BERLIN.- MISS READ: The Berlin Art Book Fair & Festival returns to Haus der Kulturen der Welt, from June 13 to 15, 2025 with a focus on Ecological Publishing. In its seventeenth year, MISS READ continues to offer a vibrant platform for critical discourse, experimental publishing, and independent artistic practices. Over 300 exhibitors from 50 countries form one of the largest and most international gatherings for independent publishing worldwide.
Founded in 2009, MISS READ is Europe’s leading event for artists’ books, conceptual publications, and publishing as artistic, political, and poetic practice. MISS READ’s mission entails fostering global bibliodiversity, nurturing creative ecosystems and pushing the frontiers of publishing.
The seventeenth edition of MISS READ introduces a special focus on Ecological Publishing and Ecologies of Publishing. Globalization has led to the widespread adoption of Western societal models, extractivism, and platform industries, including the inherent unsustainability of publishing economies. The environmental movements, which have been gaining strength in recent decades, seek not only to counter the threat of ecological collapse, but also to address issues within the arts, economics, and politics. Sustainability and subsistence—the place of humans within nature—are pressing issues worldwide.
MISS READ 2025 explores the contours of alternative frameworks—through artistic research, activism, and publishing—that center ecological awareness. From using low-impact printing and supply chains to focusing on environmental themes, many publishers around the world are engaging with ecological questions in innovative and sustainable ways.
In order to redistribute necessary resources towards supporting alternative publishing practices, MISS READ once again awards BIPOC Support Grants to exceptional artists and independent publishers and is delighted to welcome this year’s outstanding recipients: artists collective and archive Grafis Nusantara (Jakarta), publishing initiative Kayfa ta (Amman), publishing and distribution initiative Limestone Books (Maastricht), anti-caste activists Panther’s Paw Publication (Nagpur), and artist-run WAITHOOD Magazine (Maputo).
Highlights of the daily program include:
On Friday, June 13, Philosopher and media theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi opens the public program with a thought-provoking lecture on chaos, automatons, and the psychosocial unraveling of late capitalism. The pan-African magazine Chimurenga and Berlin-based independent arts collective Nyabinghi Lab present the “Black Ecologies Series,” challenging mainstream ecological discourse by confronting its colonial legacies and exclusion of Indigenous knowledge.
The annual Conceptual Poetics Day on Saturday, June 14, explores the border between visual art and literature. Writer Clara Obligado reads from all that grows: nature and writing, weaving together personal memoir, botanical observations, and reflections on displacement, in conversation with Verónica Stedile Luna (EME Ediciones). A dual book launch by Textem Verlag and Ugly Duckling Presse celebrates Mirtha Dermisache (1940–2012), a trailblazing figure in artists’ books whose radical approach to writing and circulation challenges conventional reading practices. Jhen Chen and Emily Shin-Jie Lee of Limestone Books introduce the “Cross-border Publishing Co-op,” an experimental research initiative building a publishing alliance across Europe and Asia. Focused on non-Western perspectives, it aims to connect small-scale local hubs across borders. Editors Gigi Argyropoulou and Olga Schubert of Ecologies of Instituting and philosopher Bernd Scherer explore how artists, cultural workers, and organizers create alternative institutional ecologies. Alessandro Ludovico presents Tactical Publishing, rethinking the binary of print and digital publishing and advocating for a new ecology of publishing based on the stimulation of our senses, the role of software in the publishing infrastructure, and the importance of archives.
On Sunday, June 15, a joint event by NERO and EECLECTIC reflects on climate-neutral exhibition-making and museums at the ecological turn, with the participation of artist Jumana Manna, whose work critiques extractivism and colonial conservation. Editors Christopher and Kathleen Sleboda of Draw Down Books present A Toolkit for Gathering, a guide book on the importance of gatherings in creative communities. Cthulhu Books and the Institute for Postnatural Studies invite you to a reading from Compost Reader II, exploring the flow of deep reading practices within a framework of interconnected planetary material.
