
→ Reading Room
Wouter van Riessen / talk 

In 'Joujou Baudelaire' (Roma Publications, 2025), Wouter van Riessen takes the poetry of Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) as a starting point for an exploration of the role play of artist and muse. He does so by staging hand-crafted puppets as his protagonists. The resulting book brings together 32 photographic tableaux and a dialogue between Van Riessen and Dutch writer Cornel Bierens. In this presentation, Van Riessen will discuss his reasons for using puppets, the relevance of Baudelaire’s poetry to our image of the muse and the development of his project. For the occasion, he will show a couple of the puppets he created for it.

13.30 –13.50
→ Reading Room
Nadine Ghandour / reading performance

Nadine's talk will reflect on her publication 'YOU ARE HERE: An Essay on Libraries and Wayfinding'. YOU ARE HERE is a meditation on wayfinding systems, reflecting on the psychological states of searching and the pursuit of extreme specificity. It focuses on references from the Rijksakademie Library collection, thinking through what answers a library built for artists has to offer on navigation. The chapters move through logics of mapping and categorisation at different scales within books, libraries, bodies, and cities.

14.00 –14.30
→ Reading Room
Devika Chotoe & Ciro Monoarfa Goudsmit / talk and sound performance

For VIVA VIVA, If I Can’t Dance will launch its most recent publication: the Reader Bodies and Technologies, edited by Devika Chotoe. Emerging from the reading group that accompanied If I Can’t Dance Edition IX, Bodies and Technologies is a collection of texts that inspire modes of attunement to how technologies condition and rewire the experience of our bodies. For the launch, Chotoe will be present to introduce the publication and will be joined by artist Ciro Monoarfa Goudsmit who did a ‘sonic’ intervention in the Reader. The performance will continue Goudsmit’s research into low frequencies shaking the muscles through vibrations; from relaxing the body by resonating the vagus nerve; humming the soul nerve; to, using silence as rhythm; and ask the body to fall into those gaps; to move muscles and delay into the imaginary.

15.00 –15.20
→ Reading Room
Reading Vigil for Palestine / talk

Reading Vigil for Palestine is a daily action at Dam Square to read aloud books on Palestinian history and struggle until a permanent ceasefire is achieved. Since November 2023, it has claimed public space for political education while building a self-organised audio archive of the readings and a dispersed collective library. During VIVA VIVA, they will make a presentation about Reading Vigil and talk about their action via photographs and a small timeline.

15.30 –15.50
→ Reading Room
Learning Palestine / talk

A talk on how community can get involved and support the Learning Palestine project through translation and dissemination of the pamphlets. The Learning Palestine pamphlets are a collection of online essays that are essential readings for a comprehensive understanding of the Palestinian struggle. Authored by diverse writers from various backgrounds, these essays span different periods and cover various topics.

16.00–16.20
→ Reading Room
Winnie Herbstein / book presentation

‘Slamming Doors. On Falling Out and Fighting Back in a Housing Crisis’ (2025) brings together writers, academics and community organisers against the backdrop of an ongoing housing crisis. Acting as a ‘user’s manual’, the book mobilises text and images, archives and conversations to unpack the work of DIY learning, grassroots organising, and how to record, disseminate and learn from collective struggles. In 2024, co-editor and Rijksakademie alum Winnie Herbstein, was a fellow for the research project Contemporary Conflict, organised collaboratively by Framer Framed and the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. Slamming Doors is co-published by Framer Framed and University of Edinburgh Arts Collection.

16.40 –17.00
→ Reading Room
Harriet Rose Morley, César Rogers, Miquel Hervás Gómez / publication launch

Hard Wear, Soft Wear

Back in 2022 Harriet Rose Morley was invited to become the artist in residence at Loughborough University for the Handicraft Commission. Harriet worked with César Rogers, Miquel Hervás Gómez of Fanfare both of whom are artists, designers and technicians at the Rietveld, to design the publication with a interview with Harriet Foyster. The publication 'Hard Wear, Soft Wear' explores the process of making work for the handicraft commission, the complex relationships between artists, makers and technicians and the passing on of embodied making knowledges. In this launch we will bring together artists who also identify as technicians to understand this intertwined practices. In relation to her ongoing work as a tech fellow at the Rijksakademie, this publication also holds relevant context for the program.

