In the Realm of the Book - Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 by DHH.si d.o.o., VAT ID:SI38077736

Ljubljana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the World Book Capital City

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

In the Realm of the Book Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 23 April 2010 - 23 April 2011

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Acknowledgments:

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following contributors to this programme book: Danilo Türk, Zoran Janković, Majda Širca, Boris Pahor, Manca Košir, Uroš Grilc, Andrej Blatnik, Matjaž Berger, Milan Jesih, Miklavž Komelj, Svetlana Makarovič, Slavoj Žižek, Ženja Leiler, Slavko Pregl, Igor Lukšič, Mitja Čander, Uršula Cetinski, Aldo Kumar, Barbara Kelbl, Alenka Gregorič, Simon Kardum and Jelka Gazvoda. As the authors of the introductory and accompanying texts, they have shared with readers their personal experience, expertise and love of the book, thus providing precious travel rations for the events and lasting achievements of Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Book at hand; handed down devotedly time and time again … Could it be handled any better? Oton Župančič – translated by Ifigenija Simonović

In the Realm of the Book Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 23 April 2010 - 23 April 2011

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Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

by way of introduction Dr. Danilo Türk: Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City Zoran Janković: A Book Message from Ljubljana Majda Širca: The Safe Dangerous Book Boris Pahor, AcSS: On the Destiny of Young People Dr Manca Košir: »Read or Perish« Dr Uroš Grilc: Ljubljana – the Cosmopolitan City of the Book the ljubljana – the world book capital city 2010 programme Pogledi– biweekly culture magazine Ženja Leiler: Pogledi. Naturally from the Beyond Ljubljana Reads, Growing up with a Book, Books for Everybody Slavko Pregl: Ljubljana and Books Dr. Igor Lukšič: The 2010/2011 School Year – the Year of the Book! Literary festival: Fabula 2010 – Literatures of the World Festival Mitja Čander: There Is More Than One Ljubljana, There Are As Many As the Stories of Ljubljana Books and the Creativity in Culture Uršula Cetinski: The Book and the Theatre Aldo Kumar: Books of Music Barbara Kelbl: The Book and the Film Alenka Gregorič: The Book and Fine Arts The Book and the City Simon Kardum: The Book – an Analogue Pre-Modern Gutenberg Fetish Libraries: Centres of Knowledge, Information and Creativity Jelka Gazvoda: Library Public Service World Book Summit 2011: Books as Promoters of Human Development

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

slovenia in ljubljana – the world book capital city 2010 89 Programme of Slovene Towns and Cities world in ljubljana – the world book capital city 2010 95 Programmes of Embassies in Ljubljana

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homage to the book and art Dr Andrej Blatnik: The Book Shall Remain Matjaž Berger: Tympan in Diachrony Milan Jesih: About Poetry in Books Dr Miklavž Komelj: Glowing Books Svetlana Makarovič: The Needle Dr Slavoj Žižek, AcSS: Books and the Public Use of Reason

Ljubljana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the World Book Capital City

By Way of Introduction

photo Fotoatelje bobo

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City Dr Danilo Türk, These days I have been reading the book “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the

President of the Republic of Slovenia, Game That Made a Nation” by the British journalist John Carlin. It is about one of the Honorary Sponsor of Ljubljana – most impressive political achievements in recent history – the political reconciliation in the World Book Capital City 2010 South Africa after the abolishment of apartheid. This extremely interesting and exciting

story – which has also inspired film makers – considers the importance of sporting success, which, in combination with ingenious political action, in a very short period of time did away with extremely dangerous political tensions and enabled the reconciliation process in a country which had suffered gross racial discrimination throughout its history. The ethical messages of this achievement are extremely powerful and universal. They also provide food for thought in Slovenia, which since independence has not been able to deal with its historically inherited divisions and achieve the reconciliation needed for our future development. Books are not just instructive; they are also entertaining and amusing. A good book is all of that. Slovenia learned to appreciate this long ago. In a way, Slovenes are “a nation of the book”. Our national awareness was created in the 16th century with the first books in the Slovene language. Back in 1584, Slovene Protestants gave us the first entire translation of the Bible, which made us a cultural nation at an early stage. The book was even more important for Slovenes, as we did not have our own, Slovene rulers and our own political structure – for most of our history we did not even have our own administrative unit embracing all members of the Slovene nation and speakers of the Slovene language. In addition to all of its other functions, culture, and book culture in particular, was a surrogate for political coherence. Culture, and in particular being connected through books, turned out to be a very strong bond. It successfully replaced the lacking political structures and, thanks to its lasting effects, gradually laid the foundations for them. Perhaps it is because of this special cultural feature of Slovene history that people in Slovenia love books and are so susceptible to the messages they convey. In Slovenia,

Ljubljana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the World Book Capital City

around 6,000 titles are published every year. Reading campaigns organised by the Slovene Reading Badge Association are most widespread among the young generation. The Slovenian Book Fair, held annually in Ljubljana, is a really popular event for the young and the old alike, who visit it from morning until evening seven days a week. The era of electronic media has brought many novelties and some problems, with regard to which Slovenia has, of course, been no exception. Electronic media and the Internet reduce the ability to focus. Our way of reading is becoming increasingly superficial. In short periods we try to get information and knowledge which were once available only through prolonged study. Internet shortcuts bring both benefits and dangers. Instead of reading web summaries of Dostoevsky, studious readers will, after gaining an initial insight, deepen their understanding by reading his novels in full. Although this will take much longer it will improve their understanding. The book remains indispensable. No other form of communication can lead to genuine knowledge except that which is provided by a good book, an integral text and a depth that is only facilitated by the book format. In the future, electronic media should make the book more accessible by means of information technology. This is already being done, but it should be made clear that electronic media are no substitute for the book, they just create new opportunities for it. Slovenia is pleased and proud to have its capital Ljubljana as the World Book Capital City 2010. We believe that this is a well-deserved title, based both on the historically proven attitude of Ljubljana and Slovenia towards the book and the exciting experience with the book today. It would only be right to agree on the fundamental message. I see this message in the awareness that the book will always make us richer. The more we read books, the richer our knowledge, and above all the greater our understanding of the world and our ability to make the sound moral judgements we need if want to survive in the times we live in. At the beginning of this short contribution I mentioned a book about Nelson Mandela, about his interesting and hard life and about the ethical messages of his political success. The more people in Slovenia and around the world who learn about this story, the better for us all. â&#x20AC;˘

photo Stane Jeršič

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

A Book Message from Ljubljana Zoran Janković When in 2008 I recommended the Selection Committee for World Book Capital City

Mayor of the Municipality of Ljubljana of unesco to consider Ljubljana, the capital of the Republic of Slovenia, as a candidate President of the Honorary Committee for this distinguished title for 2010, Slovenia was marking the 500th anniversary of the of Ljubljana – the World Book birth of Primož Trubar, the founding father of Slovene literature and the Slovene book, Capital City 2010 a Slovene who knew that raising the cultural level of the Slovene nation was the first and

utmost priority, and that it could be most radically achieved by means of the printed book. Humankind had to walk a long way through the development of culture and civilisation before its greatest accomplishment – the book, the keeper and interpreter of its thoughts. Without the book, which has for centuries stored the thoughts and knowledge of humankind for every day use and for posteriority, there would be no important discoveries and today we would not be living in a world of technological comfort, with an increasing awareness of man as a being of continued self-surpassing and the resulting tolerant coexistence. Even though the history of the book in its present form is relatively short, covering only a few centuries, the book had to travel a much longer path before it developed into the form we know today. In order to save his best thoughts and ideas from oblivion, man first had to invent writing and then discover paper, writing utensils and finally printing technology. The latter enabled the quicker and cheaper publishing and dissemination of books and of the content which has, through social, political and cultural movements, created modern civilisation. This gives us reason to speak about books with passion, as did the Slovene poet Oton Župančič in his conviction that what is written in books is passed from one generation to another, with every generation drawing from these sources vital and enriching messages for the present they live in. The living word of our poets and writers, all of their

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

emotions, thoughts, outrage and amazement at world events, their courage and belief in the future, are preserved in books in order to serve us and our future generations as validation and encouragement. I am especially pleased that in addition to being the venue of tens of events within the framework of the World Book, Ljubljana will also gain two lasting cultural assets for all Slovenes: Trubar Literature House and a biweekly culture magazine. Several months ago, as many as five new bookstores in Ljubljana announced this important year of the book in the capital city, which is among the world leaders in terms of the number of new books published every year and the number of library borrowings. My wish is that good, affordable books, published with high circulations this year thanks to subsidies from Municipality of Ljubljana, will be broadly available and find their way onto the bookshelves in our homes as our indispensable interlocutors. The programme Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 emphasises the significance of books for the development of the individual and of society, stimulates interest in reading in all generations and increases access to books as promoters of general human values and conveyors of knowledge. Only with the co-operation of writers of belle lettres and professional literature, publishers, booksellers and librarians can the common goal be achieved – to bring the book closer to the reader who gives the book its meaning in the first place. On the level of the city of Ljubljana, the state of Slovenia and globally, the proposed programme promotes the principles of equality, freedom of expression, education, the free exchange of information, educational, scientific and cultural content as well as intercultural dialogue, all endorsed by unesco, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Florence Agreement. Let the book help us to continue living together and respecting diversity. With due appreciation for all those whose dedication and love have helped to develop the book, and bearing in mind that Slovenes have contributed equally to this development from Ljubljana, a city specially marked by the book, we are sending the following book message to the world: the book remains the first companion of humankind in the 21st century. All book lovers are kindly invited to come to Ljubljana and participate in various events joining the book and arts. I am completely convinced that the book does not only have a past and a present – it has a future. Thank you, books! •

photo Jaka Adamič

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

The Safe Dangerous Book Majda Širca, Of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, according to unesco as many as one Minister of Culture half are on the verge of extinction. Peter Mühlhäusler, a professor from Australia, even of the Republic of Slovenia, predicts that in two hundred years’ time almost 90% of all world languages will have

Member of the Honorary Committee of become extinct, with only the largest ones surviving: English, French, German, Spanish Ljubljana – the World Book Capital and Mandarin Chinese. In his native Australia, before the arrival of the whites 250 City 2010 languages were spoken and today they have dwindled to a mere 50.

When and where does a language die? Mostly in those rare primordial places on our planet where they do not know about the written word and where some knowledge, stories and experience are still transmitted orally among people. Not only linguists, who say that Slovene is among the 10% of languages whose survival is not threatened, but each and every Slovene knows that our language is solid and our book is safe – it is dangerous only inasmuch we follow Brecht’s timeless saying: “The book is a weapon, therefore take it in your hands.” It is the book which is able to contemplate all spheres of our lives – not only art – and pronounce critical value judgments. The book is able to convey illusion and intimacy, to open the door to the paradise of the imagination, to lay the foundation for film and theatre, to provide answers to (inter)cultural phenomena in society and to interpret the microcosmos and the macrocosmos. When Ljubljana was given the opportunity to become known in the world as the World Book Capital, the Slovene book and the Slovene language received major international recognition. It is Ljubljana which will be the tenth world book capital city and for us it is even more important that at the unesco General Conference the proposal by the Slovenian National Commission for unesco was accepted exactly in the year when we

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

celebrated the 500th anniversary of Primož Trubar’s birth, the author of the first Slovene book and the founding father of Slovene literary language. Today, when we are perhaps embarking on a digital journey without return and when time, driven by market logic, exerts increasing pressure on the written word, the “reign” of Ljubljana over the world will be an opportunity both for the world and ourselves. Our opportunity to ask ourselves: can we further our reading culture, can we improve our – already exemplary – libraries, can we finally consolidate our diaspora and can we purify our publishing … Uneasiness persists, despite the fact that the government is investing more in book related activities and has established a special agency for the book to (self) govern the book industry in the best way possible. Thinking about the issue will certainly bring greater clarity, also thanks to Pogledi, a new biweekly culture magazine, coming to being under Ljubljana’s book reign. I am pleased that Pogledi will fill the void, as it promises a thorough and prompt reflection of artistic and cultural production in Slovenia and around the world, instead of the current often superficial and cursory information in the media. Slovene society is fundamentally a society of monologue and not yet a society of dialogue. Pogledi, which will frame the “object of desire” from different angles, will surely encourage dialogue. Another dialogue presents itself as an opportunity: the dialogue with Europe, which will finally have to explain why some European countries still apply a tax exemption on books, despite the fact EU legislation does not provide for any such exemption. In Ljubljana, and not only in Brussels, we will vocally reiterate the question as to whether European culture is decided by finance ministers instead of culture ministers. We like to boast that every year over 6,000 book titles are published in Slovenia and that it is a country with one of the highest numbers of published books per capita, surpassed only by Finland and Iceland. If that is considered in combination with our 1,800 publishers and 18 book festivals, of which Vilenica and Medana are international events, the survival of the book in Slovenia is not at stake. •

photo JoĹže Suhadolnik

Ljubljana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the World Book Capital City

On the Destiny of Young People

Boris Pahor, In the first post-war years, I was reflecting on my experience as a returnee from the AcSS, the herald of Slovene literature universe of a concentration camp. Being aware of the dreadful evil an ever so civilized

and masterfully developed human is capable of, I frequently asked myself the following question: how will his successor find his bearings? The catastrophe of the 20th century was not followed by the unveiling of a fortuitous agreement, but firstly by Hiroshima and Nagasaki and later by a political battle between the victors - the Western superpowers and the Soviet Union - at two neuralgic points, in Berlin and Trieste. This was a battle that would later continue in different stages all the way up to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. What struck me the most was the realisation that in the face of a repeated fundamental measuring of powers the apocalyptic destruction of human lives in the first half of the century would remain in the background. I condemned state leaders who, due to the battle between democracy and communism and to economic matters, had left aside the sacrifice of millions of anti-Nazi prisoners and who only fought very half-heartedly to bring the criminals to trial. In the face of such indifference towards fundamental values - I thought to myself - young people will grow up in a morally unhealthy atmosphere, where the dreadful past would spread its negative influence like an undefeated poisonous underground force, while a concern for prosperity would dominate the globalised world. Therefore I decided that I would testify about the evil as I had experienced it myself, and would thus place young readers directly in front of the past events, especially regarding fascism, the first dictatorship in Europe, which was later followed by German Nazism, Spanish Francoism, the Croatian Ustashi movement and others. Written interventions were eventually followed by public appearances, which due to the success of the novel Necropola (Necropolis) became ever more frequent and gave me the opportunity to

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

describe the fate of the Primorska region, from the arson of the Slovenian National Centre in Trieste to the occupation of a part of Slovenia’s territory, which was turned into the Italian province of Ljubljana. While recounting the crimes of the war criminals who were never brought to trial I was stressing that young people must develop an independently thinking personality, in other words a personality that will enable them to make decisions on the basis of their own views and judgements. In this regard they should not content themselves with what is being served to them by a school history book, a teacher or professor with a certain world view or the daily media opinions of only one political orientation, but instead educate themselves on the basis of further thorough study. In this regard I would like to recommend the book Le Personnalisme by Emmanuel Mounier, the founder of the Esprit magazine, which carries on the author’s idea even in the present critical time. Mounier is a theoretician of democratic sociality in the spirit of Christianity. In Slovenia, Mounier’s conception of society found its expression in the orientation of Edvard Kocbek. Despite the Christian sublimation of personalism, his general principles are of great worth even for a layman because of his clear and well-founded statement on the interpretation of the difference between individualism and personalism. However, as a social democrat I am convinced that even in the case of a change in the social system the decision to choose Christian personalism is more acceptable than opting for Marxist existentialism. This was the opinion of the social democrat Albin Prepeluh as early as 1918, when he rejected the Soviet revolution. My second piece of advice to young people is to build strength of character and to be loyal to their beliefs. This does not mean persistently objecting to the evident, to that which is obvious, but rather not bowing down for prestige, out of fear or for personal benefit. Of course, there are situations when refusing to give up one’s beliefs can cost one dearly, especially in a society where an undemocratic order prevails and a person who has different views or is different is considered a traitor. Considering the formation of such a single-minded social structure, a true personalist will in advance sense the danger of a dominating movement springing up in which people consider themselves as elitist, praise their own excellence and look down on the less civilised, on aliens, on immigrants, whom they characterise as vagrants. Such an emphasis on national pride, which borders on racism and usually follows a leader, can be detected by well-educated people at the very start of its existence, thus they can make every possible effort to resist and reject it at its onset. The globalisation tendency, which has conquered the world because of amazing technical developments and the winning power of capital, in my opinion carries a danger of a

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

universal state or universal decay. In the first case, there will be, as Toynbee states, a “slow and steady fire of a universal state where we shall in due course be reduced to dust and ashes.” The quote is taken from the book The Breakdown of Nations by Leopold Kohr, who sees the overall economic and cultural solution for society in the abolition of large state structures and in the development of nations with smaller states. As examples, he quotes the historic Greek Polis as well as Italy and Germany before unification. With regard to Slovenia, which is in relation to other nations-states, a Central European polis, loyalty to its identity would already protect it against the dangers of uniformed globalisation. However, it is necessary that young members of Slovene society be informed on the privileged status of their community, as well as on the dangers of the temptation to sink into an impersonal global ocean. Most threatening is the leftist thesis on the decline of the identity principle, or, in traditional terms, the national consciousness, claiming that historical development has made it obsolete, and at the same time mistaking native consciousness for nationalism. Those who give preference to their links with the native community over globalisation are often directly stigmatised as nationalists, just as the communists characterised as nationalist those whose fundamental principle was not internationalism. Fortunately, such understanding has withered away, as globalism will subside sooner or later. In the above mentioned book, Mounier also discusses the nationality issue and points out that national consciousness should be kept strictly separate from nationalism, which is harmful and reactionary, whereas the national instinct saves people from individualism and egoism, since it integrates them into the community and thus protects them from the almightiness of the state and cosmopolitan economic interests. Let me conclude the same way as I began - by stressing the importance of the personal principle, which applies to individuals in their personal life as well as in their coexistence with their community and, together with their destiny, with the destiny of the whole human race. •

photo Stane Jeršič

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

“Read or Perish” Dr Manca Košir, With these words of warning, uttered in the parliament of the newly established

the herald of reading culture in independent Slovene state, the Slovene poet Tone Pavček as many as twenty years ago Slovenia insisted that reading and the mother tongue are the sine qua non of the existence of the

Slovene nation and of Slovene citizens. Reading, he stressed, enables us to listen to our soul, to hear what it is saying about us as people and as a nation. The results of a study on functional literacy carried out, at the poet’s recommendation, by the Slovene Institute for Adult Education in cooperation with research institutes from abroad ten years later revealed that Slovenes fared worst out of the 21 countries examined. The bell was tolling loudly and clearly, yet the authorities completely ignored these alarming results in spite of the fact that without the ability to master communication in one’s own mother tongue there is no hope for quality education, personal growth, the flourishing of national culture and the achievement of economic success. After all, those who read think. When we think, however, we avail ourselves of language and not of the images that are the prevailing code of modern communication networks. We are living in times of brutal capitalism and invading individualism. All that matters is personal interests. In such times, when we pay scant attention to the community and public good, it is even more important, although not at all easy, to be who we truly are. Never before has humanity had at hand so many answers to questions such as who we are and what we should become. The philosopher Heidegger described this phenomenon to perfection when he said: Everyone is someone else and no one is himself. These are the times of the mass media, most of which are commercially oriented, meaning that the advertisers arte the Lords or Views, constantly showing us what we should be like. They tell us how we »should« live, how we »should« behave, which music we »should« listen to, which films we »should« watch etc. The images on our television screens, in popular newspapers and elsewhere tell us what is of value and what is not. Symbols and signs,

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

which are all necessary for us to create our individual and common identities, have turned into a market place telling us exactly which items to choose. “If we want to live in a better Slovenia we need to do everything that is in our power to produce more art that will tell our story and that we will love. Crisis or no crisis, art should be seen as one’s need for self-awareness. A more burning issue than the non-recognisability of Slovenia on the world stage is our non-familiarity with ourselves,” said Andrej Rozman Roza, the wise successor of Frane Milčinski – Ježek, who this year received the Prešeren Fund Prize and who, in his fight for the preservation of the Slovene written word, claims that VAT on books ought to be abolished. Books are of the utmost importance. Reading is a deep transformational process taking us through pages, from one book cover to the other. It is when reading that we learn about our collective myths and archetypes and the stories of individual people who reveal the meaning of life in a most singular manner. Each character is special, each of them has their own life story. After all, as de Mello put it, “A story is the shortest distance between a human being and truth.” Good literature does not tell us what we should do. This is why it reveals the truth about the human being best. There is one more gift that the book bestows upon us: time, time for ourselves, for the book is “the best machine for slowing down time” as the philosopher R. Debray said. There is no end to a book. The book thus enables us to think beyond limitations. The reader enters a state of consciousness that is completely different from that experienced during a heavy work schedule. In such a state, the reader experiences deep peace and connects with their soul. As individuals, as a nation and as a country, Slovenes are intellectually and existentially an “endangered species”, partly also because of the poor literacy of our adult citizens. Ongoing research on children’s literacy does not seem to promise encouraging results either. A research study on the media habits of young people living in Slovenia (2003) sheds light on why this is the case. The research study looked into the media habits of more than five hundred young people aged between 14 and 19 years. The researchers were interested in their use of old, traditional media, as well as in their use of information technology encompassing PCs, the Internet, video and computer games, mobile phones and SMS messages. The results show that young people spend a lot of their time watching television or listening to pop music to chase away their boredom and loneliness. Out of all the mass media, the book proves to be the least popular. “Regardless of classification, the book is perceived as a boring and uninteresting medium ... As such, young people of all ages describe it as the least desired medium, or even as an unwelcome medium.” If young people are our future, at least part of the answer to the question as to why Slovenes are an “endangered species” is self-evident. It is because the use of visual and

