Listening with Books

Artists Talks and exhibition opening

Date: 5Th of May

Time: 17:00-19:00

Place: Simone Book Services

Simone Books Services and Bureau for Listening are happy to invite you to a double artist talk event and exhibition opening of selected artist books from Bureau for Listening’s Library for Listening.

 

This evening brings together two conversations that approach the artist book as a site where listening and sonic practices are not simply documented, but materially reconfigured. Co-hosted by Bureau for Listening, the event situates itself within contemporary artist publishing, where the book operates as a compositional space for listening, voice, and time.

 

In the first conversation, Linn Henrichson and Lukas Lund discuss their work with Anthology for Listening Vol. II, a publication that treats the book as an editorial and spatial framework for listening across its printed, online and live versions. It was awarded a bronze medal for its book design from all over the world by the stiftung buckkunst awards.

 

The second conversation features Marie Thams and Jacob Hagen Birch on This Biopolitical Arena, an artist book that gathers a decade of Thams’ work with voice across installation, performance, and film. Here, Thams’ vocal works are collected and translated into print through visual scores, textual fragments, and graphic compositions. The publication foregrounds the book as a site where questions of body, labor, gender, and power are negotiated through both content and form.

 

Across both talks, the event explores the artist book as an expanded medium, where design, editing, and materiality become tools for composing with sound beyond the audible.

 

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Library for Listening

 

To demonstrate the diversity for artists’ books engaging listening and the sonic, Lukas Lund (artistic director of Bureau for Listening) has curated a small selection of books from Bureau for Listening’s library. These books demonstrate not only the artistry of book making, but also how specific listening and sonic practices find their form through printed matter. The books will be exhibited at Simone Books Service from the 5th to 19th of May.

 

The books has been both donated by artists, found through open calls and by visiting artists and bookstores.

 

During the exhibition time, you can welcome to leaf through the books, listen to and with them; but we invite you to do this gently as others for many years can have the same experience.

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Conversation with Linn Henrichson and Lukas Lund about giving listening form in print and their work with the artist book Anthology for Listening Vol. II.

Anthology for Listening Vol. II explores listening as both a method and a compositional framework within the format of the artist book. Bringing together contributions from artists, writers, and practitioners working across sound, performance, research, photography, text, and more, the publication approaches the book as a space where listening can be activated. Developed through the work of Bureau for Listening, the publication situates itself within an expanded field of contemporary publishing, where the boundaries between reading and listening are continuously negotiated. Through its structure and material form, Anthology for Listening Vol. II invites the reader to engage with the book as a score, a script, and a space for attention.

Anthology for Listening Vol. II is designed by Linn Henrichson, edited by Lukas Lund and published by Bureau for Listening in 2025.

 

Linn Henrichson is a graphic designer and artist working predominately with printed matter. She holds degrees in visual communication from Konstfack University, Stockholm, and Aalto University, Helsinki. Alongside her artistic practice, she works as an independent graphic designer specialised in book design. She is an active member of Bladr, platform for artists’ books.

 

Lukas Quist Lund is a philosopher, curator, art historian, and organiser working across interdisciplinary artistic and research practices. His work centres on alternative methodologies through initiatives including Bureau for Listening, fostering collaborative, extra-institutional approaches to sound, knowledge, and practice.

 

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Conversation with Marie Thams and Jacob Hagen Birch about giving sound form in print and their work with the artist book This Biopolitical Arena.

This Biopolitical Arena presents Marie Thams’ multidisciplinary art of the last decade, where the voice is a central material and method. Through sound installations, performances and films, she explores cultural and political structures such as gender, work and power – always with the body as the focal point. The book collects Thams’s voice compositions and texts in printed form for the first time, where visualizations and design open new ways of unfolding and experiencing sound works. The work challenges norms and invites the reader to reflect on work, power and life.

This Biopolitical Arena is designed by Spine Studio, edited by Lotte Løvholm and published by Marrow Press in 2025.

 

Marie Thams is a visual artist working across media. She holds degrees from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Goldsmiths, London. Thams has exhibited nationally and internationally, and is represented in collections including the National Gallery of Denmark, SMK. Furthermore Thams is a writer and educator, and chairperson of Danish Visual Artists, BKF.

Jacob Hagen Birch is a graphic designer and publisher. He has co-founded Spine Studio together with Finn Wergel Dahlgren, with whom he also runs the publishing house Marrow Press that focuses on contemporary publications with outstanding quality in both content, communication and the physical form and tactility of the book itself.