17.20 –17.40
→ Reading Room
Spookstad / talk

Anti-books: one publishes to find comrades

In this session, we will talk about the meaning and the potential of radical publishing. What does it mean for publishing to be immanent to social movements and radical activism? How can books not just speak about protest, but allow protest to speak? What form belongs to a book that does not want to be a commodity – an anti-book? Spookstad is a publishing collective guided by these questions and challenges. In this session we will try make sense of them by showcasing the various projects we are currently working on.

17.50 –18.10
→ Reading Room
Rietland Women’s Office / publication launch

RWO will give a reading to launch the most recent issue of their publication series MsHeresies, which is about the ornamental in feminist collaboration. This seventh issue takes the form of four folded offset-printed posters with sampled and reworked material from the publication archive of Big Mama Rag (1972–84), specifically focusing on the issues dealing with the Palestinian and international feminist struggle. Typeset alongside this archival collage is ‘Introduction to The Weather’ (2001) by poet Lisa Robertson.

18.20 –18.50
→ Reading Room
Smári Róbertsson / book presentation

'Gish Gallop Reverie' brings together a full-scale reproduction of Smári Róbertsson’s wheat-paste mural of the same name. A pixel drawing composed of 255 laser-printed A4 sheets with a selection of related soapbox speeches, monologues, and songs. Designed by Anton Westbom Weflö and printed at the Rijksakademie Print Workshop.

19.00 –19.20
→ Reading Room
Erik Tlaseca / book presentation

'Crystal Meth Vampires' is a series of drawings exploring masculine desire, created during my residency at the Rijksakademie. The figures inhabit a twilight realm of hazy memory—distant from light, undefined and shadowed. Drawing from personal experiences of sex and intimacy, terror and loss, the work investigates these fragments of the unconscious. Each character contains a contradiction: the violent impulse to transgress boundaries, and beneath it, the wound of wanting to be held. This book was created and printed at the Rijksakademie with the support of the Hinderrust fund for publishing.

19.30 –19.40
→ Reading Room
Joanne Igbuwe / book presentation

An intimate unlit performance of Joanne Igbuwe related to her new publication 'Dark modus'.

19.40 –20.00
→ Daylight Studio
Sarojini Lewis, Razia Barsatie & Satyakam Mohkamsing / performance

'Labyrinth Within', site-specific performance exploring Hindustani-Surinamese culture. Lewis delivers spoken-word poetry as ritual acts involving repetition, while a voice recites verses about the sea. Barsatie paints turmeric using handmade mop of yellow kitchen cloths, moving with a circular artwork and embroidering texts into curtains. Violinist Satyakam Mohkamsing provides musical accompaniment.

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Tune in for Rijksakademie Radio, VIVA VIVA Live!
Streaming from the Social Practice, artist and Rijksakademie advisor Reza Afisina will be hosting for the day, including live readings from participants and audience, music and other sounds.

11.30 –13.30
→ Social Practice Workshop
Angga Cipta (Kasih Graphic) / workshop

The Puzzlino workshop combines puzzle and linocut techniques in a collaborative printing process. Participants are invited to create playful and colourful composition by carving pieces to complete a collective puzzle, or select from pre-made linocuts to create a collage.

13.30 –15.45
→ Social Practice Workshop
Michal Jurys / workshop

Everything you always wanted to know about making books*
(*but were afraid to ask)

Have you ever held a new book that felt stiff and unfriendly? This workshop is about making books that feel good. It’s for anyone curious about bookmaking but unsure where to start.
I’m Michał Jurys, an artist and bookmaker. I work both in a studio and in Robstolk – big printer house, and I’ve learned that there is no single right way to make a book – only the way that works for your story.
During this hands-on session, we’ll skip technical jargon and start with a friendly question: what even is a book? A folded sheet? A sewn bundle of pages? A notebook held together with an elastic band? Together we’ll make three things: a folded notebook, a simple sewn booklet and a small hardcover. No jargon, no pressure – just paper, thread, and curiosity. This workshop is perfect for artists, writers, and complete beginners. Come and see how easy and satisfying it is to make your own book.