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

audio media does not promote interpersonal communication and language-related activities. As language is the cohesive element in all human cooperation and societies, a well-developed communication capability definitely paves the way to personal and societal success. As the world book capital, Ljubljana will be in a position to promote reading so that this activity gains the place it deserves in our lives. Reading should take place in families, kindergartens and schools, throughout the education system, it ought to be a private as well as a public activity, the mass media should report on books more extensively and in layperson’s terms, books should be bought, given away as gifts and discussed. They ought to be used as travelling companions revealing the worlds hidden behind the pages and within the readers. The book can teach us to appreciate the beauty of the Slovene language in the comfort of our homes, while opening our windows to the world. Each book is like a strong tree, with deep roots and large, high branches. No storm can uproot such a magnificent tree. Just as no storm can uproot a person who reads or a nation aware of the importance of reading. If we read, we shall not perish. This is why, Ljubljana, the world book capital, I salute you! And I salute you, Slovenia, the land of the people who are “bound by thoughts of brotherhood” (France Prešeren)! Let us read! •

photo Miha Fras

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Ljubljana – the Cosmopolitan City of the Book Dr Uroš Grilc, Ljubljana, the World Book Capital City, is opening up the spaces able to capture the

Head of the Department for Culture of moments of the book’s eternity. It is opening up the spaces to the thought, creativity, the Municipality of Ljubljana intermediation and availability of the book, the spaces for understanding the book and

for connecting all of the links of the book supply chain. Ljubljana is poised to hospitably provide a meeting room to the literatures from all continents. Ljubljana, the World Book Capital, is opening up new spaces to reading culture, to reading, new libraries, a new literature house, new reading parks, new public spaces dedicated to the book and its promotion. However, Ljubljana is not doing this by taking the well trodden and safe ways – it is experimenting, playing with ideas on the book’s future, the future of the awareness of the necessity of reading for each individual as well as concrete projects which make the book the driving force of society’s development. How to perform unesco’s mission de iure and de facto in the Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 programme – this was our definite and fundamental challenge, as we had to differ from all of the prevailing practices which set our limits and direction. This differentiation actually required great effort, but Ljubljana found an answer in its concrete programme based on the idea of cosmopolitanism and the related ethics of hospitality. The book in itself is the driving force of cosmopolitanism and the book in itself is the ethics of hospitality. It is inseparable from the two concepts. This led to new spaces, to the urgent need for new spaces and new dimensions as the only sources of hope that established practices and standards in the book sphere – including creation, production and reading – can be changed. In his essay “Cosmopolitans of all Countries, One More Push” Jacques Derrida reflects on drafting a “Charter of Cities of Refuge” initiated by the International Parliament of Writers. With a call to open cities of refuge to prosecuted writers around the world, he is confronted with the necessity to form a new concept of cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism which is based on new interpretations of hospitality, on the obligation

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

to be hospitable and the right to hospitality. Cosmopolitanism inherent only to cities, which in turn have to reassess their manners of belonging to the state. Ljubljana, the World Book Capital City 2010, is a hospitable city, a city aware of its right and duty to hospitality, a city aware that hospitality is not an achieved state but a way in which the city lives and acts. As the city holding the title bestowed to it by unesco, Ljubljana wants to be a cosmopolitan city and is therefore also determined to join the International Cities of Refuge Network. The Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 programme is almost a political programme, and this will be its inheritance for all future world book capitals. The Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 programme is in fact one great contemplation of the idea of cosmopolitanism epitomised by the book – cosmopolitanism which Ljubljana will enjoy to the full this year and which it will then pass on to the world as its own experience. Cosmopolitanism is traces of otherness within us, which we are able to detect and contemplate. Being the World Book Capital City is an experience leaving a lasting trace of otherness, which Ljubljana will use as a foundation for openness, hospitality and cosmopolitanism. In the forthcoming year Ljubljana will become the polis of the book. •

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ljubljana – svetovna prestolnica knjige 2010

The Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 Programme

Ljubljana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the World Book Capital City

A Year Dedicated to the Book In the period from 23 April 2010 to 23 April 2011 the Municipality of Ljubljana and numerous book enthusiasts will help each of us to become the king of the castle which, tucked away from the outside world, opens its door to concentrated inner silence. If ever there was such a year, this year will be the one in which the reader can learn that the book is the most indispensable and irreplaceable medium of all, helping us befriend one another as well as other cities in the homeland of the Slovene language and in the parliamentary assembly of the universal Word, proclaiming the principles of the freedom of expression, education, the free exchange of information, all endorsed by unesco, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Florence Agreement. The assuming of the title opens a year which will witness more than 300 events aimed at fostering reading, developing reading culture and improving the accessibility of books, as well as presenting literary genres and world literatures. The majority of the events in the programme, designed by the Municipality of Ljubljana and supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Slovenian Book Agency, will be realised by non-governmental organisations and public institutions dealing with culture, science and research, all selected by expert committees in a public tender. Part of the programme is being developed together with other Slovene cities and embassies in Ljubljana.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Trubar Literature House This year, Ljubljana will open the door of its literature house named after Primož Trubar, the author of the first Slovene book and the founder of the Slovene literary language. Ljubljana has thus joined a number of European cities, such as Munich, Vienna, Hamburg, Salzburg, Cologne and Copenhagen, where readers and book lovers can benefit from the activities organised by literature houses. The Trubar Literature House will be a centrally-located (2, Ribji trg / Fish Market Square) public space dedicated to literature and the book, where numerous events organised throughout the World Book Capital Year will significantly contribute to the vibrant culturally-coloured city beat. The mission of the Trubar Literature House is that of becoming the reference point for literature, the book and critical reflection. Members of different literary and intellectual groups pertaining to a variety of world views will here be able to exchange their opinions on cultural and societal issues of our time. The Literature House will offer programmes bringing together literary and artistic, as well as critical and reflexive aspects. The literary and artistic programme will provide for literary events, festivals, readings, book presentations, creative workshops and visits of foreign writers and poets. Apart from well-established literary events, such as literary evenings, this public institution will promote innovative approaches combining literature with music, fine arts, puppet theatre and other artistic expressions. The Literature House will also provide support for projects promoting reading culture through the use of new technologies, such as the Internet, electronic books and blogs. The Trubar Literature House will thus bring together writers, poets, authors and artists of different profiles and with a variety of creative approaches. There will be a special programme dedicated to cultural education promoting reading culture and literary, media and information literacy among the young population. Critical reflection on literature, culture and society is particularly needed when the media are influenced by the increasing pressure of commercialisation, coupled with a tabloidization and trivialisation of cultural and media content. The Trubar Literature House will, therefore, give the floor to the public, to theoreticians, critics and intellectuals, particularly those pertaining to younger generations, so that they can express their views on the changing cultural and social reality. There will be morning, afternoon and evening programmes. In the morning, the Literature House will function as a reading room (with a variety of professional journals and newspapers). During this time, it will be open to school visits, with students benefiting from a guided tour of an installation dedicated to Primož Trubar and a multimedia video presentation of Primož Trubar’s time of residence in Ljubljana. The afternoon programme will be a combination of workshops and gatherings of programme groups,

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

while the evening programme will be dedicated to projects aimed at the general public. The programme will be carried out by programme groups and will be divided into prose, poetry, theory, a children’s programme, etc. These programme groups will be established through an invitation to the public and through direct invitations to established authors, intellectuals and educators. Apart from the selected programme groups, a variety of providers (publishing houses, cultural societies, literary groups, etc.) will be given the possibility to present their literary creations and organise workshops and round tables, as well as to promote their activities. The Trubar Literature House will become the headquarters of a new book club, the web portal on literature and the book and an exhibition space. Members of the book club, organised in various groups and sections, will be responsible for the programmes. A non-commercial web portal will report on all of the events with multimedia content, as well as offering expert reviews, critiques, theoretical views, critical articles, etc. Writers and poets, especially those belonging to the younger generation, will here be given the opportunity to present their creations to the larger public. The Trubar Literature House will provide free access to a selection of electronic books for which copyright will have been purchased. Registered visitors to the web portal will have the possibility to co-create online content, such as blogs and commentaries. The Literature House will be equipped with free wireless Internet access. The gallery will host occasional exhibitions and installations. During the Ljubljana World Book Capital Year, the Trubar Literature House will also function as an information centre hosting many promotional and other events, such as press conferences and talks. With this first literature house in Slovenia, Trubar’s legacy will finally be protected, while at the same time being made available to the public. The diversity and innovativeness of the programmes, aimed at various societal groups and all generations, represent the foundation needed for the attainment of a most ambitious goal: to turn the Trubar Literature House into the centre of Ljubljana literary, cultural and intellectual activities.

Ljubljana – A City of Refuge The Municipality of Ljubljana and the Slovene PEN Centre in 2010 plan to make Ljubljana part of the International Cities of Refuge Network. This includes European and American cities which have decided to offer refuge to writers, poets and intellectuals from countries whose authorities breach the freedom of expression and prosecute, arrest or otherwise prevent free-thinking and writing people to work and, in some cases, even to live.

Pogledi The first issue of Pogledi, a new biweekly magazine for art, culture and society, will be published on 7 April 2010.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Kres pod Gradom – children’s bookshop In the Mestni dom building a new specialist children’s bookshop will open under the name Kres pod Gradom (Bonfire under the Castle), offering quality books in the Slovene language and foreign languages for children between 0 and 10 years. It will provide a homely space where children can meet writers, illustrators, fairy-tale tellers and others who will bring books closer to them in a friendly manner and encourage them to read.

For Collectors Pošta Slovenije (Post of Slovenia) will publish a postcard to mark the UNESCO World Book Capital City 2010, the Bank of Slovenia will mint occasional coins issued by the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana has published a bookplate dedicated to the occasion.

Media sponsors Dnevnik d.d. and Radiotelevizija Slovenije Časopisna družba Dnevnik, a newspaper and magazine publisher, takes pride in having become a partner in the Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City project. Dnevnik will devote its attention to the entire project, while emphasising the major events. Dnevnik has always been very active in the field of culture, supporting authors of the best fiction short story collections with its Dnevnik Fabula Award. The Fabula Festival will be one of the main events within the World Book Capital City 2010. The Culture Editorial Office will therefore introduce a special World Book Capital City 2010 Section, also supported by the Dnevnik.si web portal. In this way, Dnevnik’s readers and visitors to the web portal will be offered an updated overview of the events, while being given an opportunity to delve more deeply into stories written by the greatest masters of the written word who will be visiting Slovenia this year. Dnevnik will also be promoting reading culture with its editions distributed at various events. RTV Slovenija will cover all of the events daily in its programme Kultura, broadcast after the programme Odmevi, as well as reporting on the most prominent events in the programmes Dnevnik (News) and Odmevi. Live footage of events is also planned. Every Friday from 23 April 2010 to 23 April 2011 the section Kultura will be five minutes longer with a special divide showing the World Book Capital City logo. This section will include the events which have taken place in the given week. On 19 April 2010, a TV crew will travel to Paris to cover the presentation of the Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 programme. It will send live footage to Dnevnik (News) and prepare a contribution for Osmi dan, the central weekly cultural programme. On 23 April 2010, the opening will be broadcast live from Križanke on the TVS I channel at 8 pm. All major events will have TV coverage which will include reports by a special group of journalists, contributions for Osmi dan and interviews with prominent writers for

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

the popular literature programme Pisave. At the end of May, a special 50-minute TV programme will be broadcast about the central event in the framework of the Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 programme. A round table dedicated to Ljubljana as the Book Capital City 2010 will also be broadcast in May. In the weekly programme Ars 360 major literary events in the forthcoming week will be announced.

Information Office In April, an Information Office opened its doors, providing comprehensive information on the Ljubljana – World Book Capital 2010 programme. It will also be the venue of many event presentations pertaining to the programme. At the same time, the Information Office functions as the web page editor, available as of the end of March, and as a small print shop. Address: World Book Capital City Information Office, Mačkova 1, Ljubljana Telephone: +386 (0)1 306 11 74 and +386 (0)1 306 11 71 E-mail: lspk2010@ljubljana.si ▸ www.ljubljanasvetovnaprestolnicaknjige.si ▸ www.ljubljanaworldbookcapital.si

Note: At the time this Programme Book was being put to print, the exact dates and times of all of the planned events were not known and some venues were not defined yet. The events are therefore listed by programme group and month. Our purpose was to give readers an idea of the content of events and to actively involve them in books and reading as a way of life from 23 April 2010 to 23 April 2011, in the hope that this bond will persist in the future as well. For final information on the venues and times of events please consult the web pages cited by organisers. You can get additional information on the events of interest to you at www.ljubljanasvetovnaprestolnicaknjige.si and in daily press and media – particularly in the daily Dnevnik and the channels of Radiotelevizija Slovenija, who are the media sponsors of Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010. Detailed information will also be available throughout the year in the centre of Ljubljana, at the Information Office, Mačkova ulica 1. The programme is so rich, and has been prepared by a such a large number of institutions and individuals, that readers hungry for readings, listening events, performances and literary (co-)creation activities will be able to learn about them almost at almost every corner, not only in Ljubljana but throughout Slovenia.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Ljubljana - World Book Capital City 2010 - Opening Ceremonies official ceremony for the presentation of the ljubljana – the world book capital city 2010 programme 19 April 2010, 7 pm, unesco Palace, Paris: the official ceremony will be attended by: Irina Bokova, unesco DirectorGeneral, Zoran Janković, Mayor of the Municipality of Ljubljana, Majda Širca, Minister of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr Janez Šumrada, Representative of the Republic of Slovenia to unesco, Dr Slavoj Žižek, AcSS, and numerous diplomats. cultural programme: Jacques Brel / Branko Završan: The Shadow of Your Dog. Performers: Branko Završan, Žiga Golob, Krunoslav Levačić and Uroš Rakovec.

official announcement of unesco’s world book capital city 2010 23 April 2010, 12 noon, City Hall entrance. The Mayor Zoran Janković will announce the acceptance of the title by raising the official flag of the World Book Capital City. meeting and debate with the academician boris pahor, the herald of slovene literature 23 April 2010, 3 pm, Kinodvor. Organised upon the release of Pahor’s new book Zalivi. Čitanka (Bays. Reader.), published by Cankarjeva založba.

illuminated images An exhibition of illustrations by Jelka Reichman, academic painter: 23 April at 6 pm at the Kresija Gallery.

tympan in diachrony 23 April 2010, 8 pm, Križanke. An artistic performance by Matjaž Berger as a homage to the book, reading and writings: the meeting of science, art and philosophy from the perspective of the book.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Biweekly Culture Magazine Pogledi The biweekly culture magazine Pogledi is a cornerstone of the Ljubljana – World Book Capital City 2010 programme, and will fill a media gap in culture that has lasted for several years. Subsidised by the Municipality of Ljubljana and the Ministry of Culture between 2010 and 2013, the new culture magazine has aroused great expectations, especially among those members of the cultural public dissatisfied with the way culture is presently treated in the daily press. With this biweekly magazine the Municipality of Ljubljana aspires to encourage the critical appreciation of cultural production, the timely dissemination of topical information on developments in all spheres of culture and reflection on the society and time in which we live. At the same time, Pogledi is meant to be accessible to the widest possible audience – not just another culture magazine, but a newspaper addressing a wide range of readers with a very high circulation by Slovene standards. The new culture magazine will be launched on 7 April as a free, 32-page Wednesday Supplement of Delo, with a circulation of 60,000 copies. The newspaper publisher Delo will continue to publish it as a supplement until October, after which it will be issued as an independent publication. Ženja Leiler will be its first editor-in-chief. After the initial three year period, the Municipality of Ljubljana will evaluate the project and, depending on its popularity, decide on whether to continue subsidising it. Thanks to the selected team of authors and the background of the newspaper publisher Delo, the new magazine will enjoy the confidence of readers from the outset. Thus Ljubljana – World Book Capital City has not only created a new medium, but introduced new content as well.

photo Jože Suhadolnik/Delo

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Pogledi – a New Biweekly Magazine for Art, Culture and Society. Naturally from the Beyond Ženja Leiler, “I have always imagined the media as living people who are naturally born from an idea

Editor-In-Chief of Pogledi and equally naturally wither away when they breathe out their last idea – in no way si-

milar to any immortal Stalin, Tito or Tudjman, whose deaths are sinful to contemplate.” This natural way – in which some ideas die and others are born, in which what is created goes past the person it has been created for – is certainly not typical of the media only. But it applies to the media in a special, perhaps emotional way, even more so in the last decade when the survival of newspapers, with tumbling circulations, has no longer been taken for granted. For any editor, journalist or writer it is hard to accept that also the media which they edit, co-create or contribute to have a limited life span; which is maybe even more true of so-called premium newspapers dedicated to art, culture and society. The introductory quote was printed in the last edition of such a newspaper: Razgledi, of 22 December, 1999, on page 4 by the then President of the Management Board of Delo, Tit Doberšek. His matter-of-fact explanation of the reasons why Razgledi would not be published any more, after almost half a century, was “naturally” followed by a very emotional farewell, with an almost cataclysmic message, by Marko Crnkovič, the last editor-inchief. This is very precisely illustrated in his last paragraph: “It is cold in the scriptorium … my head, eyes and wrist hurt. We are dead, ISSN 1318-0401 has ceased to be, 'frivolous liberalism' has been abolished; for a long time continuity, subversiveness and dialogue have not been present even in inverted commas. Best regards from the beyond.” These last words dedicated to Razgledi put on the table at last two instances of “being right”. And both of them still hold true today, more than a decade later, when the world of the media viewed from the perspective of that time seems completely changed, almost unrecognisable and facing very precarious prospects. The president of the management board was right when he said that readers make a newspaper, that every editorial board sooner or later experiences fatigue. He wrote that the newspaper was buried by “the

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

readers and writers who have no longer been able to find the way to each other and have been passing each other towards new media and new content.” But the editor-in-chief of Razgledi was equally right. Not so much with his after-Razgledi-the-deluge attitude, but more by ascertaining that “only when a newspaper stops being published can it move to the realm of media myth – when Razgledi ceases to be it will in a way be more present in the minds of people than while being published.” In its last decade, Razgledi actually became the mythical place of a necessary but for ever lost general culture newspaper, even though towards the end it was being bought by just over a thousand readers and was consequently read by only a few more. It became synonymous with a newspaper vocally missed by part of the public, although in its last period those who now miss it practically no longer bought it, read it or contributed to it. From the comfortable journalistic distance one could perhaps justly ask why the management of Delo, instead of scrapping the newspaper, did not find people able to breathe in new ideas and thus maybe conquer new authors and readers. The fact remains that at the turn of the century newspaper publishers were earning more than they have at any time in the history of this medium, despite already being grabbed by the throat by the unimaginable success of the Internet and its opportunities and capacities. Moreover, Razgledi was modestly financed by the Ministry of Culture. One of the possible answers to this question is that Razgledi, despite its venerable history at the time while still called Naši razgledi, had actually served its purpose and played its role; a role which cannot be replaced or repeated, not only because of the time and social context in which it was published but also because of its editorial specificities. Pogledi, a new biweekly culture magazine, cannot and will not in any way be the continuation of Razgledi. Not just because one can never step twice into the same river, but because this magazine is being launched in very different media circumstances; circumstances that give rise to numerous questions but offer few unequivocal answers: today, when information is primarily disseminated by electronic media, does the publishing of a paper biweekly magazine dedicated to art, culture and society, and to a sophisticated readership, represent an anachronistic or subversive act? Is there a sufficient critical mass of readers in the Slovene speaking world to enable the survival of such a magazine on the market? How does one address the youngest readers, who read newspapers (if at all) only on the Internet and are perhaps really “interested in everything” but actually “care about very little”? Are we able to create a magazine which will critically and credibly reflect cultural and societal phenomena? Generally, in these times of change, increasingly less favourable to serious reading and content, will authors and readers be able to “connect to each other”? – If we were scared by the inability to answer these decisive and redemptive questions we would probably never have undertaken Pogledi at all. Doberšek’s post scriptum to the last issue of Razgledi ends with the thought that maybe the authors and readers “will meet again before another similar challenge, when both feel

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

the need for it”. Our challenge has come some ten years later – thanks to the City of Ljubljana and the Ministry of Culture, which put up a tender for publishing a new biweekly culture magazine, as well as to media houses, which responded. Delo, as the media house which won the tender, bears the greatest responsibility for the project. See you as readers. •

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Ljubljana Reads, Growing up with a Book, Books for Everybody Ljubljana and Books Books create intimate spheres: starting with the sphere of the author and the manuscript and ending with the sphere of the reader. The Slovene language is therefore fortunate to have the dual number. The Slovenes like reading. We like the worlds created by the twenty-five letters of the Slovene alphabet. These special symbols have immense power: they store the past, present and future of mankind. In time all of these stories have accumulated to create the largest treasury in our history. History sometimes makes light of certain nations, especially those who feel meekly diminutive themselves. Several times we Slovenes have taken our destiny in our own hands with self-confidence. We are doing so again now, as the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, has become the World Book Capital City for one year. Our culture, our language and our books are an integral part of our pride in this. The reader and the book are the noblest of pairs. Let our greedy eyes devour every good book! This festive year offers us a multitude of good, affordable books, thanks to serious authors and all of the other players in the bookselling chain in Slovenia. The time has come for us to take a moment and look into books. Everything is written in all books. Books are special homes to happiness and pain, insight and wisdom, uncertainty and courage. They are homes to the biggest and smallest of peoples. Let us together and in our individual ways be bold and brave enough to reach for the printed word. Let us return home to reading. Let us take a deep plunge into Ljubljana, the World Book Capital. Slavko Pregl, Director of the Slovenian Book Agency

The 2010/2011 School Year – the Year of the Book! The wish of the Ministry of Education and Sport of the Republic of Slovenia is for the unesco Ljubljana – the World Book Capital 2010 project to further increase the awareness of the importance of reading and books for the development of each individual and of society as a whole. This is why books and reading will be particularly emphasised during the 2010/2011 school year. The numerous reading-related programmes and projects which will be carried out by various cultural and other institutions throughout Slovenia during the Ljubljana World

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Book Capital Year can only be seen as an excellent opportunity for the promotion of reading culture among the young generation. Reading is of the utmost importance if one wishes to achieve success and gain knowledge. Reading is one of the fundamental human activities of our time. Reading and writing are the foundation of primary schooling and further education. It is our wish that in this school year our young people realise the importance of reading, while also enjoying reading, for such enjoyment will contribute to the further development of their reading habits and will help them immerse themselves in the joys of life. Dr Igor Lukšič, the Minister of Education and Sport of the Republic of Slovenia

For three years, the Ljubljana Reads programme of the Municipality of Ljubljana has been systematically developing reading culture in children. Every year the municipality gives an original picture book by a Slovene author as gift to each three-year-old child in Ljubljana and to each pupil on their first day in one of the capital’s primary schools. In this way we make the best books more accessible and support the top authors. The Slovenian Book Agency also helps young readers to become familiar with the book through its programme Growing up with a Book. Within this programme all secondary school students in Slovenia will receive an original book by a Slovene author. The Books for Everybody project foresees the publication of 21 titles of different genres, with a circulation of 8,000 and at a price of 3 Euros per copy. During the year that Ljubljana is the World Book Capital, books will not be sold just in bookshops but also in general libraries and other cultural institutions. The project involves the Slovenian Booksellers Association and the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library. In designing this original experiment the latter was led by the idea of raising the awareness of purchasing books as an indispensable part of reading culture. Partly subsidised by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library has produced special book racks on which books will be sold, whilst the City Administration will take care of promotion.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Ljubljana Reads: Selected Titles

Jelka Reichman and Anja Štefan: Lonček na pike (The Polka-Dot Pot), Mladinska knjiga. Poems about animals and children by two outstanding artists. Matjaž Schmidt: Slovenske pravljice (in ena nemška) v stripu (A Comic Strip Version of Slovene (and one German) Fairy Tales, Mladinska knjiga. 17 Slovene folk tales and a German fairy tale about Rumpelstiltskin are presented in a comic strip version, thus filling a gap in the Slovene book market.

