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ARTIST BOOKS & EDITIONS

@backbonebooks

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following

→ publishing house (Berlín) run by @claudiadelatorrea
→ artist books & editions
→ also: @artistsbooksworkshop

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EPHEMERAL SPACES – ARCHIVES IN MOVEMENT

Raumklasse UdK Berlin x Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln
Winter 2026_27

Was bleibt von der Bewegung, wenn sie vorüber ist?

Im Rahmen des Entwurfsprojekts ‚Ephemeral Spaces – Archives in Movement‘ und in Kooperation mit dem Deutschen Tanzarchiv Köln widmet sich die Raumklasse, zusammen mit ihren Gästen der Frage, wie Tanz als flüchtige Kunstform bewahrt, erinnert und neu erfahrbar gemacht werden kann. Aus künstlerischen und theoretischen Perspektiven erkunden wir das Archiv als lebendigen Möglichkeitsraum zwischen Körper, Bewegung, Raum und Erinnerung. Dabei geht es um Spuren des Vergangenen, um Formen der Weitergabe und um die Frage, wie Bewegung über ihre eigene Zeitlichkeit hinauswirken und immer wieder neu in Bewegung versetzt werden kann.

20.10. Luisa Ungar & Juana Awad (UdK) 03.11. deufert&plischke (Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln) 09.11. Yui Kawaguchi (UdK)  26.10. Mone Schliephack (UdK)
24.11. Claudia de la Torre / backbonebooks (studio visit)  19.01. Dr. Nora Sternfeld (UdK + online)

Die Vorträge finden, wenn nicht anders angegeben, im Medienhaus der UdK Berlin statt, Grunewaldstr. 2-5, 10823 Berlin - Schöneberg / Raum 105/106.

spacesofcommunication.de @raumklasse_udk
udk-berlin.de @udkberlin
deutsches-tanzarchiv.de @stiftungkultur

—
Image Credits
Bild 2: Stigma: Score for A Regurgitation is a Song is a Spell (Consultations to Recreate the Colonial Disease). Luisa Ungar
Bild 3: Handy-Kommunikation. Mone Schliephack
Bild 4: deufert&plischke
Bild 5: Yui Kawaguchi
Bild 6: The Waves, Artist Books
Bild 7: Volker Renner

Grafikdesign / Plakate: @parkistark

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How do you make your own book? There’s alot of resources and information - both online and in physical spaces. Opening a workbook from the Artists’ Book Workshop by Claudia De La Torre of Back Bone Books

@artistsbooksworkshop @claudiadelatorrea @backbonebooks

#bookmaking #howto #art #workshop #education

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By @backbonebooks: Hands and Flowers
Claudia de la Torre
backbonebooks
2016

A collection of hands and flowers taken out from do it yourself Ikebana arrangement books. A homage to the small and beautiful things in life.

12 pages, thread bound, set of five different covers.

15€ + shipping
available. Send me a dm to buy (@backbonebooks)

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Hello book lovers! I’m Claudia de la Torre (@claudiadelatorrea), a Mexican artist, publisher, and founder of @backbonebooks, based in Berlin.

Books have been at the center of my practice for many years. I make, design, edit and publish concept-driven artist books, exploring the book not simply as a container for work, but as a space where the work itself can happen.

I founded @backbonebooks in 2011 and have since published more than 90 titles. Alongside my own artistic and publishing practice, teaching has become an important part of what I do.

Since 2021, I’ve been running @artistsbooksworkshop from my Berlin studio, working closely with artists to translate an idea into a physical book. We think through editing, sequence, scale, paper, rhythm, binding and all the decisions that allow a book to become a work in its own right.

Over the years, I’ve led more than 200 workshops in my studio and at art institutions internationally, most recently in Chile, Hong Kong and Denmark. In 2024, I was invited by the Center for Book Arts in New York as keynote speaker for the Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference.

My work and publications are held in collections including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas J. Watson Library, Yale University, NYPL, Museo Reina Sofía, mumok and Fundación Ankaria.

But what continues to interest me most is quite simple: what can a book do that another form cannot?

That question runs through my art, my publishing practice and my teaching.

Happy to have you here, and always happy to meet others thinking through books

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What does your idea need to become a book?

At the @artistsbooksworkshop, we don’t begin with a format, a binding or a predetermined idea of what a book should look like. We begin with what you bring.

Photographs, texts, drawings, archives, collections, found material, a score, an existing work, or an idea.

From there, we edit, sequence, print, cut, fold, bind, test and reconsider.