13.30 –15.30
→ Studio A7 (meeting point = Hall West)
Kagul / workshop

Learning the talismanic pattern making on ritualistic costumes

Southern Sri Lankan traditional performative rituals contain an amalgamation of numerous artistic practices. A branch of the performing tradition includes textile and costume making diversified regionally in the form of ritualistic “thovil” or exorcist practices to other forms of “shanthikarma” or curative/ healing rituals which contain diverse attire aesthetics. These include intricate cosmological beading techniques that communicate language of healing and transgression. In this workshop, the art platform Kagul will introduce some techniques coming from this tradition, such as embroidery, the beaded stitching process, traditional cosmic patterns and their meanings and soft sculpture making.
KAGUL is a platform that aims to rejuvenate a dying traditional textile practice, bringing its talismanic form and its historical and cultural representations to contemporary times. Aspects of its timeless approaches are to be redesigned, revoke new nuances in approaching the tradition, and find deeper roots of its existence. To create a discourse by analyzing and decoding the existence of its gendered cultural identity, representation, and historiography through the textile tradition.

15.30 –17.30
→ Studio A7 (meeting point = Hall West)
Kagul / workshop

Learning the talismanic pattern making on ritualistic costumes

Southern Sri Lankan traditional performative rituals contain an amalgamation of numerous artistic practices. A branch of the performing tradition includes textile and costume making diversified regionally in the form of ritualistic “thovil” or exorcist practices to other forms of “shanthikarma” or curative/ healing rituals which contain diverse attire aesthetics. These include intricate cosmological beading techniques that communicate language of healing and transgression. In this workshop, the art platform Kagul will introduce some techniques coming from this tradition, such as embroidery, the beaded stitching process, traditional cosmic patterns and their meanings and soft sculpture making.
KAGUL is a platform that aims to rejuvenate a dying traditional textile practice, bringing its talismanic form and its historical and cultural representations to contemporary times. Aspects of its timeless approaches are to be redesigned, revoke new nuances in approaching the tradition, and find deeper roots of its existence. To create a discourse by analyzing and decoding the existence of its gendered cultural identity, representation, and historiography through the textile tradition.

16.00 –18.00
→ Social Practice Workshop
Sam Samiee / workshop

Editing as an epic enterprise: in-between art practice and academic principles.

In the workshop held by alum Sam Samiee (RA 14/15), he will give a history of his work as an editor for translation institutions, working as editor for the Freudian Group of Tehran, and his experience in self-publishing his book, 'Footnotes to Life', which was the winner of Best Dutch Book Design in 2020. He will delve into theories of editing and translation, looking at the editing history in psychoanalytic movement, namely the work of Jean Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis, the authors of Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. He will elaborate the process of making his book, as editor, project manager, and artist, giving account of how to make publishing a book on studio practice aligning with the methods and processes of studio practice. Samiee believes editing is an epic enterprise, a task which can shape history of a field, it can overcome obstacles of translation, and it is an integral part of academic and research work, especially for those working outside the infrastructure of academic institutions. This workshop can be useful for artists, graphic designers, editors, or researchers who want to think about bringing multiple fields and disciplines together, without compromising principles of each field. In the second part of the workshop, he will moderate a conversation with the initiator and organiser of the Book Fair, Reyhan Lál, discussing their experiences, obstacles and solutions they have used to realise their ambitions. The workshop will be held in two parts with a break in between.
Sam Samiee is a painter, essayist, curator and educator. His practice involves research in the history of painting, psychoanalysis and Persian literature.

18.00–20.00
→ Social Practice Workshop
Hannah Rose Whittle / workshop

Material Bodies Clay Club

Together with Hannah Rose Whittle, we’ll read out loud a selection of short texts to think through and with our material bodies, accompanied by making with clay. This is a drop in session with a focus on collective reading and making, the clay objects will be documented and then recycled back into a workable clay body.