Growing with a Book: Selected Title

Slavko Pregl: Geniji brez hlač (Trouserless Geniuses), Didakta. This youth novel is a continuation of Pregl's popular book about geniouses. It will be distributed to secondary – school students, who – in terms of their reading habits – represent the most vulnerable group of (non)-readers.

Books for Everyone: Selected Titles

Rene Goscinny, Tome and Jim Davis: a paperback comic strip entitled Mesečnik (Monthly), Založba Graffit. This publication introduces two main comic strip stories featuring Iznogoud, Spirou and Fantasio, legendary comic strip characters that have been entertaining Europeans for more than 70 years, as well as Garfield, the world’s most famous cat. Monika Kropej, Roberto Dapit: Kole, kole, koledo, leto lepo mlado (Carol, Carol, Christmas Carol, a Brand New Year is Here), Didakta. This book consists of Slovene tales and fables focusing on the main landmarks in the calendar year, where individual seasons and months are characterised by folk customs and beliefs. Vsaka ljubezen je pesem (Each Love is a Poem), Slovene Writers’ Association. A collection of love poems by selected Slovene poets. Individual authors contributed one of their poems and chose an additional five of their favourite Slovene love poems ranging from folk songs to contemporary poetry. Evald Flisar, Damijan Stepančič: Čarovnikov vajenec (Magician’s Apprentice), comic strip, Vodnikova založba. The most widely read postSecond World War Slovene novel, which has seen its eighth edition and is now available as a comic strip, focuses on the friendship between Jogananda, an Indian spiritual teacher, and a young European.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Karl Markus Gauss: The Dog-Eaters of Svinia (Jedci psov iz Svinije), Slovenska matica. Through personal research, travel and numerous contacts with the Roma in Slovakia, the author reveals a heart-breaking portrait of their life and the attitude of the majority population towards this minority group. Tone Pavček: Čas duše, čas telesa (The Time of the Soul, the Time of the Body), Slovenska matica. A collection of short lyrical prose in which the poet touches upon each topic, be it language, landscape, wine, history or mistresses, in a uniquely personal, genuine, profound, witty or ironical way. Boris Pahor: Zalivi. Čitanka. (Bays. Reader.), Cankarjeva založba. This selection of excerpts from Pahor’s novels and novellas features a range of prose, representing the best and most authentic Slovene Mediterranean literature. Selected excerpts outline the fascist period in the 20th century, especially its attitude towards the Slovene population in Mussolini’s Italy, while fragments from Necropolis depict the images of annihilating concentration camps. Slavoj Žižek: Začeti od začetka. Čitanka. (Start from the Beginning. Reader.), Cankarjeva založba. This compilation of Slavoj Žižek’s selected texts published in the last two decades focuses mainly on the analysis of society and the modern functioning of societal ties. This streamlined selection provides Slovene readers with a fil rouge through the labyrinth of numerous texts written by Žižek that have been published primarily in the English language. Svetlana Makarovič: Deseta hči. Čitanka (The Tenth Daughter. Reader.), Cankarjeva založba. An overview of poetry by Svetlana Makarovič, who uses the vocabulary and the imagery of folk music - especially ballads - in order to create a magic world of poetry that is both concrete and contemporary, as well as fairytales for children in which she is able to express her views and comments that are not typical of the concise poetic form. The book also contains a CD with eight poems recited by the author. Andrej Rozman Roza: Passion de Pressheren, Arts and Cultural Centre KUD France Prešeren Trnovo. A theatrical song in the well-known and unique style of Andrej Rozman Roza, highlighting individual periods from the life of France Prešeren. This book is a union of two creative minds, as it also contains illustrations by Ciril Horjak. Herta Muller: Everything I Own I Carry With Me (Zaziban dih). Študentska založba. This life-story of a deportee to a Russian gulag serves as the basis for revealing the fate of the German nation in Transylvania and provides the

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

reader with a moving and precise account of the persecution of Germans under Stalin’s rule. Daniel Kehlmann: Fame: A Novel in Nine Stories (Slava. Roman v devetih zgodbah), Študentska založba. Kehlmann presents nine stories happening here and now, i.e. in the era of communication technology, in which his characters find themselves in various disagreeable situations due to a breakdown in modern technology. Richard Flanagan: The Sound of One Hand Clapping (Plosk ene dlani), Študentska založba. The novel describes the life of Slovene immigrants who took refuge in Australia after the Second World War. It depicts the hardship of Slovene immigrants who struggle to find hope and salvation through love in a foreign land. David Grossman: See Under: Love (Glej geslo: ljubezen), Študentska založba. A novel about Momik Neumann, a boy growing up in Jerusalem in the 1950s with his Yiddish-speaking parents who survived the holocaust. Surrounded by the silence and insanity of survivors, Momik becomes obsessed with the secrets of this world that people around him are trying to hide. Jonathan Franzen: The Discomfort Zone (Območja nelagodja), Študentska založba. This is Franzen’s first autobiographical work. It begins and ends with his mother’s death and the selling of her house, which represents the breaking of the final bond with the past and provides for an analysis of his life so far. At the same time, the author paints a broad picture of American society in the 1960s and 1970s. Michal Viewegh: Lessons on Creative Writing (Učna ura ustvarjalnega pisanja), Študentska založba. A funny, bitter-sweet and moving tale about two stubborn twins and the aunt who raised them, about a charming 19-year-old who got pregnant with a married man, and about a female tabloid editor who seeks self-respect by humiliating others. Gašper Troha, Sebastijan Pregelj: Literarne poti po Ljubljani (Literary Paths around Ljubljana), Študentska založba. This book invites readers to take a walk around Ljubljana and experience it from a new perspective. An exciting story reveals individual layers of history and gives readers an insight into the lives and works of the most prominent Slovene authors. Individual points of interest are distributed along two walks around the city centre, while the book also lists certain sights that should outline the literary history in other parts of Ljubljana.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Several authors: LJ kot ljubezen (L as in Love), Študentska založba. This book shows how more than forty Slovene poets of all generations feel about Ljubljana and her more or less hidden parts. It also reveals how their experience is brought to life through their own specific forms of expression. Ljubljana thus becomes a source of inspiration and criticism, of auto-poetic digressions and historical representations. Several authors: Zdaj pa: Ljubljana. Tuji avtorji o naši prestolnici (And now: Ljubljana. Foreign Authors about Our Capital), Študentska založba. This compilation of texts about Ljubljana represents a priceless combination of testimonials, memoirs or miniature literary masterpieces written mostly in the 1930s by renowned foreign authors. Songs of praise and sarcastic criticisms, lucid observations and poetic errors, create a valuable document which provides a view from the outside for those readers who wish to get to know Ljubljana from within. Several authors: Štiri zmajske (Four Dragon Tales), Študentska založba. Four witty authors of youth literature have created four stories about dragons that find themselves in today’s hustle and bustle. In these stories dragons are not monsters fighting with knights, but rather curious creatures full of intelligent ideas. The book is illustrated by Matej de Cecco.

books for everybody in numbers Special book racks in 75 bookshops all over Slovenia will bend under the load of books for everybody. They will be on sale also in Trieste and Klagenfurt and will tempt readers in 105 Slovene libraries, 24 Slovene museums and 4 cultural institutions. legend: bookshops libraries museums and other cultural institutions

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Literary festival: Fabula 2010 – Literatures of the World Festival 3-28 may 2010

There Is More Than One Ljubljana, There Are As Many As the Stories of Ljubljana The city is anything but an abstract model, it is a maze of human destinies, some from the past, others from the present or from the future. Some of them can be tested empirically, others have been inspired by imagination. There is more than one Ljubljana. In fact, there are as many Ljubljanas as there are stories within its walls. In May, the city of Ljubljana will be flooded by stories and poems. They will be walking its streets and conquering its squares, they will be caressing its river banks and resting in its parks. They will even visit those corners of the city where they rarely go and where they are most anxiously expected. In May, the book will address the citizens of and visitors to Ljubljana as a message of art, captivating its readers with the beauty of its words and tempting them to stop and wonder who we are and where we are going. The 2010 Fabula Literature Festival will be the largest literary event in independent Slovenia, with numerous events all very diverse in their content yet all marked by artistic excellence. During the festival, Slovenia will be hosting a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature for the very first time since independence. In May, Ljubljana will listen attentively to the voices of the world and to the voices of those who, sometimes almost completely unnoticed, hide in its bosom. Then the Festival will be over; but the books will be here to stay, calling upon us to open them and to enter the world of literary adventure. Mitja Čander, Editor-In-Chief, Študentska založba The festival, organised by the publishing house Študentska založba, will host renowned authors from different countries. Central festival activities, such as public readings, workshops and literary trains, will be held in Ljubljana, especially in its historical centre, while individual activities will also take place in other Slovene towns. The main aim of the festival is to present different contemporary literary genres that currently appear in different parts of the world and to provide opportunities to discuss the position of literature in modern society as a fundamental axis for establishing dialogue between cultures. The festival will draw special attention to children’s and youth literature. Special literary editions of Slovene and foreign authors, carrying the logo Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010, will be published within the framework of the festival. Opening ceremony of Fabula 2010 Literary Festival with Herta Müller, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature, will take place at 8 pm on 3 May, 2010 at Drama SNG Ljubljana.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Main writers participating at the Fabula 2010 – Literatures of the World Festival Herta Müller, Romania, Germany, born 1953 in Nitzkydorf (Romania), winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. Müller, who only learned Romanian at the age of fifteen, studied Germanic and Romance languages at the University of Timisoara. She then worked as a translator for an engineering company for two years, but was dismissed for her refusal to cooperate with Securitate, the Communist regime’s secret police. Her first texts were either banned or published in extremely censored versions. In the 1980s, she moved to West Germany, together with other Banat Germans. She currently lives and works in Berlin. She became a member of the German Academy for Writing and Poetry in 1995. Two years later she withdrew from the German PEN centre in protest at its merger with the former German Democratic Republic branch. Her works touch upon the issues of the destiny and dignity of people in totalitarian regimes. She is acclaimed for her exceptionally poetic writing, which does not aim to embellish but rather reveal the dark multi-layered reality. Jonathan Franzen, USA, born 1959 in Chicago. Soon after his birth, Franzen’s family moved to Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. He studied at the Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and currently lives in New York. Franzen’s first novel, The Twenty-Seventh City, was published in 1988 and caused a great deal of interest in American literary circles. In 1992, he published Strong Motion, a novel which focuses on a dysfunctional family. His third novel, The Corrections, received the National Book Award for Fiction in 2001 and established Franzen as one of the most important contemporary American writers. David Grossman, Israel, born 1954 in Jerusalem. Grossman is one of the most important Israeli novelists. He has written eight novels, a play, some short stories and novellas as well as numerous books for children and youth. Grossman made his entrance onto the literary stage in the 1980s and continues to captivate readers and critics alike. He achieved international acclaim by publishing The Yellow Wind (1987), a non-fiction study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was hugely acknowledged for its compassionate and humane account of both sides. His essay, Lion’s Honey, has been published in Slovene translation. Michal Viewegh, Czech Republic, born 1962 in Prague. Viewegh is one of the most popular contemporary Czech writers. His first book was published in 1990, and he has written more than 20 books to date. Some critics refer to him as a social phenomenon and claim that his success lies in his ability to

Ljubljana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the World Book Capital City

write with an acumen and humour typical of romantic comedies. He also has an extraordinary feeling for characters and for his readers, who are enchanted by his writings about love, sex and relationships. Viewegh is considered a pop icon of modern Czech literature, as his books are sold in astounding numbers. So far he has sold more than 1,200,000 copies. Richard Flanagan, Australia, born 1961 in Tasmania. His first novel, Death of a River Guide, talks about AljaĹž Cosini, a river guide, who reveals his hidden life and the life of his ancestors while drowning. His latest novel is entitled The Unknown Terrorist. Flanagan has received numerous awards for his works. As a screen-writer he has also participated in several films, such as the Hollywood blockbuster Australia. The film version of his novel The Sound of One Hand Clapping was nominated for the Golden Bear for the Best Film Award at the Berlin Film Festival. His books are translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, German, Finnish, Dutch, French and Slovene. Daniel Kehlmann, Germany, born 1975 in Munich. He published his first novel Beerholms Vorstellung (1997) at the age of 22 and critics praised his distinct style and maturity. He gained further acclaim with his fifth book, a novel entitled Ich und Kaminski (Me and Kaminski) in 2003. Kehlmann became globally renowned in 2005 when he published Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the World), which sold more than two million copies in German-speaking countries alone and was translated into more than forty languages.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Fabula 2010 Literary Festival – Events ljubljana in literature Ljubljana’s literary history will come to life online on the World Book Day. ▸ www.literarnaljubljana.si. translation workshop: the international within the local The workshop aims to establish cooperation between Slovene and Chinese poets. It will see the participation of four Slovene poets, namely Aleš Šteger, Milan Jesih, Gorazd Kocijančič and Tomaž Šalamun, and four Chinese poets: Yongming Zhai, Xiaobin Yang, Yang Lian and Leung Ping-Kwan. In cooperation with experienced translators, they will translate poems by different authors from Mandarin Chinese into Slovene and vice-versa. The translations will be published in two bilingual anthologies. The visit of Chinese poets to the Fabula Festival will be followed by a visit by their Slovene counterparts to China. accompanying programme public readings by slovene poets Recordings of public readings by Slovene poets will be available on the Fabula Festival’s web-site. The following poets will provide interpretations of their own poems: Neža Maurer, Barbara Korun, Erika Vouk, Lucija Stupica, Tone Pavček, Ciril Zlobec, Tone Škerjanc, Esad Babačič, Andrej Medved and Miklavž Komelj. ▸ www.festival-fabula.si the infinite travelling book A large empty book will travel around Ljubljana’s bookshops inviting lovers of the written word to create their own novel. Visitors will have the opportunity to add their own sentence to the last sentence in the book, thus keeping the story alive. The final text, together with the authors’ signatures, will be published on the Fabula Festival’s web-site. when words come to visit Slovene theatre actors will read excerpts from works published in Beletrina’s pocket-size paperback editions (Študentska založba), in hospitals, crisis centres and homes for the elderly. Participating actors include Alenka Tetičkovič, Mojca Fatur, Zvezdana Mlakar, Radoš Bolčina, Gašper Tič, Boris Ostan and Saša Pavček. literature turns into a comic strip This literary competition is intended for primary school pupils. The best contributions will be selected by an expert jury composed of Boštjan Gorenc – Pižama (editor), Damijan Stepančič (illustrator) and Dušan Šarotar (writer).

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

reading promenades During the festival, three sites in Ljubljana – Knjigarna Beletrina at Novi trg, Plečnikove stopnice at Trnovski pristan, and Čolnarna in the Tivoli Park – will feature reading areas. These will be set up in a pleasant, shady environment, thus giving their visitors the opportunity to spend some time with a good book in their hands. Reading areas will be equipped with book stands and seats. Visitors will be able to choose from numerous titles published by several Slovene publishers.

Festival’s Central Topic: the City Venue: Breg

writer’s city: During the festival, invited authors will, in symbolic terms, represent their cities through their literature. A city, represented by an individual author, will be marked by interventions in the physical space. The Breg area (on the left bank of the Ljubljanica River) will be adorned with the symbols of participating capitals, while the invited authors will create the atmosphere of their cities through public readings, talks, concerts and panel discussions, where issues related to literature, sociology, philosophy, urban planning and other fields will be addressed. writer’s cities: 7 May: Jonathan Franzen - New York; 11 May: David Grossman – Jerusalem; 15 May: Michal Viewegh – Prague; 20 May: Daniel Kehlmann – Vienna; 24 May: Richard Flanagan – Sydney. exploring the city along literary paths: This is an unprecedented intervention in the physical space, as well as a unique literary map and accompanying book. Visitors of the festival will be able to walk along writers’ paths with the assistance of guides, who will be trained especially for this occasion by the Ljubljana Tourist Board. friendly city: Adaptation of the City Museum and the Ljubljana Galleries (MGML). The City of Ljubljana will carry out a sample project for adapting exhibition areas and improving the accessibility of exhibits for the blind and visually impaired by rearranging a part of the City Museum’s permanent collection. The organisers will hold a debate entitled What Does Our City Need? where participants will discuss the position of disadvantaged groups and provide possible solutions for improving the situation in this area. ode to prešeren: a transcript of prešeren’s krst pri savici (baptism on the savica). This activity will see the participation of secondary school students from Ljubljana and its surroundings, who will transcribe a part of this national epic poem. For one day during the Fabula Festival, the Prešeren monu-

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

ment will undergo a special make-over. The art installation entitled Prešeren’s New Clothes, with passages from Prešeren’s longest poem, will be authored by Andreja Brulc. ljubljana in the 1980s: feri lainšček’s peronarji: Meeting the author to discuss the second edition of his novel. poems about ljubljana: Established Slovene poets of all generations have been invited to write a poem about Ljubljana. Excerpts from the poems will be shown on displays at public transport bus stops and on local buses. Passengers will be able to read poetry on buses and at bus stops in May 2010. projections of literary works on public buildings: During the festival excerpts from works by Slovene and invited foreign authors will be projected onto different buildings around Ljubljana. exhibitions portraits of slovene writers and poets, Historical Courtyard of the Ljubljana Town Hall: An exhibition of photographs by Jože Suhadolnik, who has captured more than 50 Slovene writers and poets in his lens. exhibition on the ljubljanica river beds: This exhibition of photographs by Borut Kranjc entitled Bralec (Reader) aims to give meaning to reading and promote the Year of the Book. israeli exhibition: On the occasion of David Grossman’s visit to Slovenia, the Slovene Ethnographic Museum, in cooperation with the Israeli Embassy in Vienna, is organising two exhibitions: The Art of Hebrew Letters and The Best Israeli Illustrations. These exhibitions have already been on show in numerous countries around the globe. fabula and video writers on buses: Selected Slovene writers will be brought closer to passengers on the Ljubljana Public Transport services. Short video clips of Slovene authors will be presented on electronic displays on buses, thus giving the writers an opportunity to enter the daily life of their readers and accompany them in their day-to-day activities.

recordings of main events: All of the main events of the festival will be recorded and made available online (on the literary web portal www.airbeletrina. si) for those are unable to attend live events.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

kinofabula (fabula cinema): During the festival, the Kinodvor cinema will feature films related to invited authors and the cities from which they come or which they explore in their works. Film projections will be followed by talks with selected authors in the Kinodvor’s coffee house. education and training events seminar for librarians and booksellers: Librarians, booksellers as well as professors of the Slovene language have expressed their wish to define guidelines, potential approaches and advice on how to provide quality books to readers while at the same time stimulating a long-term enthusiasm for books and reading. Lectures by renowned speakers will provide some answers to these dilemmas and present examples of best practices. essay in the 2010 baccalaureate: Lojze Kovačič and Andrej Makin – topics for comparative essays. an essay is a brain storm! Taras Kermauner: Literary training in the form of a short seminar will focus on how to write a baccalaureate literary essay. Professor Nada Barbarič, who will tutor the seminar, will highlight individual topics from the literary works that form the basis of the 2010 baccalaureate essay in May. literature turns into a comic strip – a competition for primary school pupils: The topics of this competition arise from a book entitled Štiri zmajske (Four Dragon Tales), which will be published in Beletrina’s pocket-sized paperback editions (Študentska založba). Pupils will be able to choose one of the four tales published in this collection of short stories for youth and create a comic strip. dream vision: international symposium on ivan cankar: The international symposium on Ivan Cankar, an important Slovene writer and thinker, aims at highlighting the complexity of his personality and his works, thus creating the space for discussing individual ideas stemming from his works and reconsidering their spiritual, conceptual and aesthetic significance in today’s world. music events a song is a voice from the heart – choirs in ljubljana: Choirs will perform poetry by Slovene poets, whose poems have been set to music, ranging from France Prešeren and Dragotin Kette to Srečko Kosovel and Oton Župančič. The selection of choirs and compositions was entrusted to Kulturno društvo Glasbena matica (The Slovene Music Society), which is co-organising the event. ▸ www.festival-fabula.org