The aim is not to fit the work into a book, but to find the book that the work needs.

I see teaching as part of my artistic practice. The workshop is also my studio and the headquarters of @backbonebooks, a space for thinking together through the book, where questions around editing, sequence, scale, material and structure are explored through making.

These are not decisions that come after the work. They are part of the work.

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My newest book ANOTHER DAY is now on Lulu. Thanks to all those who purchased a copy. Made my day, merci.

The text follows an unnamed character who awakes each day to the wonder of another day and manages it with a certain difficulty, but quietly triumphs. Sort of.

Here's the portal to get a copy.... and signed book plates to any and all who ask for them:

https://tinyurl.com/m7stfwk5

#collage #artistbook #gouache #paris #kunst #booktoday #trouble

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15 years of independent publishing through @backbonebooks , all gathered in my studio.

Each book is a work of its own. A different idea, a different form, a different way of thinking about what a book can be.

My manifesto A Book Is grew from this way of working: thinking of the book as an object in space, activated by the person holding it, unfolding through time, and existing at the scale of the body.

During the @artistsbooksworkshop , this archive is open to everyone. The books can be taken from the shelves, held, unfolded, read and discussed.

Not only as references, but as artworks themselves.

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The Artists’ Books Workshop takes place in my own studio in Berlin, home to both @claudiadelatorrea Studio and @backbonebooks

It’s where I work, make and publish, surrounded by my machines, materials, collection of artists’ books and the backbonebooks archive.

For the ABW, I open this space and everything in it. The books, tools, machines and archive become part of the workshop.
——
Studio documentation: @omri_livne

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Goodbye Berlin, the past two months have been so special that I have no words (but luckily I have some pictures).

Thank you so much @claudiadelatorrea for having me. I’m so glad I could be part of @artistsbooksworkshop this summer, and I’m incredibly grateful for this experience, for everything I learned, and for all the people I’ve met along the way. I also hope I was able to give something back in return!

This time will always have a special place in my heart 🤍

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It’s very exciting when the boxes arrive from the printer. This time backbonebooks upcoming title DO UN DO is an artist publication made by @epcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

This book-work is
defined by its specific structure, with 726 stencil drawings filling its pages.

As you flip through the pages, you engage in an act of un-doing. More soon!

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𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬/𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵’𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘦… 👉📚👈

Over 10 intensive days in Berlin, 8 creatives from around the world (including me!) gathered to do just this: exploring the possibilities of the book as an art form…

The @artistsbooksworkshop Summer Programme, led by book guru @claudiadelatorrea alongside @alicjagaszta (aka the ‘printer queen’ 👸), put ideas first - a rare and radical thing in the world of book-making, which often teaches the craft of binding, or the rules of graphic design, over openly learning around and through the conceptual potential of a book. We spent our days thinking, reading, writing, speaking, questioning, visiting, researching, imagining and making - allowing ideas in our heads to become form in our hands, as our own experimental book ‘dummies’ took shape… 🧠🤲✨📖💭

The collective energy that emerged (the kind that only artist-led/self-organised learning can produce) was magical. ✨ We bent the rules while bending language, flip-flopped ideas while flipping paper (sorry for the double-sided printing head-fuck guys 🙈) and somewhere along the way I learnt to love paper. Perfecto 👌

Huge thanks also to @rahel.zoller @smalleditionsnyc & @danihz for generously sharing their expert know-how via demonstrations, workshops & crit conversations + @einbuch.haus @einbuch.kollektiv & @coloramaprint @coloramaworkshop for the inspiring visits 👀

Excited for where this will now go…
🏢🗣️🗂️📓✨

𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘴 - 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦, 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳, 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘭 - 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘢 𝘥𝘦 𝘭𝘢 𝘛𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘦

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A warm invitation
This Wednesday
15:30—17:30

Kienizerstr 98
2 hinterhof
Studio 02
Berlin

For ten days we placed the artist’s book at the center.

We slowed down to think through making. We questioned structure, sequence, material, and form. Through feedback sessions, crits, studio conversations, field trips, and talks with invited guests, eight artists developed eight very different projects.

We invite you to our Open Studio to experience the results. Come leaf through the books, meet the artists, and see where ten days of focused making can lead.

Artist Books by:
@sculptureartman, @vicafernandez_, @alanoodbukhammas, @sylviegodel, @tsukonra, @alicjagaszta, @colectivo_mescalina, @ameliem.ds, @__cruzdiaz

Special thanks to: @alicjagaszta @rahel.zoller @einbuch.haus @pseudopress @smalleditionsnyc @danihz

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