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Books and the Creativity in Culture The Book and the Theatre Theatre brings together different forms of artistic expression, from literature, dramatic play and movement to fine arts and music. Theatre is in a continuous dialogue with literature, with drama in particular, which it either attempts to enact on stage or break free from. In relation to prose, drama and poetry, theatre plays an important role in the promotion of drama and those plays which have be written to come to life on the theatre stage. The late Peter Božič once said: “I have not written anything for twenty years because theatre companies have not invited me to do so. A playwright writes for the stage and not for his own drawer.” Slovensko mladinsko gledališče (The Slovene Youth Theatre) is well aware that it is playwrights who can create plays reflecting the time and space in which we live. World drama touches upon global topics which are relevant for nearly all societies on our planet, while only Slovene playwrights can capture the specificities of Slovene society. This year, when Ljubljana turns into the World Book Capital, we can avail ourselves of this great opportunity and ponder the role of theatre companies in the promotion of Slovene play writing. Uršula Cetinski, Director of Slovensko mladinsko gledališče

Books of Music If you look through all of the books in the world you will see that some are truly special. Usually they keep to themselves, modestly, or with a hint of superiority, staying far away from their fellows on the bookshelf. They feel special for a reason. They need no translators to be understood, and yet their content can only be grasped by a selected few. When their content takes its intended shape, however, it is, with extraordinary ease, revealed to everybody. These are the books whose magical and modest characters can part the curtains of time to glimpse the sound of Gothic cathedrals, Baroque palaces, Romantic salons, Viennese cafés, tumbling streams, roaring wars and the silence of the heart. These are scores, books of music. These are the books with enigmatic notes whose sounds, when we are reading them with our eyes closed, echo through the landscape of our awareness. Prof Aldo Kumar, Academy of Music, University of Ljubljana

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

The Book and the Film The film or the book, the picture or the word? The book speaks to each of its readers, opening its doors to many an individual world of experience and imagination. And yet, a picture is worth a thousand words. The film is not limited to what has been uttered. It has the power to narrate without uttering, to avail itself of image, composition, rhythm, sound and time. The book and the film seen as rivals. The book and the film seen as partners. Many great films have been based on books, and yet there have been many cases of failed film projects inspired by literature. The book is never better than the film. There can only be good and bad books. And there can only be good and bad films. A good book describes what language can not. Similarly, a good film is much more than a compilation of images. It does not matter what the book and the film are made of. What matters is what they create. They may narrate in a different way, yet, when good, they speak of the same thing. They speak about me, about you, about worlds magical and real, they speak about what is and what could be. They make us freeze, feel, think, want, fear, laugh. There is room for both of them on the throne of imagination and spirit. Barbara Kelbl, Head of the Film Education Programme, Kinodvor

The Book and Fine Arts We are accustomed to storing our language in books. Through the centuries we have perfected a classification system to protect us from misunderstandings. Lexicography is one of the cornerstones of knowledge about language and there can be no translation without a dictionary. We are translating all the time – not only from or into foreign languages, but also within a language: an experience is often defined by being translated into a different experience. Translation also takes place in the field of fine arts: the artist translates his or her experience into visual language, while the spectator uses his or her classification code and experience to finally translate it into spoken and/or written language. Impressions from the real (or imaginary) world are thus transformed into visual images; through the eyes of the individual, these are translated back into reality, where they are recorded at the individual level and are often committed to paper. What is left is a document, the written word, which – along with the work of art recorded on canvas, paper, in a computer graphic, in marble, stone or bronze, or stored as digital data – speaks of the time of inception, translating the past and searching for its place in the future. Alenka Gregorič, Art Programme Director of the City Museum and the Ljubljana Galleries (MGML)

In the course of Ljubljana – World Book Capital City 2010 various events in different spheres of culture will take place under the title Books and the Creativity in Culture. In terms of content, they will be related to the underlying programme and to the book in the wider sense of the word. They will be organised by museums, galleries, theatres, musicians and other cultural creators. In this way the book will attract virtually all cultural institutions and media to its midst.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Programme of Events march, april 2010 kinobalon at the festival fairytales today. Kinodvor. Children will have an opportunity to compare the narrative of film to live storytelling. First they will listen to fairytales being told and then they will watch animated films on the big screen. Two animated films will be shown, both based on picture books: The Three Robbers, based on the picture book by Tomi Ungerer of the same title, and Why? by the popular author Lila Prap, whose book has been made into a series of animated films. Fairytales about animals will be told by Ajda Roos. ▸ www.kinodvor.org/kinobalon kinobalon tells stories. Kinodvor. Before the start of the films being shown, selected storytellers and musicians will tell children fairytales and stories and sing them songs related to the topic of the film narrative. In Sezamov kotiček (Sesame’s Corner), children will be able to leaf through picture books and read stories on subjects dealt with in the film. During the school holidays, a workshop will be organised on the connections between books and film and comic strips and animated film. ▸ www.kinodvor.org/kinobalon evenings of books and film. Kinodvor. The Evenings of Books and Film will take place from March to December 2010 in cooperation with Slovene publishing houses and film distributors. Guest speakers will include authors of various literary works that have been made into films, authors of scientific literature on film, critics and other experts dealing with the world of books and film. ▸ www.kinodvor.org major retrospective books on film, part 2: understanding film, Slovenska kinoteka. Louis Giannetti designed his book based on twelve specific chapters dealing with film theory. The films that will be shown are part of this multi-stage journey through the book and offer an opportunity to experience first hand how films can be understood holding a book, eyes directed at the screen at the same time. ▸ www.kinoteka.si on the wings of the imagination. Ljubljana Puppet Theatre. The bibliographical exhibition will be an upgrade of the regular offer of the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre. The foyer will host an exhibition of antique and rare children’s books that will conjure up nostalgic memories and make the visitors want to read them again. ▸ www.lgl.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

varietejček. familija, society for organising art, Kavarna Union. Four theatre serials will be staged, each of them related to a different type of art but all revolving around the same central theme: the book. On Saturday mornings, children between the ages of 4 and 8 will become engrossed in the secrets of picture books, scientific encyclopaedias, collections of children’s poetry and fairy tales from around the world. They will then watch one of the four theatre serials, while the last hour will be devoted to creative workshops and play. ▸ www.varietejcek.si the book of villa vilekulla. Pionirski dom – Centre for Youth Culture. Organised by the Art Centre of Pionirski dom, the exhibition and production of the book of Villa Vilekulla consists of a selection of prints, drawings and paintings, conceived as illustrations of the central topic of the haiku competition held at the Vič High School in Ljubljana in 2010. The purpose of this project is to complement the high school competition with a non-competitive call for works of art produced by children and adolescents in schools throughout Ljubljana and Slovenia. ▸ www.pionirski-dom.si jelka reichman: illuminated and selected images. Kresija Gallery. The exhibition will be opened on 23 April, the day that Ljubljana receives the honorary title World Book Capital City 2010. Jelka Reichman is last year’s recipient of the Župančič Award for life work. the book dismantled and displayed. Kresija Gallery. The exhibition The Book Dismantled and Displayed and its complementary events will provide an educational and interactive way of familiarising visitors with the movable type printing technique, which remained unchanged from the Guttenberg era right up to the 1970’s. marvellous images in town, an exhibition of selected illustrations by 25 Slovene illustrators. Atria of the Ljubljana City Hall. The exhibition will be simultaneously displayed on posters throughout the city. ▸ www.ljubljana.si/si/zivljenje-v-ljubljani/kultura-turizem/razstavni-prostori-mol/ an exhibition by a group of eight young illustrators. Gallery Srečišče at the Celica Youth Hostel, Metelkova. In the exhibition Ex Libris – Back to the Book, contemporary visual artists will present the future of the minute masterpiece of the ex libris and pay homage to the classical technique of printmaking. This first-time exhibition will showcase the works and interventions into gallery space by Dean Ivandić, Jakob Klemenčič, Alenka Sottler and Zora Stančič. The two exhibitions will be accompanied by a complementary programme featuring

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

reading sessions that will bring visual and written language closer to the broadest possible circle of connoisseurs and enthusiasts of this type of literature. ▸ www.galerijasrecisce.si the island, the city and the others. Society for One Music. Author Lucija Stupica. The performance establishes a different relation between the human being and metaphysics, between myself and others. The rhythm of the city is thus dictated through poetry, music and accompanying photography. The artists collaborating in this project view the city as a space that opens up different possibilities for the individual’s actualisation as a cultural and social being. ▸ www.pranger.si ▸ www.terrafolk.org the book and the performing arts, a thematic round table. Studio Mestnega gledališča Ljubljanskega. The round table will present publishers and editors who are responsible for scientific literature in the field of the performing arts in Slovenia. ▸ www.mgl.si introduction to the 1st festival of letters, Kresija Gallery, calligrapher Marko Drpić, renaissance typography. The core of the Festival of Letters is the reconstruction of a 50-year-old printing press including a tonne of lead and wooden letters. The printing press will be used to print business cards, invitations and sample books of letters. ▸ www.festivalcrk.si bookmarks. Ten designers, an illustrator and a calligrapher will print a small series of bookmarks. The bookmarks will be on sale at larger bookstores and in museums. The participants include designers Tomato Košir, Teja Kleč, Tanja Radež, Boštjan Botas Kenda, Borut Balant, Petra Černe Oven, Mojca Janželj, Zek Crew, Lukatarina and Maja Licul, the illustrator Mina Žabnikar and the calligrapher Marko Drpić. The sales stands for the bookmarks are the work of the industrial designer Toni Kancilja. ▸ www.festivalcrk.si masters telling stories. Every Wednesday, masters of print will be interviewed in the hope of extracting some juicy stories from behind the scenes of the world of print. ▸ www.festivalcrk.si literadiotura – the literary programme and events of radio študent 2010-2011. A Pocketful of Fantasy (a radio programme featuring fairytales

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

and a storytelling event called Fairytale Crisscross), Here and There (a literary programme with interpretations of prose by contemporary world and Slovene authors), Dreamtigers (a poetry contest and poetry evenings), Nightings (a nightly literary and fiction programme devoted to less known literary periods): Literary programmes and events featuring various literary genres, based on the tradition of literary programmes and radio dramas by Radio Študent as well as its 40-year tradition of interpretation. A selection of fairytales, prose, poetry and drama from the Slovene and world heritage. ▸ www.radiostudent.si actors reading novels in mini teater. Mini teater. Semi-staged events that will consist of some of the greatest names of Slovene theatre as well as some actors of the younger generation, Milena Zupančič, Olga Kacjan, Zvezdana Mlakar, Jurij Souček, Ivanka Mežan, Iva Zupančič, Štefka Drolc, Saša Tabaković, Jose, Robert Waltl, Marko Mandić and others, lending their voices to the classic novels of world literature (Madame Bovary, Billy Bud …) and to contemporary authors (Pascal Quignard, Josef Winkler, Daniel Kehlman, Aleksandar Hemon …). A significant part of the programme will also be devoted to the contemporary Slovene novel. ▸ www.mini-teater.si an evening with mila kačič, Zavod Senzorium and Drama SNG Ljubljana. The evening with Mila Kačič will be a tribute to spiritual congeniality, friendship, loyalty, love, commitment and concord. ▸ www.senzorium.com ▸ www.drama.si the book of theatre. Slovensko mladinsko gledališče (Slovene Youth Theatre). Professional discussions will take place once a month while Ljubljana is the World Book Capital City and include experts in humanities and art. They will discuss the phenomena of contemporary art, mostly theatre, in relation to the book. ▸ www.mladinsko.com/predstave/pogovori-v-klubu/sezona-200910 may 2010 hopscotch. nona ciobanu, peter košir. kazemate at the ljubljana castle. The project consists of three interconnected events taking place in the same space: Spatial Video Installation, Performance and Concert by Kayhan Kalhor. The project is the fruit of cooperation between the TOACA Cultural Foundation from Romania, KUD France Prešeren, the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Ljubljana Festival. ▪ Spatial Video Installation: Space, visible through hopscotch grids, reveals and explores the every day reality of the Middle East.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

▪ Performance: A voyage and transformation of the (geo)graphical symbol into

a letter, a word, a poem. A mixture of contemporary dance, projections, poetry, live music (percussion, theremin, spike fiddle) and architecture. ▪ Concert by Kayhan Kalhor: The Iranian composer and musician based in New York is a virtuoso on the ancient Persian instrument called the kamancheh (the Persian spiked fiddle). He will perform his own work and improvisations based on traditional music derived from ancient Persian literature. ▸ www.lspk2010@ljubljana.si/ristanc major retrospective books on film, part 3: the history of film, Slovenska kinoteka. The third retrospective that will round off the first half of the year refers to the book entitled Film History by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, which will be published in Slovene translation this spring. ▸ www.kinoteka.si kantfest festival. Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture, co-production. Zavod CCC. The festival of contemporary troubadours will begin in Ruše and then continue on its way to CUK Kino Šiška, its leitmotif being the relationship between the word, silence and music. In May 2010, the eighth festival CD, along with a compilation and presentation of the best lyrics featured in the festival, will be released. ▸ www.myspace.com/kantfest rockers singing poetry. CUK Kino Šiška, co-producer: Youth Cultural Centre Maribor. 20 selected Slovene bands playing musical versions of poems by 20 selected Slovene poets. ▸ www.myspace.com/rokerjipojejopesnike svetlana makarovič: chrysanthemum on the piano. musical theatre project by janja majzelj. Co-organised with Slovensko mladinsko gledališče and CUK Kino Šiška. ▸ www.kinosiska.si readable. 9 + 1. Sculpture Association. Open-air gallery in front of the Gruber Palace in the Tivoli Park. Ten sculptors selected by Tatjana Pregl Kobe. All of the works exhibited will be “readable” in different ways: literary poetics in sculptures; a sculpture motif taken from literature; the sculptor as a literary creator; the book as a visual element; literature as an inducement, a challenge. The book as a sculptural object and a medium will also be presented in the accompanying catalogue and in an envisaged publication which will contain expert commentary as well as individual presentations of all ten authors. ▸ www.kiparstvo-zavod.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

tomes, various workshops by the Student Cultural Centre ŠKUC. Workshops on creative writing, printing text onto T-shirts, creating alternative dust jackets and bookmarks, a painting and sculpture workshop focusing on literary text, a graffiti workshop based on literary concepts, a workshop on transferring

literary text into public space, a comic strip workshop, the Anonymous Readers Book Club, literary evenings entitled Literary Megabytes. A reading performance accompanied by music, video or acting, publishing a mini dictionary of Slovene LGBTIQ terms. ▸ www.kulturnicenterq.org ▸ klubmonokel.com backstage, comedy, deaf and hard of hearing actors; Slovene sign language interpreters. The performance brings together two worlds – the world of spotlights and glory that actors experience on stage and the world of gruelling rehearsals, perseverance, distress and stage fright that actors experience backstage. The performance also sheds light on the personal inner drama of individual actors, while all the while also being a metaphor for the divide between the world of the deaf and that of the hearing. ▸ www.gluhi.si artwork in your pocket – the bookworm. The France Stele Institute of Art History of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts. Stories from literature, art history, architecture and other fields provide interpretations of works of art and explain their role in the life of the city of Ljubljana. New notes on works of art collected in pocketsized paperbacks invite you to read up on artistic heritage. In addition to the opening (including a photographic exhibition) and closing events, monthly presentations of new booklets will be organised which will also include guided tours of monuments, readings and discussions. ▸ http://uifs.zrc-sazu.si student fashion show on the subject books in textile and an exhibition of textile/tactile books. Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, Textile Department. In their collections of clothes, the students will develop their own interpretations and understanding of books. This will give rise to different stories – clothing books that will unfold to become contemporary three-dimensional clothes. Students will present tactile textile diaries which will showcase a different way of reading books. ▸ www.oto-lj.si/

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

june 2010 boris pahor – boris kobal, klavdija zupan: necropolis,

dramatisation of the novel, premiere, 5 June, Ljubljana Castle. Association Celinka, KUD Pod Topoli, Mestno gledališče ljubljansko. Interpretation by Pavle Ravnohrib. The dramatic interpretation of the novel Nekropola by Boris Pahor will stimulate reflection on ethics, the abuse of ideology, survival at the point of utmost dehumanisation and coming face to face with pure impersonal evil. ▸ www.mgl.si ▸ www.celinka.net books hiding behind a mask of music: a solo. Glasbena matica Ljubljana. A recital of vocal solos featuring a selection of musical versions of masterpieces of world poetry. ▸ www.glasbenamatica.si books hiding behind a mask of music: i am not sitting on my ears. Glasbena matica Ljubljana and the Academy of Music. As part of the all-year project Ciciban Singing, a workshop will be organised that will offer children an opportunity to learn how poems can come alive outside of books; some can be sung, others are acted out, some can be danced to or painted, while some might even be recorded and seen on television or heard on the radio. ▸ www.glasbenamatica.si books hiding behind a mask of music: literary classics in operatic metamorphoses. A performance by students of the Academy of Music. A concert of operatic arias with librettos based on motifs taken from classic literature (Sophocles, Ovid, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Pushkin, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, Molière, Wilde, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Cankar, Jurčič, Župančič, Prešeren). ▸ info@glasbenamatica.si books hiding behind a mask of music: i am all ears. A performance of the Glasbena matica children’s choir. The performance will include a selection of children’s poems and stories about how these poems come alive once they reach a composer who sets them to music. These poems are not only read and listened to, but also sung and acted out. ▸ www.glasbenamatica.si books hiding behind a mask of music: pedenjped. A performance of the Glasbena matica children’s choir. Directed by Katja Pegan, screenplay by Jože Humar, composers Karol Pahor, Borut Lesjak, Peter Šavli, Aldo Kumar, Tadeja Vulc, Matevž Goršič, Črt Sojar Voglar. A concert of Niko Grafenauer’s poetry

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

collection Pedenjped set to music. ▸ www.glasbenamatica.si books hiding behind a mask of music: old ljubljana. A performance of the Glasbena matica youth choir. A concert of Niko Grafenauer’s youth poetry collection Old Ljubljana (Stara Ljubljana) set to music. ▸ info@glasbenamatica.si poetry off a slip of paper. Cultural Institute Vitkar. Author and performer: Branko Potočan. The poems have so far been living in pockets, drawers and chests. On occasion, the author would share them with friends, sometimes even with the broader public. In this show, these poems are presented with an air of spectacle not unlike storytelling for children, using both myths and tricks as well as more complex and imaginative interpretations. The show includes some attractive elements of the circus and acrobatics, featuring the tightrope and other props. ▸ www.bunker.si the form of the book, book design. Academy of Fine Arts. A project by Prof. Radovan Jenko. A presentation of book design by academy students and their mentors. An exhibition of integrated book design, book covers, book illustrations. ▸ www.aluo.si 17th live literature festival with a complementary programme entitled long live the book. Škuc, Brane Mozetič. This international literary festival linked to music and other art forms presents authors from Malta, India, Russia, Galicia, Serbia, Lebanon and Slovenia. It includes a programme for youth and children – workshops on creative writing, comic strip, recycling, fairytale gatherings featuring authors and intercultural cooperation - guest authors and their work are presented through talks enriched with music and multimedia performances, allowing non-literary artists to present their interpretations of the authors’ work. Visitors have the opportunity to experience literature through dance, installations, videos, improvisations … ▸ www.skuc.org the sun and sunflowers throughout the world. Sploh Institute. A presentation of the CD bearing the same title, which was issued by the Institute Sploh in cooperation with the publishing house Mladinska knjiga in 2007 and has sold 45,000 copies. A concert of six poems by Tone Pavček that have been set to music and will be performed in Slovene as well as in Japanese, Romanian,

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Albanian, Macedonian, Danish, Russian and English. Performed by Slovene and foreign singers accompanied by percussion, the guitar, the double bass and other instruments. ▸ www.zavod.sploh.si 4th moon festival: children’s celebration – the moon reading. Institute for Cultural Production Fest. A one-day festival for children offering them a variety of activities: creative workshops, sports, theatre and dance programmes, music performances, fashion shows and numerous contests. The central objective of the festival The Moon Reading is to develop a reading culture among pre-school and school children, to generate an interest in reading and getting to know Slovene authors, whom the children will also be able to meet at the festival. ▸ www.luninportal.si 1st festival of letters, Kresija Gallery. Calligrapher Marko Drpić, tipoRenesansa. ▪ Stripburger Comes of Age. The production of a booklet marking the 18th anniversary of Stripburger. Authors: Jakob Klemenčič, David Kranjčan, Gašper Rus, Kaja Avberšek, Marko Kociper, Matej de Cecco, Matej Lavrenčič, Matej Stupica and Matej Kocjan. ▪ The Rolled-Out Poster. A steamroller will be used to print the winning posters in the competition. ▪ Lectures. Designers will shed light on letters from different aspects. ▪ Workshops: tipoRenesansa – an international workshop on typeface design (the topic this time is the design of letters to be executed in wood), Book DIY (a five-day workshop where participants will learn how to make paper, form an initial, set up and print a text using lead types, make a woodcut and bind it all into a booklet), Business Card DIY (participants will design and print their own business cards), Carving Letters into Stone (participants will use a stonemason’s chisel to carve letters and inscriptions into stone), A Book the Size of Your Palm (a children’s workshop where tiny booklets will be made). ▸ www.festivalcrk.si august 2010 books are our magical eyes. Založba Sanje and Društvo Festival Sanje. The parks of Ljubljana will come alive through live verse from Slovene and world classics and contemporary poetry. Visitors will have the opportunity to leave their literary mark on the Tree of Poems and the Tree of Wishes, and they will also be able to use the mobile stage Dream Wagon, which will visit several locations throughout Ljubljana. ▸ www.festivalsanje.net

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

the exhibition e-stories by jaka železnikar, at the Kresija Gallery, will add to the World Book Capital City a taste of exploring the literary element in the digital world that goes beyond book reproduction as we know it, i.e., the e-book. september 2010 the secret of kells. Animateka. Animated feature film. Kinodvor. Directed by Tomm Moore. Ireland/France/Belgium, 2009. The story takes place in the early Middle Ages. The hero, 12-year-old Brendan, lives in a settlement close to an abbey, which is under constant siege of barbarians. One day, a celebrated master illuminator Aiden arrives from far away, carrying the ancient and unfinished Book of Kells, full of wisdom and magical power. In order to finish the magnificent book, Brendan has to go into the enchanted forest, where mystical creatures hide. ▸ www.animateka.si scribes, places, days: imprints in medieval manuscripts, the National and University Library (NUL), Ljubljana: the 17th colloquium of the Comité International de Paléographie Latine, devoted to autograph manuscripts whose scribe is also the author, organised by Dr Nataša Golob from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana. To mark this occasion, the NUL is preparing two exhibitions in the National Gallery and the NUL that will give visitors the opportunity to see some of the best examples of records in original codices that are kept in the NUL; around 20 manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries will be displayed. ▸ www.nuk.uni-lj.si manuscripta. book painting in medieval manuscripts, the National Gallery, the Faculty of Arts and the National and University Library (NUL), Ljubljana: An exhibition of forty of the highest-quality artefacts kept in the NUL. The illuminated manuscripts were created between the mid 9th and early 16th centuries; they represent various European painting schools and attest to the long journeys undertaken by individuals and their books. ▸ www.nuk.uni-lj.si the rabbit’s urban coolture. Urbano pleme d.d. Musical literary evenings in the early autumn will enrich the cultural landscape at Gornji trg in the old city centre. Performers: Lado Bizovičar, Peter Mlakar, Tomica Šuljić, Katarina Čas, Uroš Fürst and the trio Symann&Guitarfunkel. ▸ www.urbano-pleme.si the blue e – in the name of the people. Maska, Institute for Publishing, Production and Education. An event that uses the experience of writer Matjaž

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Pikalo with the judicial system as an incentive to question the limits of artistic freedom in relation to the rights of the individual, the relationship between law and art and the existential status of a fictitious character. This is a legal and theatrical event taking place in a state where magnates can predetermine newspaper headlines and where the police calls literary characters in for questioning, thus raising fundamental issues for both the future and the past. ▸ www.glej.si ▸ www.maska.si from mouth to books – folk songs between the mouth and print. Marjetka Golež Kaučič. An exhibition about folk songs on their way from oral communication to the printed form. Original audio and video recordings and film clips from the field will be shown. A review of vernacular creativity in Slovene literature and music from Valentin Vodnik to contemporary Slovene authors such as Svetlana Makarovič, Gregor Strniša and Veno Taufer. ▸ http.//gni.zrc-sazu.si blind date convention, P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E Institute. The BLIND DATE international convention on artist’s books is a pioneering project in Slovenia and is a response to increasing interest in artist’s books and artist editions. The aim of the project is to establish new contacts, cooperation and exchange at the local, regional and international levels and to contribute to fostering the awareness and the popularity of artist’s books. In addition to Slovene creators and publishers, the one-month event will also host creators and publishers from Croatia, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Great Britain and the USA. The planned activities include a video, music and education programme as well as programmes for youth. To complement the fair, a new periodical publication entitled A Notebook on Artist’s Books will be issued, which will provide a broader context to the artist’s book by explaining its history and offering current information. ▸ www.zavod-parasite.si phraseland, The City Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana. The exhibition adopts an interdisciplinary approach to investigating the everyday process of translating both from language to language and within a language, and highlights the connections between the book and other fields of culture. What happens if we divest language of metaphor and take it literally? Using a selection of Slovene phrases, the sheer directness of language is showcased and presented in an interdisciplinary context. ▸ www.mestna-galerija.si ▸ www.mestnimuzej.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

the ljubljana days of the 6th international festival review within review (RwR), KUD Apokalipsa. Literature, architecture, music, comic strip, poster design, theatre, documentary film, humanities – intellectual content, international journals fair. The festival will include: ▪ Haiku Activities: several haiku poetry readings by authors; a presentation of new titles in the haiku collection of KUD Apokalipsa; a presentation of the multilateral haiku publication Višegrad + Slovenija within the framework of the RwR project; the 12th International Haiku Competition by KUD Apokalipsa – award ceremony; the 6th International Haiku Comic Strip Competition – exhibition of award winning haikus from previous competitions; Glej Theatre – a haiku remix on stage; etc. ▪ Mentality and Literature: a round table discussion on the subject Stories of an Intellectual in the Light of Social Inclusion and Exclusion – the cases of Béla Hamvas and Edvard Kocbek; a presentation of the Slovene translation of his book and the ideas of the Czech theologian and philosopher Tomáš Halík; screening of documentaries on Béla Hamvas and Edvard Kocbek; an exhibition Correspondence: Edvard Kocbek – Heinrich Böll etc. ▪ The Review within Review Fair: an international exhibition and sale of all partner journals and special issues created within the framework of the RwR project as well as additional publications connected to the RwR project. Sale of promotional materials. Other artistic activities will be available: music, a presentation of architectural achievements in Ljubljana, the networking of literary journals and cross-border cooperation of creators. With the active participation of around 50 artists, writers, poets, translators, editors, publishers and intellectuals from 16 countries. ▸ www.revija-v-reviji.si in the sign of the book. Pionirski dom – Centre for Youth Culture. A presentation of ten top authors and illustrators and a selection of ten books intended for children aged 5 to 10. An exhibition of illustrations by Slovene illustrators will be on display in Pionirski dom for ten months. Towards the end, it will be accompanied by an exhibition of illustrations produced by children in workshops. The presentation of each of the selected books will be on display for a month. The best illustrations by upcoming young artists will be awarded book prizes. ▸ www.pionirski-dom.si art maze. Exodos Ljubljana. The Art Maze is an organic and sustainable work of art with real ecological commitment, which will be set up as a park in Fužine, right next to the psychiatric hospital. The Bulgarian artist Venelin Shurelev has designed a park area with 300 trees planted to form a maze. The maze is

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

intended for townspeople who like to find refuge in green areas where they can take a walk and breathe in the smell of the natural environment, sit on a bench and enjoy the latest book. At the heart of the maze there is an artistically designed bench, at the base of which the curious reader/nature-lover can always find new literary works. Walking through the maze one is bound to do some soul-searching, so laid carefully along the sandy paths you will find flagstones engraved with the thoughts of Slovene and world thinkers on the subject Walking as Art. Since the yew tree is one of two tree species protected in Slovenia that can reach up to 20 meters in height and has a lush low canopy that offers shelter from city noise, and seeing how the oldest specimens are over 2000 years old, the work of art being created might just outlive the human race. In the next 40 years, the maze will absorb over 43 tonnes of the carbon dioxide released unscrupulously by city dwellers into the atmosphere. ▸ www.exodos.si. film retrospective: slovene books on screen. Slovenska kinoteka. A presentation of Slovene film classics based on Slovene literary works. The films will be shown on the big screen in cooperation with Slovene publishing houses. Suitable for school visits to the cinema. ▸ www.kinoteka.si being your own translation. Centre for Slovenian Literature and KUD AAC Zrakogled. An intermedia performance focusing on the book and the contemporary concept of authorship, using interdisciplinary methodology to explore the relationship between the author, his or her work, community/context and language/body. The project’s main interest is translation in the broadest sense of the word, viewed as a process of interpretation and cultural mediation. Translation strategies serve as connecting mechanisms that can build space-time structures in the spirit of the remix culture. ▸ http://cli.gs/prevod exhibition artist’s book in slovenia. Kresija Gallery. The artist’s book is an important artistic medium that has not yet been subjected to detailed analysis or review in Slovenia. This exhibition attempts to fill this void and at least partly make up for lost time. october 2010 dinosaurs?! A puppet performance to mark the Bee Festival, Mladinska knjiga Trgovina. The Bee Festival is a festival of children’s books held at the bookshops of Mladinska knjiga on 22 October, the birthday of Kristina Brenk. The festival seeks to encourage parents, grandparents, kindergarten teachers and teachers to read their children at least one fairy tale, and in so doing follow the basic

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

guideline of the Čebelica book collection, which aims to bring a children’s book into each home, to each Slovene child. Let us celebrate together with children. This year we will present the theatre performance Dinosaurs?!, prepared by the Labirint puppet theatre and based motives from picture books by Lila Prap. ▸ www.mladinska.com miniature books: from sumerian clay tablets to the bible on a chip. The Ljubljana City Museum and Galleries. A display of the historical development of miniature books from the original Sumerian clay tablets from around 2400 BC to the Bible on a chip of only 5 x 5 mm. The exhibition will include some 1,300 books from 52 countries, including Slovenia. The miniature books on display are from a time period stretching from the mid 17th century to today. Particular emphasis will be placed on certain important publications, such as those by William Pickering and David Bryce, as well as on booklets by Karolýa Andruská, who alone created some 220 miniatures, decorating them with woodcuts and linocuts. The exhibition will demonstrate the craft of printing, which since its invention has been the domain of the finest masters, and will show the excellent illumination and design of miniatures. The exhibited items are the private collection of Dr Martin Žnideršič. ▸ info@mestnimuzej.si

the donation by dr martin žnideršič of the largest Central European collection of miniature books to the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library. Over a period of 35 years, Dr Martin Žnideršič has created an opulent collection of more than 3,000 miniature books, no larger than 76 mm, or exceptionally up to 100 mm, from more than 53 countries and printed in numerous world languages. It is the largest collection of its kind in Central Europe, comparable with collections in Germany, USA and Russia. Dr Žnideršič’s collection currently contains the smallest book in the world, Chameleon by Anton P. Chekhov, measuring a mere 0.9 x 0.9 mm. In honour of Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010, Dr Martin Žnideršič has decided to donate his precious collection to the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library, thus permanently and significantly enriching the cultural heritage of Ljubljana and Slovenia.

film retrospective: nobel laureates in literature. Slovenska kinoteka. After over 100 years of the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Slovenska kinoteka will show a series of well-known films based on this literary prize. The retrospective will showcase a multi-faceted understanding of film art and will address both film experts as well as the literary-oriented public. ▸ www.kinoteka.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

literary readings by members of the slovene writers’ association. The Slovene Ethnographic Museum. Authors and performers from the Slovene Writers’ Association. ▸ www.etno-muzej.si the word became sound. LUD Literatura, Kino Šiška, Municipality of Ljubljana. The performance is part of a joint literary and music project and brings together all of the significant creators who have distinguished themselves with successful word/sound performances in recent years. For this project the performers are preparing new original literary and musical material that will be based on an effective stage presentation and a creative fusion of two artistic practices on a joint stage. The series of events will culminate in a performance by a renowned guest from abroad. ▸ www.ljudmila.org/ludliteratura a writer in the world of sound. LUD Literatura, Radio Študent, The Municipality of Ljubljana. In this guided project, literary creators will use the sound of literature to create scripts for radio dramas, they will learn about contemporary and classical dramaturgical approaches used in radio drama and transfer some of their own literary works into the world of sound. The workshop will focus on the creation of original texts for the radio, the adaptation of literary works by Slovenian authors and the production of literary radio programmes (literary evenings, literary nocturnes, fairytales, poetry, selected prose, etc.). The project will be carried out on the premises of Radio Študent and will be presented to the broader public in the Ljubljana city centre and at the ŠKUC gallery. ▸ www.ljudmila.org/ludliteratura stripburger in motion. Forum Ljubljana. Marking the 18th anniversary of the first issue of Stripburger, the comic strips will be brought to life in a project entitled Stripburger in Motion. The project consists in a 30-minute collage of ten short animated films based on ten comic strips by authors of different nationalities who regularly publish their work in the magazine. In addition to four Slovene authors, authors from Spain, Serbia, Germany, Sweden, Croatia and the Netherlands have been invited to participate. ▸ www.kinodvor.org theatre for birds. Zavod Emanat. The performance is based on the play Teatro para Pajaros (Theatre for Birds) by the Argentinean playwright Daniel Veronese. The play will be published by the Emanat Institute as part of the series Transitions in April 2010. The play revolves around a group of six individuals, all involved in theatrical circles, entangled in an unusual set of love affairs. The playwright and the authors of the performance scrutinise the superficial nature

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

of the world of theatre, occasionally also allowing flashes of insight into the broader societal context and dynamic which appear in the performance as noise, confusion or some other disturbing element. The American actor and director of the performance Eric Dean Scott currently lives and works in Ljubljana. The performance also features the choreographer and dancer Maja Delak, who will play one of the six roles and has co-created the movement in the show. ▸ www.emanat.si unforgettable: an evening of poetry by female slovene poets set to music. Café teater. Poetry by Slovene female poets was long seen as subordinate to male poetry. It was only with the Anthology of Slovene Female Poets in three volumes, selected and edited by Irena Novak-Popov, that the rich literary creativity of girls and women was finally revealed. This anthology is the key source of the selected poems, the guiding principle being diversity of content and female sensitivity. ▸ www.cafe-teater.si ▸ www.cd-cc.si azure windows of poetry. The Azure Circle Association for International Cultural Connections. Poetry in different languages and set to music, three concerts featuring poetry and videoart, a dance performance based on poetry set to music, a vocal-acoustic performance, a photo exhibition on a subject taken from poetry. Poets writing in nine languages – Slovene, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Bulgarian, Finnish, Croatian, Romanian and English – will come together to create poetic remakes of their translations in these languages and to meet music creators from Slovenia and France who will find a melody and rhythm for some of the poems. This will be accompanied by dance performances, a photo exhibition through which two photographers will confront their interpretations of texts and a vocalacoustic performance typical of Slovene music culture. ▸ www.sinji-krog.org reading through a camera lens. The Faculty of Social Sciences. The student photographic competition Reading through a Camera Lens and an exhibition of the selected photographs; an exhibition of artistic photographs on the subject of reading the author Hanno Hardt and Reading with Manca Košir: What Do Students Read and Why? These events establish a connection with another artistic medium in order to promote reading as a personal experience and as a socially significant activity. They encourage students to think and act creatively when it comes to reading and to view photography and the written word as two ways of making sense of the world around us. ▸ www.fdv.uni-lj.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

the book. The City Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana. The 15th theme exhibition on books at the Bežigrad Gallery will focus on the relationship between text and images in a book. The exhibition will showcase works from over fifty countries, including some unusual issues: a three-dimensional book, a book of leaves, a book-object, poetry books, miniatures, journals of visual and concrete poetry … ▸ www.mestna-galerija.si ▸ www.mestnimuzej.si marthes bathori: utopia porcina. Kresija Gallery. A presentation of developments in contemporary European comic strip illustration. november 2010 9+9, the artist’s books and artists, International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC). An exhibition of the book collection of MGLC interpreted by invited visual artists and involving their artistic interventions as well as new art productions and art installations. The artist’s book becomes a link between the author of the book and the invited visual artist, who puts the book’s contents and meaning in the context of an exhibition gallery. The exhibition is planned to include nine Slovene female and male artists who through their work have encountered this kind of production (the artist’s book) and are familiar with its specific contextual and conceptual foundations. ▸ www.mglc-lj.si let the book breathe: a workshop for book and theatre lovers, Barica Blenkuš Drama School. The aim is to encourage various social groups to adopt a different approach to reading books, allowing the individual more freedom in dealing with the book and its possible interpretations. This is expected to lead to a demystification. The workshops aim at introducing young Slovene authors to readers who might otherwise never have opted for their work. ▸ www.dsbb.si jože spacal: books in flames. Kresija Gallery. The exhibition will deal with the topic of book burning. december 2010 language distress: an exhibition marking the 70th anniversary of poet niko grafenauer, National and University Library. Niko Grafenauer (1940), poet, translator, literary historian and essayist, provided a strong poetic impetus to Slovene poetry in the 1960’s. His expressive range extends from soft sentiment to bitter pain, while the intellect that is always on the lookout shows him a world “as cruel as an unperturbed awareness”. His poetry collections for adults and youth, such as Stiska jezika, Štukature, Palimpsesti, Dihindih, Skrivnosti, Pedenjped, Stara Ljubljana and others never cease to find resonance among Slovene readers. ▸ www.nuk.uni-lj.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

literature by dušan jovanović. Mestno gledališče ljubljansko. A performance of the latest play by Dušan Jovanović entitled Disclosures in March 2011. Before starting rehearsals, the theatre is preparing a broad-based discussion on the life opus of the author, who unfolds his creativity between literature and the theatre. ▸ www.mgl.si the book on the concert stage. Café teater. A competition for original Slovene chansons that will be the result of cooperation between singer-songwriters and Slovene poets. The best chansons will be presented in June 2011 at the traditional international chanson evening entitled La vie en rose, taking place in the Gallus Hall in Cankarjev dom. ▸ www.cafe-teater.si february 2011 the beaver festival, Slovene Youth Theatre. In the year that Ljubljana holds the title of the World Book Capital City, the Beaver Festival will be closely linked with the book. There will be a series of reading events and creative workshops, as well as specialist meetings on the topic of reading culture for primary school teachers. ▸ www.mladinsko.com andrej gelasimov in ljubljana – andrej skubic in moscow. The Municipality of Ljubljana and Založba Modrijan will in parallel publish The Year of the Lie (Leto prevar) by the Russian writer Andrej Gelasimov in the Slovene language and the novel Lahko (Easily) by Andrej Skubic, winner of Župančičeva nagrada (The City of Ljubljana Prize), in the Russian language, thus building a bridge between modern Slovene and Russian literatures. ▸ www.svetovnaprestolnicaknjige.si march 2011 slovene folk tales in words and pictures. Mladinska knjiga. A new collection of Slovene folk tales, selected and edited by Anja Štefan, Milko Matičetov and Dr Marija Stanonik, and illustrated by Zvonko Čoh and Ančka Gošnik Godec, will be published in 2010. The release of the book will be accompanied with an exhibition of illustrations, a storytelling event and a round table discussion. The round table discussion will feature renowned experts who have been dealing for years with the art of words, particularly folk tales. ▸ www.mladinska.com

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

The Book and the City The Book – an Analogue Pre-Modern Gutenberg Fetish The book is not for everybody. It is not necessarily a weapon, it is not an object to fondle and it is not a scenic element. In other words, it is not something to bring life to a desertlike living nest. If anything, the book is an analogue pre-modern Gutenberg fetish which humans occasionally hold in their hands. To avoid a possible misunderstanding, reading devices of any sort are also nothing but a medieval neo-technological invention. Nothing more than that. Some people cannot live without a book; young people in particular, who do not think particularly highly of it. Because they have to have it. An order is an order. Others are so fond of it that they cannot live without it. They are addicted to it and are hence called book lovers. These are people walking parallel worlds with printed media in their hands and then, watch and behold, they turn the corner and reality hits them. Such a reality check is often painful, if not cruel. Therefore, be not surprised by the expression of pain on the faces of these addicts, their crooked walk and their strained eyes running past us as if suffering from a hangover. We are somewhere in the middle, still believing in books. For one reason only. The author. And yet, we doubt books – to the very same extent. Again, for one reason only. The author. Simon Kardum, Director of Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture

Traditional literary events in Ljubljana and Slovenia will be enhanced so that interventions in the public space emphasise the importance of reading and encourage reading culture. Ljubljana will gain new reading niches in public areas, we will read in hospitals, asylum centres and homes for the elderly. The City of Ljubljana will pay special attention to the book as a the promoter of social cohesion, with an aim to make the book and cultural event more accessible to vulnerable groups. april 2011 the bookshop kres pod gradom in the ljubljana puppet theatre (lpt): The opening of a bookshop and sales-information centre at the LPT in the Mestni dom will take place on 28th April 2010. This first specialised children’s bookshop will carry books for the 0-10 age group. On the opening day, each visitor will be given a picture book. During the opening week, reading sessions will be held in the morning and afternoon. The first 14 kindergartens to apply will be able to participate in the events at the bookshop with groups of up to 20 children. The bookshop will sell a high quality range of books, gifts related to books and their heroes, a selection of audio and video products, as well as the information programme for the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre and tickets for their puppet performances. ▸ www.lgl.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

slovenian book days 2010, Slovene Writers’ Association. Literary festival and open-air book fair. In the year of the World Book Capital City, the Slovenian Book Days are dedicated to the connection of all readers, publishers, authors, specialist institutions, literary guests from abroad and partners. The aim of the event is the broadest popularisation of books amongst readers, the organisation of interesting specialist meetings, the arrangement of authors’ meetings with children and young people, and the execution of competitions that popularise literature in a communicative and unconventional way, with a special emphasis on the promotion of the contemporary Slovenian book and the endorsement of local authors. This year’s literary guests will be first-rate Turkish writers, while another special project is an award for the best short story, which the festival will confer in cooperation with the journal Sodobnost (Contemporaneity). A special competition is also aimed at primary school pupils, who will join writers at the festival. Throughout Slovenia the promotion Let’s Give a Book will take place. New features of this year’s festival, in honour of the World Book Capital City are: Book on a Stool (standing completely still on a stool the players read from their favourite book), a Literary Marathon (a book bazaar with a literary marathon, in cooperation with the magazine Mentor and the Slovene Writers’ Association Youth Club), Slovene Writers in Bookshops and Libraries (a simultaneous presentation of members of the Slovene Writers’ Association in the bookshops Konzorcij, Slovenska matica, Trubarjev antikvariat, Bukvarna ... and in libraries in Ljubljana and the surrounding area), Living Books (events in the streets of Ljubljana), Exchange a Tulip for a Book or Let’s Give a Book (the giving of tulips in the very centre of the city to highlight the fact that on this day books are given), Prizes (evenings dedicated to prize winners of the secondary school competition, which is again included in two competitions of the Slovenian Book Days 2010, will take place in the Slovene Writers’ Association garden and the Gajo Jazz Club), My Story is Your Bag (an action in which primary school pupils begin the Book Day with the same selected story broadcast on the school radio). ▸ www.drustvo-dsp.si artists appearances, slovene reading badge association – zpms. A programme of meetings between young people and artists from the field of books: in accordance with the wishes of kindergartens and schools, we will facilitate visits by excellent artists from the areas of literature and the visual arts, and prepare a special programme of meetings for small organised groups of children in the hall of the Slovene Writers’ Association. Particular attention will be devoted to children and young people with special needs and to socially disadvantaged groups of children, while children from the other side of the Slovene borders will also be invited to Ljubljana. ▸ www.bralnaznacka.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

a book on a train through the city, Slovenske železnice d.o.o., Passenger Transport. In cooperation with the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library, Slovenske železnice (Slovenian Railways) will provide books to passengers on certain specially marked trains for the duration of Ljubljana — the World Book Capital City 2010. In the week containing the World Book Day, Slovenian Railways will organise reading events on trains, as well as taking care of the general promotion of all of the projects taking place within this programme. ▸ www.slo-zeleznice.si ljubljana on www.spletnopero.si, spletno pero in ljubljana, KUD Pero. Internet literary workshops, a short story course and literary evenings. With Ana Geršak we will ask ourselves what the author really wanted to say – according to the individual opinion of each participant. Vesna Lemaić will accompany you to the world of writing. In the autumn, it will be possible to participate in an Internet literary course on an announced topic: this year it will be a point of departure for the story of photography. The event will be accompanied by literary evenings in the Internet blog and live at the Festival Sanje and in Ljubljana libraries. ▸ www.spletnopero.si through the streets of ljubljana to slovene poets and writers, Slovene Writers’ Association. A cultural-historical and literary-promotional project, connecting the birthplaces of Slovene writers and houses where they have lived and created in Ljubljana, memorials and centres of cultural literary events. The writers’ path through Ljubljana will have an educational, cultural preservational, recreational and promotional nature for Ljubljana and Slovenia. It is a commemorative, literary and Internet project that, with all of its dimensions, will decisively contribute to the development of reading culture in Ljubljana with the preservation of cultural heritage. ▸ www.drustvo-dsp.si writers on a bus, Slovene Writers’ Association. In an attractive way in terms of media, 100 Slovene writers will be presented on public city buses. Electronic displays will be installed in ten buses, on which writers will address their Ljubljana readers with an original appearance, a story, or by reading excerpts from their works. Each writer will have approximately 3 minutes at his or her disposal, and 5 writers will be presented on each DVD, which means that on the ten routes there will be a total of 50 writers. Each DVD will have a total length of 15 minutes and will be on view from morning to evening on each of the ten buses, with a 14 day rotation. After six months, we will get to know another 50 Slovene writers of all generations. It is estimated that around 10,000 passengers will view the writers every day. ▸ www.drustvo-dsp.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

the mobile molehill. Založba Krtina. An environment-friendly bookshop on wheels, with which the publishing house Založba Krtina will increase the accessibility of books within the area of the Municipality of Ljubljana. It will visit various locations in Ljubljana, create new cultural venues and join various cultural events in the city. Within the framework of the Mobile Molehill there will also be programmes for children and young people, as well as specialised debates and lectures on selected topics, aimed at popularising the book and reading, and at encouraging critical thought. ▸ www.zalozbakrtina.si an exhibition of literary valuables from the elte university library of budapest, ELTE University Library Budapest, National and University Library Ljubljana. In 2009, the National and University Library Ljubljana (NUL) signed a cooperation agreement with the ELTE University Library in Budapest. Within this framework there will be an exhibition of valuables from the collection of this venerable and important university library. In 2011, Budapest will host an exhibition of valuables from NUL. At the exhibition in Ljubljana, a selection of the most valuable treasures from the heritage of Hungarian writing will be on display. ▸ www.nuk.uni-lj.si the bookshop – city of books: the famous visit konzorcij, Mladinska knjiga Trgovina. Accompanied by famous media personalities, well known Slovene writers and poets will discuss the importance of books in the life of the individual and society, and whether books can change the world, or at least change our perception and understanding of the world ... We will discuss the relationship of the author to the reader— a relationship that can at the same time be anonymous and very intimate – and how a personal familiarity with the author can influence the reader’s perception of the literary work. The literary opus of the author appearing will also be presented, along with the relationship of the famous guest towards the author’s books. We will arrange a total of 12 literary-flavoured evenings in friendly company and with relaxed conversation. ▸ www.mladinska.com a fast track to health with reading, Založba KRES d.o.o.. Through visiting the children’s wards of hospitals and sick children, and with the reading and bringing to life of children’s picture books, fairytale tellers, writers, authors and other well known personalities bring children closer to the book and reading culture, and as far as possible help them to survive their days in a hospital bed and alleviate their pain, loneliness and longing for home. Four times a year,

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

all of the young patients will be given books donated by the publishing house Založba KRES, making the book even more accessible. ▸ www.kres.si may 2010 kiosk – a comic strip shop with character, Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture Centre. In May 2010, Kino Šiška will open its first Comic Strip Shop with Character / bookshop / shop / reading room, which will represent a new story in Ljubljana in the selection of local and foreign publications from the area of culture and art. With a rich, carefully selected offer of Slovene and foreign authors, the Comic Strip Shop with Character will preserve the unique story of the so-called ninth art form – by occasional guest appearances of authors, by making their language more familiar to the Slovene sphere, by familiarisation with comic strip expression, and by organising workshops, seminars and monthly exhibitions. Thus with promotion, education and the presentation of Slovene authors, creativity will be encouraged and the curiosity and development of future generations of young artists will be nurtured. ▸ www.kinosiska.si they are still with us. Sezam and a consortium of societies – Institute for the Development of Creativity, Growing Book Society, Society for a Better Quality of Life in Župančičeva jama. The Regeneration of the Promenade of Slovene Culture is an interdisciplinary project to regenerate the spatial attributes of a new park in Župančičeva jama, just beside the Navje Cemetery, which is thematically connected with Slovene literature and motives of the united books of the world. A group of architects, landscape architects, sociologists, pedagogues, artists and writers, as well as interested societies, including the local society for the quality of life in the district, have together prepared a complete programme for the promotion of the book, reading culture and reading in the neighbourhood or park. All of the activities will, in an innovative and creative way, bring literature closer to various target groups, primarily children and inhabitants of the neighbourhood, visitors to the park and promenaders, and will present the specific Slovene cultural heritage that is offered by this space. At the same time, it will offer content that is of interest to specific social groups, from excluded youth to handicapped children and young people. To this end, it will connect with two existing societies for invalids in the neighbourhood. The project will initiate new relationships between the public and the private. By adopting the space, it will attempt to ensure lasting access, the ongoing use of play equipment, the use of a multimedia portal, the protection of the public good – benches, the part of the park where a children’s playground will be located, a water play area and the protection of the green areas in the location. The project will also invite people to the space for outdoor picnics for fun, relaxation and contemplation. ▸ www.zdruzenje-sezam.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

night reading, Forum Ljubljana. Under the working title “Recreating the City” the festival Lighting Guerrilla will in 2010 be focused on installations in the public space. The purpose of the programme is to offer witty and innovative creative solutions and to highlight the potential role of the artist in co-creating the public space. Part of the programme will also be linked with the book, and will be divided into three sections: evening reading in public spaces, personal reading, comic strip and visual poetry. ▪ Evening Reading in Public Spaces: With lighting installations in parks, squares and streets, we will offer readers protection from the sun during the day, while in the evening hours the installations will facilitate reading, that is, provide an illuminated space dedicated to readers. In so doing we seek to encourage the citizens of Ljubljana to enjoy their free time with independent public reading and learning in the outdoors. ▪ Personal Reading: Personal Reading is a project by the Spanish artists’ collective Luzininterruptus, which focuses on open-air installations. The collective creates both complex multimedia projects and guerrilla actions. With a guerrilla action they will enable the night reading of comic strip publications and poetry in the centre of the city at various unusual locations. ▪ The Comic Strip and Visual Poetry: We will project poetry in comic strips in the city and set up installations connected with the comic strip and poetry. ▸ www.svetlobnagverila.net fairytale images in the city, Mladinska knjiga. Založba. An exhibition on large posters in the city centre. The project will present the greatest achievements of this important cultural segment by enlarging original illustrations by Slovene artists and by displaying them in public places present the works to the broadest possible public. The illustrations will at the same time be on display in an exhibition at the Rotovž Gallery. ▸ www.mladinska.com route 10: the book, Bunker, Ljubljana. In an unobtrusive and innovative way, the project seeks to locate the book in the public and urban space, where people will take it in their hands simply because it is in the right place at the right time. Bus stops are places where people wait for a bus to convey them to their desired destination. While waiting, they will find shelves at the bus stop with an interesting and diverse range of books. Initially from curiosity, and then, we hope, from habit, citizens will take the books in their hands and begin to leaf through them. The books will not be fixed to the bus stop shelves, so passengers will be able to take them with them and continue reading them on the bus until they reach their destination bus stop. If the book draws them in they will perhaps take it home and, either at home or the following day on the same journey to work, school or university, read it to the end. Then they will return

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

the book at one of the many the bus stops in the city with bookshelves. Thus the book will re-enter the system and be available to the next citizen whose attention it grabs. ▸ www.bunker.si the publication of new books and literary events, Navdih Literary Society from Ljubljana and assistants as readers and musicians. The project encompasses the publication of new books containing the best literary creations by members of the society, as well as presentations of books at numerous literary events in Ljubljana: in the House of Literature, at Vodnik Home and in libraries, as well as in public areas in front of homes for the elderly. In an innovative way, the project encourages literary creativity and reading amongst the elderly, while at the same time improving the accessibility of books to vulnerable and socially threatened groups. ▸ www.ljubljanasvetovnaprestolnicaknjige.si/navdih not every wednesday is a grey wednesday – a book about ivan cankar, Založba Morfem. The book Not Every Wednesday is a Grey Wednesday is a youth novel aimed at children and young people from 12 years onwards. The purpose of the book is to bring young readers closer to Ivan Cankar in a way that they can relate to. The facts in the book are carefully arranged, so they will be inscribed in the readers’ memories in a much better and more durable way than the tiresome information in a textbook. Although it is a youth novel, it can also be used as a learning aid in Slovene language teaching. ▸ www.morfem.si liber.ac; academic book fair, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. A three-day public event with an accompanying programme, introducing a new type of book fair in the Slovene sphere, while also establishing a new cultural and communication centre in the Municipality of Ljubljana. It will connect various players from the area of the production and promotion of academic books, from university publishing houses and bookshops to university libraries. The organisers foresee that the fair will grow into an annual event at which the most recent publications from Slovene higher education publishing houses from all areas of science and the arts will be presented. This year’s event will be accompanied by a rich cultural programme entitled The Stars of Eastern Asia in the Slovene Sky, within the framework of which, amongst other things, there will be a presentation of the achievements of the scientific production of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana in the area of Japanology and Sinology. Special emphasis will be placed on the presentation of Japanese and Chinese literature. Liber.ac will give the youngest visitors an opportunity to become familiar with Eastern Asia through the telling of Japanese and Korean

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

fairy tales. Within the framework of workshops, they will be able to create their own books in the Japanese way. There will also be a presentation of Chinese calligraphy and the Korean script known as hangul, as well as the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the making of origami and Asian dance. The happenings will be enriched by an exhibition — views of Eastern Asia through the lens of the artist’s camera. ▸ www.ff.uni-lj.si mousetrap (literature crosses your path), Inštitut za raziskovanje inovativnih umetnosti. Mousetrap is the first experimental literary evening to take place without a previously announced space or programme. For those interested, the instructions for participation can be obtained by sending your mobile telephone number to the following address: info@iriu.eu by 6 pm on 20 May 2010. Then you just have to put your faith in the instructions that will lead you through Ljubljana to the unusual space of the event, and to audiovisual experiences of poetry. What happens when you follow the instructions of poetry? Mousetrap — an artistic game that takes over. ▸ www.iriu.eu library under the tree tops 2010, Divja misel, Institute for Non-Profit Communication. Reading rooms in the outdoors – Library under the Tree Tops is the only 100% natural library in the world, and it brings itself to the World Book Capital City with seven branches. On its shelves are presented the most recent publications of beautifully written and illustrated books, as well as numerous foreign and Slovene newspapers and magazines. Reading, leafing through books and enjoyment under the following imminent city tree tops: Tivoli Park: something for everyone, The Trnovo Pier: pleasure for students and humanists, Tabor Park: reading for mature readers, The Argentine Park: leafing through books for children and parents, The Botanical Gardens: an island for lovers of poetry and nature, The Ljubljana Castle: welcome tourists, Breg: newspaper reading room for the cosmopolitan, Paediatric Clinic Playground: we are giving children a small library in the outdoors. Ongoing announcements about the accompanying programme of Library under the Tree Tops will be available on the Internet. ▸ www.knjiznicapodkrosnjami.si the book embrace, Antikvariat Glavan in cooperation with the Municipality of Ljubljana. The Book Embrace is an enormous bookstall that will transform the streets of the city centre into one great open-air bookstall embracing the city centre. Second-hand bookshops and even passersby will be able to offer books at a single price of 1 Euro. Part of the profits will be donated to charity. ▸ www.antikvariat-glavan.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

june 2010 june in ljubljana 2010, Municipality of Ljubljana, Tourism Ljubljana. This year, the Municipality of Ljubljana is for the second time marking the beginning of the cultural summer with cultural events in Prešeren Square, organised by the city’s public cultural institutions and non-governmental organisations under the title June 2010. At the same venue last year, between 12 and 28 June, there was a series of 60 dance performances, music performances and film projections for all generations, attended by several thousand people. The programme is designed for a wide audience, while at the same time catering to connoisseurs of music, dance and theatre, who will have an opportunity to witness quality artistic production in the outdoors free of charge. Particular attention is devoted to the selection of the morning programme, which is aimed at the youngest visitors. In addition to performances by the Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet Ljubljana, including Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet and Young Choreographers, this year there will also be a performance of Cabaret by the City Theatre, the hit of the Slovene Youth Theatre Kekec, and numerous other attractive artistic events that will be enriched by the reading of literature by Slovene writers. ▸ www.ljubljana.si ▸ www.visitljubljana.si my streets, the streets interweave, we tell and write the story of Ljubljana. Divja misel, Institute for Non-Profit Communication. My Streets is an attractive intergenerational exploit, in which curious gazes and roguish questions save dusty stories from oblivion. Interesting people transform themselves into the narrators of the best stories. There are always two main heroes of all of the stories: the city of Ljubljana and its faithful inhabitant. With innovative approaches the selected stories will become exciting records, inspiring aphorisms, fine recordings and good Internet content. ▪ Programme: Collecting Stories: Ljubljana, throughout 2010 (we seek out and write down the stories of Ljubljana), Live Storytelling: Ljubljana, The Botanical Gardens (planned for June, July, August 2010; every Sunday at 5 pm, broadcast one week later on Radio Študent (in the programme My Streets), Theme Tea Party: Ljubljana, City Museum, April 2010, with the filming of a documentary film Screening of the Documentary Film in Urban Public Places (3 screenings are planned between May and August), Major Storytelling Event: Ljubljana, planned to be held in front of the City Museum, June 2010. ▸ www.mojeulice.si knjigarna azil’s tricycle, zrc sazu, Knjigarna Azil. This project denotes the mobile branch of Azil. The tricycle will have a large chest behind it and will be present at various events taking place during summer in Ljubljana, bringing a selection of books adapted to the nature of each event. With the aid of the

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

bicycle and cushions, a temporary reading room will be erected in which visitors will be able to leaf through and purchase selected literature prior to, after and during events. Part of the bicycle will be a mobile information point for the World Book Capital City (with special drawers for posters). At least once a month, well known actors or public figures will be invited to cooperate by taking over the role of chauffeur and salesperson and engaging with the city bustle. ▸ http://azil.zrc-sazu.si/trikolo vilenica and ljubljana, Slovene Writers’ Association. In 2010, the international literary festival Vilenica celebrates its 25th jubilee. Vilenica and Ljubljana is a series of three literary evenings at which the prizewinners of Vilenica will again present themselves to the Slovene public at the Estate Hall of the Ljubljana Castle. Twenty authors, who will reside in Ljubljana 1-6 June 2010, 20-25 September 2010, and 10-15 January 2011, will supplement the literary evenings in the city with creative work on the theme of Ljubljana and Slovenia. Their contributions will be published in a special publication in 2011. The entire project will be accompanied by a promotional campaign that will familiarise people on the Ljubljana streets with the authors and quotes from their works. ▸ www.vilenica.si the slovene pen centre in ljubljana – the world book capital city 2010. The Slovene PEN Centre is an international association of writers, poets and essayists which was established in Slovenia in 1926 for the purpose of protecting persecuted writers both in Slovenia and abroad, and to advocate freedom of expression within the framework of the International PEN Writers for Peace Committee, which was established on the initiative of the Slovene PEN Centre in 1984 to promote cooperation between writers from politically turbulent countries. The organisation has organised two world congresses and 42 international meetings, which have gained a great deal of recognition within international writers’ circles. In accordance with its programme, within the framework of the Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City project, the Slovene PEN Centre will each month, except in July and August, organise a debating evening or a literary event with at least 60 participants. The debating evenings will be oriented towards questions concerning the position of language and literature in school and in public, contemporary linguistic changes in literature and science, the attitude of the media towards authors and their work, and trends in cultural connections between authors from the republics of the former Yugoslavia. The literary evenings will be dedicated primarily to meetings between authors from various cultural regions (Jewish, Balkan, expatriate Slovene and Eastern European). Appearances by members of the Slovene PEN Centre will be included within the Ars Evenings 2010, broadcast on Radio Slovenia Third Channel – ARS.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

ljubljana in the international cities of refuge network In the year that Ljubljana is the World Book Capital City, the Municipality of Ljubljana and the Slovene PEN Centre intend to include the Ljubljana in the International Cities of Refuge Network. The network began to operate on the initiative of Salman Rushdie and the International Parliament of Writers (IPW) in 1994 as an international network of cities that offer writers sanctuary from persecution and threats. Many cities in numerous democratic countries are already included in the International Cities of Refuge Network, with the largest number being in Norway, where the network has operated since 1995. Local authorities from the city’s included in the network, sometimes in cooperation with state authorities, offer writers from Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Iran, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Belarus, Nigeria, Angola, Uganda and numerous other countries where freedom of expression is not yet ensured, a flat for one to two years and an income in the form of a stipend for writing work. The city of refuge thus enables writers who often have to flee from their homeland to avoid imprisonment or worse an opportunity to create a new social network in a new environment, possibly to seek employment or other means of subsistence, and provides them with conditions for work in a time that is often, especially directly after fleeing from their homeland, the most difficult for them. For this project, the Slovene PEN Centre is seeking the cooperation of the Slovene Writers’ Association and other organisations in Slovenia who could help towards its success, so that Slovenia, thanks to the Municipality of Ljubljana, can join countries such as Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Canada and the others in which many of the larger cities offer a dignified existence to numerous writers, poets, dramatists and essayists who have in their own countries been persecuted and in some cases even sentenced to death. “one scoop of slovene poetry please.” (Literature Crosses Your Path). Inštitut za raziskovanje inovativnih umetnosti. In an artistic way, the writers’ installation with this title plays with passersby who, in the heat, want to either cool down or sweeten up with ice cream. With the installation, the ice cream, within which are concealed selected works by the greatest Slovene poets and writers (as well as young poets and writers who are not established), gains the value of an artwork, which the tasters will receive on the memorial site of a national poet (Prešeren Square, Gornji Square). Where is the limit of the expression of poetry (if it exists)? Can passersby, at least for a instant, sense the impulse of the writer at the moment the poetry is created? ▸ www.iriu.eu SEM’s knowledge in books, Slovene Ethnographic Museum. A presentation of the SEM book collection in 2009 and 2010. ▸ www.etno-muzej.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

the sun, the earth, the moon... rotate without wheels, Slovene Ethnographic Museum. A children’s festival of fairy tale reading, dance, movement and creativity. ▸ www.etno-muzej.si SEM’s book bazaar, Slovene Ethnographic Museum. On Summer Museum Nights there will be a SEM bookstall in the courtyard in front of SEM – an exhibition and discounted sale of SEM publications. ▸ www.etno-muzej.si september 2010 it was late that i grew fond of you – a reading of st augustine’s confessions. Authors and performers: St Augustine / Gregor Čušin, Boris Mihalj, Jure Sešek, Dr Miran Špelič and others. In the Middle Ages, reading was far from being a personal thing, and was instead often a genuine social event. Silent reading was almost completely unknown. Reading is therefore an invitation to listening and coming together. With public reading, one of the fundamental literary works of Christian antiquity will be presented, Augustine’s Confessions, the first extensive autobiography ever written. In an artistic interpretation by Slovene actors, the read word will convey us to North Africa at the end of the 4th century, where one of the giants of European cultural history will stand before us with his words, which have been translated into Slovene by Anton Sovre and Kajetan Gantar. ▸ http://izpovedi.co.nr books in movement, ZRC SAZU, Knjigarna Azil. A flea market of used and damaged books by Slovene publishers. A book fair that address publishers and the reading public. At the fair, publishers are invited to sell damaged books that are gathering dust in their warehouses. All publishers have significant qualities of books that are categorised as damaged because of printing errors, returns from bookstores, incorrect storage, fading due to sun exposure, etc. These books have tiny flaws due to which it is not possible to sell them in bookshops, and they are therefore significantly cheaper. In addition to publishers, the organisers of the fair also encourage private individuals to bring their unwanted books and either sell them, exchange them or give them away. ▸ http://azil.zrc-sazu.si/ the pilgrimage of books (literature crosses your path), Inštitut za raziskovanje inovativnih umetnosti. Poetry has never been an attractive market commodity; normally it is only read by art lovers. The aim of this event is to familiarise readers with contemporary Slovene and foreign poetry. Those

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

interested can participative in the project by sending their details (name and address) to: aggressive.theatre@yahoo.com by 14 September 2010. They will then receive by post a collection of poetry to read, along with instructions on how we will expand the pilgrimage to other people in a period of 60 days. On the conclusion of the project, at the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library, all of those participating will have an opportunity to participate in a draw for generous literary prizes. ▸ www.iriu.eu march 2011 the 14th storytelling festival the fairytale today 2011, The Association for the Reanimation of Storytelling 2 Reels. Since 1997, the storytelling festival The Fairytale Today has followed the basic guidelines of the festival: those appearing at the festival offer the listeners stories that they tell freely, while the narratives presented are normally drawn from the folk tradition, both of Slovenia and from abroad. Thus the festival enables listeners to experience the well told word, while providing folk tales with a living path to the present. The storytellers are people whose words flow smoothly and lusciously, and who know how to be convincing with their expressive power. They are a colourful group, both in terms of their creative paths and their age, which gives the festival a breadth of a special kind. The organisers are guided by a conviction that even today it is possible to charm a person with something that is on first view very simple – that it is possible to touch him or her with a story that is “just” told, if it is told well and if the content is worth listening to. The increasing number of listeners every year confirms this conviction. ▸ www.drustvodvakoluta.si hidden treasures from ljubljana’s special libraries, Union of Associations of Slovene Librarians – Section for Special Libraries. In their storerooms, Slovene special libraries store a large number of precious books, some of which are hundreds of years old. Amongst them are incunabula and other surprising printed treasures of the Slovene and world cultural heritage. For the duration of the Slovene World Book Capital, Slovene special libraries will unlock their treasuries and in one place present precious items from the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Two incunabula will be on display, along with numerous works of antique classics and a range of works by humanist men of letters (Cicero, Pliny the Younger, Petrarch …), which have never been publicly exhibited, despite having had an important influence on the cultural image of Europe and Ljubljana. The exhibition of “hidden” books from Slovene special libraries will at the same time be evidence of the significance of books for the development of science, the importance of preserving literary

Ljubljana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the World Book Capital City

material, and the unchanged role of the book in spreading knowledge from the end of the Middle Ages until today. â&#x2013;¸ www.zvezabibliotekarskihdrustev.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Libraries: Centres of Knowledge, Information and Creativity Library Public Service Reading, informing and learning, promoting good books, family reading, meetings between readers and authors, reading quizzes and riddles, reading badges are all activities which usually come under the heading of the “library public service”. The activities which the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library will be organising within the Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 project will continue the rich tradition of the Ljubljana libraries in the development of reading culture. Since the Ljubljana libraries merged into the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library, our vision has had an even greater bearing than before, for our public institute is the largest library in Slovenia catering for the needs of more than half a million citizens. We are therefore responsible for the quality development of library services and activities offered in Ljubljana and the rest of Slovenia. It is our wish to be an innovative and high-quality library. This is why we will, within our events, show to the citizens of Ljubljana that we are not merely important information centres, but rather well-recognised culture providers. The admission to all our events will, as always, be free. Our events will focus on a selection of modern projects on books, literature and culture. Moreover, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library is the first library in Slovenia to introduce the rental of electronic readers. A pilot project was launched at one of its libraries in late 2009, and during Ljubljana’s year as the World Book Capital City this activity will be extended to all of the Ljubljana libraries. The Ljubljana Metropolitan Library will also be coordinating the Books for Everybody project, a national reading campaign enabling the purchase of quality books at reasonable prices in Slovene libraries and museums. The campaign seeks to emphasise the importance of reading and purchasing books, while developing a better relationship between individuals and society, on the one hand, and writers and publishers, on the other. Together with the City of Ljubljana, the Museum and the galleries of Ljubljana, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library will organise programmes and events which will take place in the Trubar Literature House, a brand new cultural centre which will also function as the centre for all of the events and activities related to books, reading and literature during this most special year. Numerous events are being organised for a variety of target groups. The first activity created with all Ljubljaners in mind will be a photographic competition on the book. Throughout the year, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library will be addressing topical issues and dilemmas faced by institutions and individuals whose main activities revolve around the book. Jelka Gazvoda, Director of the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

The Ljubljana Metropolitan Library Programme april 2010 – april 2011 read wider – read slovene authors! The Ljubljana Metropolitan Library (MKL). At its branches, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library will present to its visitors classical and mostly contemporary Slovene authors and their works – fiction, poetry and drama. Reading Slovene authors in both electronic and printed formats will also be encouraged. The project will focus on the reading of e-books using the latest reader Kolibri V3. Literary works will also be linked with Slovene music, film and text recordings by Slovene authors. A selection of library material will be exhibited and made available for borrowing and reading. Happenings will take place in MKL Knjižnica Bežigrad, MKL Knjižnica Jožeta Mazovca, MKL Knjižnica Otona Župančiča, MKL Knjižnica Prežihov Voranc and MKL Knjižnica Šiška. ▸ www.mklj.si library my asylum, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library. The project envisages direct and indirect work with asylum seekers. The direct work entails collecting data on the needs of persons living in the Asylum Centre, their integration in events already going on in the library setting and the organisation of additional events and training seminars regarding the needs of Asylum Centre dwellers. The indirect work includes the preparation of a special collection of material for foreigners, PC and Internet access and the production of promotion material. A round table will be held as part of the project to inform the general public about migration and refugee issues. Within the framework of the World Book Day an exhibition of picture books from around the world will be mounted. ▸ www.mklj.si kosovir’s spoon, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library. The Kosovir’s Spoon is an interactive object — a realistic, computer-aided model made from supporting artificial material, designed for children. The scooping part of the spoon is ergonomically designed for sitting and the “tomatoes” that form part of this ergonomic design have loudspeakers around the head section. In Kosovir’s Spoons songs and fairy tales may be listened to. The Kosovir’s Spoon is based on the book Kosovirja na leteči žlici (Two Kosovirs on the Flying Spoon) by Svetlana Makarovič. Interactive spoon models in libraries encourage children to use modern technology, they are pleasing to children and lure them into the world of listening and reading the written word. ▸ www.mklj.si wwcomic strips and literary classics side by side, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library. To drawing lovers, the comic strip, called the ninth art, has been more than an easy read for a long time already. More and more authors believe

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

that a good comic strip is almost equal to an exceptional story. The library wishes to draw readers’ attention to its rich collection of comic strips and its tradition of placing comic strips alongside literary classics. Its inclusion in the Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 programme enables the comic strip to interpret the written word, to merge with the traditional image of literature and to modernise the concept of the book; on the other hand, through workshops, exhibitions, round tables, EU participation, the setting up of new web pages and the promotion of young authors the concept of the “hybrid library” is emphasised: openness, connection and active participation will convey the library goer to the physical and virtual space of the library. ▸ www.mklj.si book club, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library. This project enables presentations, comments and reviews of books on the pages of the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library website, as well as criticism and recommendations by using Web 2.0 Tools and Applications (assessments, personalisation, comments, etc.). Supported by the staff of the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library, the Book Club will be designed and edited in a virtual space by the library users themselves. The web site of the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library will offer web communication tools, a specifically adapted web forum, blog pages and recommendation lists. ▸ www.mklj.si dancing with the book, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library and Plesna šola Kazina. The aim of this dance project is to try to bring the content of books closer to project participants and use it to familiarise them with dance. www.mklj.si ▸ www.kazina.si the ljubljana metropolitan library in the trubar literature house. The Trubar Literature House will also be the venue of some of the events organised by the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library, such as meetings with Slovene writers and poets, literary theoreticians and historians and connoisseurs of modern Slovene literature, with an emphasis on topical issues. In cooperation with publishing houses, the Library will organise regular presentations of newly published Slovene works, while the house will remain open to other creative activities from the field of literature, writing, reading and books. The Ljubljana Metropolitan Library will organise its events in cooperation with publishing houses, non-governmental organisations, and other groups and individuals related to the book and reading culture. Within the Ljubljana World Book Capital Year, literary events, book presentations, readings, discussions on art and society, presentations of digitalised content, activities for children, creative

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

workshops, visits of foreign productions and exhibitions will be organised. ▸ www.mklj.si april 2010 – september 2010 city – book – people, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library. A book-themed photography competition is being prepared by the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library. It will include photographic images of moments that offer the possibility of visually recording a story, that document time and space, that have communicative-aesthetic value, and that visually promote books, reading and libraries. The theme will be limited to books in connection with people and the city. With this competition the library wishes to encourage the contemplation of the position of books among people, show their mutual inter-connections and interdependence, and raise sensitivity towards these aspects. ▸ www.mklj.si august 2010 filmbus: travelling cinema, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library. The Travelling Library will win the citizens of Ljubljana over with its mobility, modern equipment and attractive exterior and interior. In various residential districts of Ljubljana there will be projections of book-based films. One of the artists involved in the creation of the film (director, actor, screenwriter, etc.) will be invited to watch the projection and participate in the subsequent discussion. At the same time, invitations will be extended to visit Bilobus and learn about the various collections of material, the library catalogue and everything else that the Travelling Library has to offer. ▸ www.mklj.si november 2010 library, the heart of the city: between tradition and the future, the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library. A one-day expert symposium and a round table will be held on 8 November 2010. With this event the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library, in cooperation with selected institutions in this field of expertise, will actively participate in an exchange of opinions, ideas and professional initiatives for the future quality development of the book, reading, knowledge and culture in Ljubljana. The themes of the symposium will be the importance of the library in the urban tissue of a city, the role of and prospects for the book as a mass medium in the era of digital media and modern libraries’ dilemmas on developing a quality range. The round table, involving distinguished guests, will focus on the topical issues of the daily dialogue between the library and the city, the individual and the library, and between the library and the environment. It will open up different challenging aspects of the role of the library in the promotion of reading, knowledge, critical thinking, creativity and culture in a city. ▸ www.mklj.si

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

World Congress: World Book Summit 2011 Books as Promoters of Human Development world book summit 2011: books as promoters of human development, Cankarjev dom, 31 March to 1 April 2011. Human history proves that the book is the key promoter of human development. Therefore, the congress will try to answer the question as to how the book and reading, which are today surrounded by other media, drive the development of the individual and of society. The researchers and experts studying all of the links in the book supply chain – cultural policies on books, copyright, publishing and literary critique – have decided to discuss the following two themes: Book Globalisation and Reading in the Digital Era and Publishing Books on Smaller Language Markets and Translating Books from Minor National Languages into World Languages. As a result, the organisers, The Chamber of Publishing, Bookselling, Graphic Industry, Radio and TV Media and The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia, expect useful guidance on book market monitoring, reading culture encouragement strategies and policies for improving access to books. Key experts in the global book market have been invited to give the domestic professional public an insight into topical developments in the field of the book and, at the same time, help them better understand these developments in a deeper cultural and societal context. At the congress the Ljubljana Resolution on Books as Promoters of Human Development will be signed and the related proceedings will be published. ▸ www.cd-cc.si

Ljubljana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the World Book Capital City

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Slovenia in Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 Programme of Slovene Towns and Cities

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

april 2010 the municipality of izola has established a public competition for the best story from the Izola tradition, offering three prizes to the best literary works reviving the tradition and customs of the urban and rural areas of Izola. The aim of this pubic tender is to reinstate the cultural history of Izola and use the prize-winning works as additional tourist promotion of this coastal town. ▸ www.izola.si the municipality of trzin will carry out several programmes: ▪ four international literary evenings involving up to three authors, hosted by Študentska založba (ŠZ) and the Slovene PEN Centre; the first during the Slovenian Book Days 2010, when in cooperation with ŠZ an evening with Turkish authors is planned in Trzin, and the last in late March 2011, in parallel with the International Conference of the Slovene PEN Centre in Bled, ▪ three literary evenings with performances by Slovene poets within the framework of Culture Evenings organised once a month in the winter season (from October 2010 to April 2011), ▪ a literary evening of Slovene authors organised by the Municipality of Trzin within the framework of the Trzin Spring Festival, planned for the second Saturday in June 2010 and ▪ a literary marathon coinciding with the World Book Day 2010, within the framework of a book fair in Trzin between 24 and 25 April 2010. ▸ www.obcinatrzin.si adult reading badge – reading club, the metlika popular library. The aim of the reading badge for adults, i.e., the reading club, is to encourage adult readers to turn to quality literary works, with an emphasis on Slovene authors and local history and heritage. Discussion of the books read inspires critical thinking and builds confidence for reaching for and grasping more demanding texts. ▸ http://www.metlika.si/lkm/bralni%20klub.htm memory lane, the municipality of kostanjevica. On the eve of the official announcement of Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 there will be a presentation of the latest novel in verse by the Slovene writer Feri Lainšček, interpreted by Vlado Novak. ▸ www.kostanjevica.si festival ljubezni 2010 / love festival 2010, kid kibla. murska sobota. The Love Festival is a travelling festival held every year at the beginning of spring in one of the towns and cities of Eastern Slovenia, linking the sights of the forthcoming European Capital of Culture. Its rich weekend programme offers a mixture of literature and other interesting arts, mostly music and visual genres. The festival is particularly fond of composed literary texts, literary exhibitions and

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

music with visual accompaniment. However, the author’s word remains in the forefront, heard in public readings, poetry and fiction duels, literary breakfasts and meetings with authors organised between these. A special feature of the Love Festival is its parallel programme for children, who also deserve their share of literature, either in the form of (fairy) tale readings or creative workshops. With its exciting programme, both pleasing and of extremely high quality, the Love Festival tries to attract the widest audiences and ensure that festival events reach those places which literary maps often neglect. The first Love Festival was held in 2008 at the Stična Castle. The following year it visited the town of Ptuj and in 2010 it will take place in the town of Murska Sobota. ▸ www.kibla.org/festivali/festival-ljubezni may 2010 kindly invited to the library, the roma! metlika public library. The aim of this ongoing project, which was launched in 2004, is to bring the library and the book closer to the Roma living in the Metlika Municipality, and in particular to their younger generations. The library has been organising story-time and playtime activities, as well as creative workshops for Roma children, while, during summer months, the mobile library visits Roma settlements so that children can borrow books and other reading materials. Within the project, computer literacy courses are offered to children and adults living in the Roma community. The Roma are also regularly invited to partake in other events organised by the library. ▸ www.ljudskaknjiznicametlika.si lirikonfest velenje 2010, a spring festival of lyric art held in Velenje with presentations all over Slovenia and abroad, the Velenje Literary Foundation UVKF and the Velenika Literary Association. A literary festival with 21 literary events and an accompanying programme of lyric art with Slovene and foreign performers. Lirikonfest provides an overview of literary activities and brings the literature of the 21st century, its authors, translators, editors, publishers, international intermediaries, organisers, performers, critics and other connoisseurs closer to the general public. With original and translated modern poetry, and reflections on the cognitive, connective and critical role of artistic literature, it establishes and further promotes international literary connections. Main Programme: ▪ The Herberstein Meeting of Slovene Writers (HSK) with international participants and the Herberstein Lirikonfest Literary Essay Prize for the best literary essay on a topical issue selected by the HSK assembly; ▪ The 7th Pretnar Prize Ceremony for ambassadors of the Slovene language and literature; ▪ the 6th annual issue of the poetry magazine Rp. Lirikon21 (an overview of

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Slovene and translated poetry of the 21st century) and the Lirikon Poetry Translation Prize Ceremony (for the best translation of modern poetry into Slovene or from Slovene into other languages), as well as Lirikon tastings of a selection of Slovene and translated poetry and other lyric arts (with presentations and readings all over Slovenia and abroad); ▪ The 5th Poetical Slovenia Ceremony with the Cup of Immortality / Velenjica Prize for a 10-year opus of Slovene writers who have made a significant impact on Slovene 21st century literature; ▪ The 4th year of the Writers in Residence Programme organised by the Velenje Literary Foundation UVKF for foreign and Slovene authors and translators of artistic literature. ▸ www.lirikonfest.si june 2010 flirtings 2010, Založba Litera. Within the Spogledi / Flirtings 2010 International Prose Festival, readings, concerts, discussions and a round table will be organised, while foreign authors will visit various Slovene towns. The accompanying programme consists of story-time activities for children and film screenings. ▸ www.zalozba-litera.org/flirtings2010 the publishing activity of novo mesto dolenjska museum 1950 – 2010, Dolenjska Museum. An overview of the works, such as monographs, exhibition catalogues, guides, folders, posters and tickets, published by the Dolenjska Museum from its establishment until the present day. Most of the publications reveal the research carried out by Dolenjska Museum curators. ▸ www.dolmuzej.com august 2010 an exhibition of miniature books, the valvasor library. The smallest Slovene town, Kostanjevica na Krki, will introduce itself with an exhibition of miniature books. ▸ www.kostanjevica.si september 2010 women writers in minor literatures of the 19th century, the university of nova gorica. With the emergence of nationalisms, a number of small nations dedicated themselves to literature in the 19th century, also attracting women writers. The research on women writers contributing to literatures overshadowed by the literature produced by big, politically dominant nations offers a good insight into literature and history. The aim of the scientific symposium is to show that minor literatures of the 19th century saw a significant and intense presence of women writers, whose contributions must therefore be re-inserted on the 19th century literary map.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

▸ http://www.ung.si ▸ http://www.costwwih.net povest od jožeka, pjeba štajerskega (the tale of jožek, a štajerska lad), Rogatec Culture, Tourism and Development Institute, Rogatec Library, Rogatec Primary School, Rogatec Male Choir, Rogaška Slatina Music School. Students of the Rogatec Primary School will spend a day researching the life and work of Jože Šmit, a poet born at Tlake, a village close to Rogatec. His birth house is now the main feature of the Rogatec Open-Air Museum. The day will conclude with the students giving a presentation of their findings, while the local library will be exhibiting the author’s collections of poems and the Rogatec Male Choir, together with local musicians, will carry out a recital of poems by Jože Šmit. ▸ www.muzej-rogatec.si april 2011 the gorjup literary evening, jože gorjup primary school, kostanjevica. Young authors from Kostanjevica will present their poems to the public. ▸ www.kostanjevica.si the municipality of dobrovnik within the Ljubljana – World Book Capital City project, The Municipality of Dobrovnik. Reading at the local library. ▸ www.dobrovnik.si/sl for better reading literacy, the xiv division senovo primary school. Vinko Hostar, the headmaster, and the teachers of the XIV Division Senovo Primary School will give a presentation on their project. ▸ www.ossenovo.net big and small, maribor Regional Museum. Next to the Books for Everybody stand, the largest and the smallest book from the museum’s collection will be exhibited, i.e., Il tabernacolo della Madonna d’Orsasanmichele from 1876 (45 x 61 cm) and a 1776 Calendar (3 x 7 cm). ▸ www.pmmuzej-mb.si

Ljubljana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the World Book Capital City

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

The World in Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City Programmes of embassies in Ljubljana

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

The Embassy of Italy april 2010 festUnit 2010, The Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia, Marzio Serbo, Romance Language and Translation Student Theatre Group – Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana: Live theatre readings and dramatisation of literary works will be at the core of some major projects. April will see the second FestUniIT, a university theatre festival at which the Romance Language and Translation Student Theatre Group will stage Teo by Giorgio Manganelli. book club, The Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia and the Italian Department of the Faculty of Arts (Dr Irena Prosenc Šegula and Irena Trenc Frelih). The programme envisages five 90-minute meetings every month on late Wednesday afternoons, dedicated to recent Italian works of prose fiction characterised by a great power of expression and originality. Texts will be scheduled depending on the complexity of literary structure – from the simplest to the most complex – and the publication date, starting with the most recent. ▪ 21 April 2010 at 6 pm (presented by T. Černe and M. Lenart) Tabucchi: Il filo dell’orizzonte (The Edge of the Horizon); ▪ 21 May 2010 at 6 pm (presented by J. Brenčič and A. Benedetič) - a reading circle dedicated to the adventure of reading Calvino’s postmodernist meta-novel Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler). film club. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia, Faculty of Arts - University of Ljubljana (Eleonora Kolar, students of Italian Studies). Students of Italian Studies will present and lead discussions on films which are based on literary works and speak of Italian history: ▪ April - May: La terra trema, Il gattopardo and I viceré, ▪ November: Kaos, ▪ December: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli. pirandello and the cinema, Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia, Faculty of Arts - University of Ljubljana (Eleonora Kolar): Lecture by Sergio Micheli, university professor and film critic. may 2010 portraits of italian writers – ritratti. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia. Exhibition of a selection of photographs of important Italian contemporary writers by Michele Corelone. evening dedicated to drago jančar and his novels translated into Italian. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia, Cankarjev dom. Headnoise, Northern Lights and Joyce’s Pupil.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

milan selan: middle italy by bicycle - part 1: Umbria - Cycling Guide - Nature, History, Culture, Art and Cuisine. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia: pierluigi cappello: assetto di volo. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia, House of Poetry: Presentation of the poet Perluigi Cappello and the Slovenian translation of his book Assetto di volo. aljoša curavić: a occhi spenti. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia. Presentation of the book by Aljoša Curavić, published by the publishing house EDIT from Rijeka. The publisher Sivio Forza will attend the presentation. october 2010 From Literature to Film. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia, Slovenska kinoteka, Experimental Film Centre from Rome. The event is dedicated to the relationship between literature and film, and to the presentation of films based on Italian novels. A series of meetings with writers and directors. The following films will be discussed: La ciocara (Vittorio de Sica, 1960), I promessi sposi (Mario Camerini, 1941), L’isola di Arturo (Damiano Damiani, 1962), Il nome delle rosa (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986), Il deserto del tartari (Valerio Zurlini, 1976), Profummo di donna (Dino Risi, 1974), Il Decameron (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971), Caro Michele (Mario Monicelli, 1976), L’innocente (Luchino Visconti, 1976), Il gattopardo (Luchino Visconti, 1963), Cristo si e fermato a Eboli (Francesco Risi, 1979), Il giardino dei Finzi Contini (Vittorio de Sica, 1970), La lupa (Gabriele Lavia, 1996), Almost blue (Alex Infascelli, 2000), Il consiglio d’Egitto (Emido Greco, 2002), Sostiene Pereira (Roberto Racusa, 1996). vitruvius: de architectura. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia. Presentation of De Architectura by Vitruvius, translated into Slovenian by Prof. Fedja Košir. freccia azzurra (the blue arrow) & gip in the television. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia, Cultural Centre Sežana. A theatrical transposition of the works Freccia Azzurra and Gip nel televisore by Giovanni Rodari, a preeminent writer for children, to whom the year 2010 is dedicated in Italy and around the globe. Accompanying events (exhibitions, video screenings) will take place at the seat of the Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia. theatrical reading of lei dunque capirà by claudio magris. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia: Theatrical interpretation of the Slovenian translation of Lei dunque capirà by Claudio Magris, the winner of the 2009 Vilenica Literary Prize.

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

dacia maraini: passi affrettat. Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia, Slovenian Permanent Theatre in Trieste, Mini teater: Staging of the theatrical text Passi affrettati by Dacia Maraini, translated by Irena Trenc Frelih, on violence against women in the world. ▸ www.iicljubljana.esteri.it

The Embassy of Switzerland may – june 2010 40 books for the ljubljana metropolitan library, the Embassy of Switzerland. On the occasion of Ljubljana being proclaimed the World Book Capital City 2010 by UNESCO, the Embassy will donate to the Ljubljana Metropolitan Library 40 books recently published in Switzerland. the writer ilma rakuša in ljubljana, the Embassy of Switzerland. The Embassy of Switzerland together with the Vilenica Festival will host the writer Ilmo Rakuša. In early June 2010, she will read her works and be interviewed at the Ljubljana Castle within the framework of Vilenica in Ljubljana. january 2011 the swiss comic book creator zep visits ljubljana. The Embassy of Switzerland, Vale Novak Publishing House. Two-day activity programme for children and comic fans. ▸ www.eda.admin.ch/ljubljana

The Embassy of Germany may 2010 the reception of modern literature in the german language, GoetheInstitut Ljubljana, German Library – The Central Technological Library at the University of Ljubljana (CTK). Discussions with Slovene, German, Swiss and Austrian authors and literature experts. october 2010 youth literature readings, authors from Germany. Goethe Institute Ljubljana. Readings of children’s and youth literature. november 2010 scholarly literary seminar on “exophony”. Goethe Institute Ljubljana. The seminar will feature authors from Germany not writing in their mother language. ▸ www.goethe.de/ljubljana

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

European Parliament, Information Office for Slovenia june 2010 Embassy of Spain in Slovenia and Republic of Slovenia Public Fund for Cultural Activities Office Ivančna Gorica exhibition of translations and illustration of kozlovska sodba v višnji gori (the famous goat trial) in the House of the European Union, the European Parliament, the Information Office for Slovenia, the Republic of Slovenia Public Fund for Cultural Activities Ivančna Gorica Office and the Embassy of Spain in Slovenia. An exhibition of translations into Spanish, French, English and German, including original illustrations of The Famous Goat Trial by Josip Jurčič. Individual translations were illustrated by Marjan Manček (English), who was also the illustrator of the Slovene original, Judita Rajnar (French) and Santiago Martin (Spanish). The work was translated by: Santiago Martin, Patrick Sunčan Stone and Florence Gacoin Marks. An accompanying publication tells more about the links between the European Parliament and Jurčič. The exhibition will be mounted by street artists and it will remain open to the general public throughout June. ▸ www.europarl.si

The Embassy of France october 2010 are books facing a crisis? Charles Nodier French Institute, Cankarjev dom. A series of French-Slovenian meetings, sponsored by CULTURESFRANCE and in cooperation with Cankarjev dom. There are typical readers who consider the book to be a fetish object that has created their relationship to culture: they regard books containing sentiment as an antidote to that which could be called virtual dangers. However, are these defenders of the old book in the battle against “all that is digital” not forced into some sort of elitism? Is the priority they ascribe to the personal interests of the author over the common interests of the public not a kind of betrayal of the humanistic values to which they refer? There are contemporary readers who think one has to keep up with the times and without improper sentimentality relinquish the technology which they consider over the hill. What could be more inappropriate than still using dead trees as knowledge carriers? However, the digital book is not an arbitrary network among many others, the World Wide Web is not an arbitrary network among many others: we have to question ourselves about their distinctive characteristics. Has the philosophical liberalism that contributed to the evolution of the Internet, which it originally designed as a tool of emancipation, not changed into economic liberalism, which is by some considered a system that causes inequality?

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Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Themes: ▪ The Digitisation of Library Stock, Relations with Google. Director of the National Library of France (BNF) Bruno Racine and Director of the National and University Library Mateja Komel Snoj; ▪ The Digital Book Challenge, Copyrights in the Age of the Internet. French publisher Bertrand Py, Editor-in-Chief of Actes Sud Publishing House, and Slovenian publisher Rok Zavrtanik, Director of Sanje Publishing House; ▪ The Author’s Website: an Independent Work of Art or its Supplement? French writer Jean-Philippe Toussaint, author of his own web page, and Slovenian writer Miha Mazzini, also author of his own web page. ▪ The Future of Intellectual Property, Aesthetics and the Internet. French philosopher Jacques Rancière and Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupančič. ▪ Blog as a Tool for Literary Criticism, Criticism in the Age of Internet Publishing. French critic Pierre Assouline and Slovenian cultural expert Aleš Debeljak. ▪ Comic Strips as a Possible Area of Rebellion against “All that is Digital” or the Internet as the Future of Comic Strips? French cartoonist Joan Sfar and Slovenian cartoonist Izar Lunaček. ▪ Are Books and the Digital World Condemned to Mutual Exclusivity? French professor Roger Chartier and Slovenian anthropologist Drago Rotar. ▸ www.institutfrance.si ▸ www.cd-cc.si

The Embassy of Netherlands october 2010 visits of acclaimed dutch authors. The Embassy of Netherlands. Literary evenings, lectures, readings, discussions. ▸ www.netherlands-embassy.si

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Homage to the Book and Art

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photo Jože Suhadolnik

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

The Book Shall Remain Dr Andrej Blatnik, What do they have in common? An Indian shepherd seated in the shadow of a solitary author, translator and tree, while the sheep look for good pasture he remains absorbed in an object in his hand: university professor a book. An American professor, who charges tens of thousands for a single lecture.

Nothing – except the book. The book which should not just be bought and dumped in our collection, but opened if we want unknown worlds to open up to us. The book is one of those rare things common to mankind, playing different roles in different cultural settings. In one of her essays Doris Lessing tells a story about a boy in a remote African village, who stole a book at the age children usually finish school there. He stole a higher-education text book on physics, in which he could not understand anything but the conjunctions. “Why did you steal the book?” “I wanted to have a book. I don’t have any books.” “Why this book in particular, it’s difficult?” “I want to be a doctor.” said the boy clenching the book. He took possession of this book as a realistic hope, as an opportunity for changing his life. And lives do change – very quickly in the era we live in. But which era was different, without changes? It is only that changes are coming ever quicker. News circles the world in an instant. More and more is available to you at your fingertips, no matter where on the planet you are. Only a few people still use paper to write on. We no longer store our films and music on tapes and only twenty years ago the possibility of viewing favourite films from an armchair at home seemed fantastic. Only one medium has not really changed for centuries – the book. Although its form has remained unchanged for ages, for the book the form is not essential. Whether paperback or hardbound, on paper or on a screen, we can still read it. The book is not form, it is substance. But as we live in times of the great victory of form over substance and of the exchange of one form for another, many times it seems more important to buy a book than to read it. However, reading is the normal usage of the book.

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Reading is pleasure and opportunity accessible to all. Even more so in Slovenia, which is perhaps one of the reasons why Ljubljana as the World Book Capital City reconfirms our traditional commitment to the book. Slovenia has not had a lucky hand in many privatisation stories, but for one: a very well-developed and broad network of public libraries was preserved. Everybody will find what they want in this network, if they only look for it. Similarly, everybody can publish what they want using either public funds or their own funds. In terms of the number of published books per capita, Slovenia is among the leading countries, more then ten times above the world average. The novel New Life by Orhan Pamuk speaks about a secret society of readers, people linked together by books. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury the paper on which books are printed burns at the temperature used as the title of the novel, but the books live on in the memory and are passed from mouth to mouth. Each new reader changes the book; it opens up differently to every reader, who in turn opens up to the book in a different way. When we read the same book again we are different, which makes the book different. You can never step twice into the same book. It keeps the images, thoughts and feelings of its author, but it changes with the reader. Even a book just recently published by a part-time disheartened poet, who thinks that no one else but himself needs it, can find its first reader. Perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not soon, but in good time – the book can wait. Most things in life happen at an exact moment in time, they happen and they cease. But not the book – the book shall remain. •

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Tympan in Diachrony

photo Boštjan Pucelj

Matjaž Berger, To insist upon thinking its other: its proper other, the proper of its other, an other prodirector of Anton Podbevšek Teater, per ... Novo mesto

Jacques Derrida, Tympan ... Only then the merry science of the sign and the ethics of codes authorised by such a science will occur. Such an act, in any circumstance, may be understood as the disclosure of a code, be it existing or not, repeatable or not. The code as an ethical postulate ... Jean-Claude Milner, The Structural Tour. Figures and Paradigms The tattered cord can again become knotted. It holds, but it is torn. Perhaps we’ll face each other again but there, where you left me, you’ll never meet me again. Bertolt Brecht, Me-Ti / The Book of Changes ... there are assumptions which will help us to concentrate the symbolic status of the script, inscriptions, the Book, the statements and literary testimonies of civilisations and Masters of the sublime into a parable on dialogues, into a structure of thoughts ... If the book is a weapon (Brecht), as well as a document of civilisation and, at the same time, also a document of barbarism (Benjamin), then it is also the field of an (in)complete encounter between the Author(s) and the recipient, the field of an encounter leading further, to other and different encounters ... In such a context, the book becomes the concept and the territory producing the sublime (“We have an Idea of the world [...], but

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we do not have the capacity to show an example of it. We have the Idea of the simple [...]. But we cannot illustrate it with a sensible object which would be a ‘case’ of it. We can conceive the infinitely great, the infinitely powerful, but every presentation of an object destined to ‘make visible’ this absolute greatness or power appears to us painfully inadequate.” (Lyotard)). Is the sublime the authority of gestus which can travel so far that within the trace left by Plato in his Symposium or by Shakespeare in his King Lear we today can recognise the power of dialogue, of utopia, of the division of the kingdom of the signifier into three parts: the real, the good and the beautiful ... Is the sublime the absolute minimum difference in the restraining thought protocol between a place and what happens there as discussed by Badiou when interpreting Malevich’s White Square on White? Or is it perhaps the domination of the conclusion aiming at Plato’s pure wish as discussed by Bernard Bass: “What is this pure white, this white which is ... a maximum white? This white where nothing shows, where there is no stroke of a brush, no magic, no image. This is, strictly speaking, the sublime white, the white that occurs beyond the limit of the imaginable. The sublime white represents the non-representable. A pure wish is the wish of pure white. A pure wish is a white wish.” If the Book (the text, the script) offers a dialogue, a conversation, a discussion, then the opening ceremony of the Ljubljana World Book Capital City 2010 entitled Tympan in Diachrony is undoubtedly about this fundamental separation, “for we all know that we need to agree on something if we want to quarrel. This is why dialogue is so difficult. If we are to understand the other, we need to agree at least on some fundamental points first. Therefore, the other, the other’s truth cannot be eliminated. We assume it is there, present, as the other’s benevolence whenever we listen to somebody, whenever we address somebody ... ” (Jacques-Alain Miller) With a metronome, Tympan in Diachrony measures the rhythm of the act of transcending borders, which found its guardian of interpretation in Borges. Before that, almost as a rule, such mental gestures found their way as messages in a bottle floating in unknown and unnamed seas. Or (as Jože Vogrinc would put it) within the imprimatur? / imprimatur! status. •

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photo Jože Suhadolnik

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

About Poetry in Books Milan Jesih, Ljubljana is the pride of the national community, which is prone to ceremonially rePresident of the Slovene peating that its survival and individuality were ensured by its loyal commitment to the Writers’ Association language and the literary manuscripts that were written and printed in it. Whether this

is the historical truth or just a myth about poetry’s redeeming nation-building capacity, born in the consciousness of the people - who are in fact unable to refer, for instance, to any past military victories, great native monarchs, fearless conquerors of overseas lands, inventors and builders - we leave to faith and doubt. However, we should agree that in previous centuries literature in our language legitimately expressed the nation’s being and at the same time - sometimes admittedly somewhat late - participated in the main European intellectual movements. In that time it reached a high level of quality, even in comparison to its more numerous and more successful competitors. We can also agree that our national literature was for decades in the centre of attention, that its authors were adequately honoured - admittedly often only posthumously, that - regardless of whether the merits of the previous generations of authors are a fact or a myth - they were regarded either as the nation’s consciousness, the telamones of the nation’s soul and the nation’s prophets, or at least as the nation’s ever vigilant patriots. Therefore, it is all the more paradoxical that: firstly, the path of independence to complete nationhood, during which authors exemplarily demonstrated their civil engagement, brought a collapse of their public reputation; secondly, the interest in living literature rapidly died and only glimmers on in a small number of admirers and connoisseurs; thirdly, the writing profession is approaching amateurism: it is becoming a weird evening or Sunday hobby. We are, of course, living in a world - and this is already a worn-out cliché - where the culture of words is being transformed into a culture of images; flickering images take

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over our senses more effectively than deep, but all too time-consuming reading, even if only for a second, before giving way to a new superficial sensation. The cult of pleasure, momentary consummation and instant oblivion rules the world. In such a world, poetry - literature - cannot but be underprivileged, because people lack the concentrated, slow attention which it demands. Moreover, it falls victim to many stereotypes: contemporary writing is said to be either incomprehensible and elitist or lame and whiny. Some readers are put off by the sholastic rigidity of the school. This one-year period, when Ljubljana is designated as the Book Capital, should not be a time for empty, unreflected glorification, but rather a time to ponder the bookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role as a medium of contemporary, living, here-and-now literature, our concern for it and for its first creator, the writer. For we are living in the capital of a country where commercial logic inclines authors to give up their works for free publication in an anthology, thus making it financially more accessible, and where it acquires the rights over a text against all conventions regarding intellectual property rights - for all eternity. Moreover, we are living in the capital of a country where the stock of classics burdens the publisher to such an extent that this stock must be destroyed, and this act is not seen as vandalism. You will search in vain for most of the national and translated classic titles in the bookstores of the Book Capital. Merchants sell goods: booksellers sell pulp rather than classics. Yet, ever new poetry is being published in magazines and books. Yet, there does not seem to be a lack of new stories, unverified in their factuality, but true in some higher reality. (Even though sometimes everyday life can be more unbelievable than the entire universe of literary imagination.) Yet, poetry is being vivaciously discussed by brilliant young people: enthusiastic, well-educated, sensitive or strict. Yet, in their ghettoised print media they write about poetry with lucidity and depth. Poetry is being written and read: poetry exists. Just as the truth of the world cannot be captured, so literature cannot die. We are not aware of how close to us it begins: a joke is already a story, a dumb advertising catchphrase comes from the same breed as a poem: a sequence of words that is unverifiable in literal terms. A student tries to apologise for his being late by inventing a story, a PR agent of a political party uses the same rhetoric. Moreover, we are not aware of how far it can reach: from that shot, when it brilliantly put our own sensitive thought into words, to that shiver, when ever new worlds are opening up before our eyes. If someone reads a good poem their perception will never be the same again. Poetry is and is not bread. Even though poetry - literature - addresses us so individually, many people live a life that is full and in no way deprived without books: a human being can, human society can not. â&#x20AC;˘

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photo Jože Suhadolnik

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Glowing Books Dr Miklavž Komelj, When Dante Alighieri, just before the end of the Divine Comedy, describes his most glopoet, translator, scholar wing vision of paradise, he uses the following metaphor for books: “Bound up with love and essayist together in one volume, What through the universe in leaves is scattered”.

Rather than filling him with peace, this electrified him. It could not have been a vision of “oneness”, but a vision of the non-existent “multitude of all multitudes”. Dante, of course, did not use the language of the theory of the multitude; he felt like a geometer trying to square the circle. Until his mind was struck by lightning. The book as the notion of the materialisation of the impossible – as understood by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. One of the most unusual books I know, with what is for me one of the most beautiful titles, was published in Yugoslavia (in which Slovenia was included for most of the 20th century): The Impossible (1930), an almanac by the Belgrade Surrealists. One of the authors of the almanac, the poet and writer Oskar Davičo, in a song he wrote much later trying to express in words the state of overcoming oneself, physically identified himself with the book: “Bound in a cover of human skin / I withdrew from all of the three dimensions / which are usually my boundaries. Raised to the fourth / power of myself, I emerged from a chest, where imagination still / works under the lid. This/ did not yield the same results as when it works/ under the open sky […]”. In the process of reading, the book goes beyond itself and cannot be reduced to its physical phenomenon. Nowadays, experiments with electronic books are spreading, (which I personally dislike, since e-book readers do not encourage focused reading; it is infinitely more familiar to me to picture Machiavelli dressing up in the evening to sit down among old volumes in solitude), but at the same time I have to note that the electrifying experience has been connected with books “since Adam”. The Babylonian Talmud describes

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a young man reading a holy book for which he was too young – a flame came out of the book and burned him to ashes. To be aware of the power of the book one does not need mysticism. Various obscurantists have abused the awareness of the potentially dangerous power of the book to prohibit reading – but this power has always been somewhat greater in the hands of those who have used the book in liberating processes. In this sense the motto of Bertolt Brecht has been repeated countless times: “The book is a weapon, therefore take it in your hands.” If ever these words carried importance, it was in Ljubljana during the Second World War. Under the fascist occupation Ljubljana became the centre of national liberation and revolutionary movements, in which the press played a role equally important to that of weapons – even in those most difficult circumstances the press did not serve just information purposes. In this vein the High Command of Slovene Partisan Troops in 1942 published a collection of poems by Matej Bor Previharimo viharje (Let’s Weather the Storms). This illegally printed booklet had one of the highest circulations in the history of Slovene poetry. It spread widely, even though imprisonment and even death threatened those in whose possession it was found by the occupying authorities. Time and again I am fascinated by the fact that the partisan movement in dire straits published a book of poems with such a high circulation – a book far from conforming to general taste and in some aspects quite “avant-garde”, which only showed the incredible power of the movement. The book was printed in a clandestine underground print shop on the outskirts of Ljubljana called Podmornica (The Submarine), placed in bunker with water leaking in. I have been there accompanied by a former partisan printer. He told me that the print shop had been so damp that bread had gone mouldy in just a few hours. He also told me that he used to carry a gun – if the enemy had broken into the print shop he would have shot himself, so that they would not have been able to take him alive. Flame Book … In Ljubljana, however, books have been exposed to flames in other ways as well. The first books published in the Slovene language were “damned books” – written by Slovene Protestants in the 16th century, they were publicly burned in the middle of the city during recatholisation. Ljubljana maintained the tradition of burning books for a surprisingly long time, albeit in a different way: fanatics used to buy “dubious” books so that they could burn them. Ernestina Jelovšek, a daughter of France Prešern, wrote in her memoirs that Krajnska čbelica – a periodic miscellany of poetry which also published Prešeren’s work – had a circulation slightly above the small number of readers, as the clergy was expected to buy some copies in order to burn them. The same fate befell

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Erotika (Erotism) by Ivan Cankar in 1899, when almost all of the copies were burned in the bishop’s stoves. If such burnings at least pushed up the sales of books and added to them a halo of subversiveness, the process of destruction today is more imperceptible. Over the last twenty years, Slovenia has witnessed the saddest phenomenon regarding books: the “democratic” removal of books from public libraries, where “democratic” criteria serve ideological purging as thoroughly as the Inquisition. Books which are not borrowed for a certain period are automatically written off (I personally know that many “uninteresting” books have also been written off soon after I borrowed them). As a consequence a great number of the best titles disappear from public libraries, only to be replaced by profit-making pulp. The selection of Ljubljana as the World Book Capital City in a time when neoliberal capitalism is belittling civilisation’s achievements and cultural memory can in no way be a reason for celebrating the present situation, but should rather be the beginning of a thorough, critical and creative redefinition of the attitude towards the book in this part of the world. •

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photo Jože Suhadolnik

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

The Needle Svetlana Makarovič, Gently, neatly, to and fro

stitching with scarcely visible thread one to the other.

What has been knotted together cannot be untangled, what has been crushed together can nevermore be smoothed.

Let it stitch, let it stitch together me to you, you to it, the more closely it stitches me in the fewer words I utter.

Yet for one the breath is stopped with foresight and recognition. The path reveals its own way. This is the way for one.

Piercing, pulling, tightening the thin, sharp, hot thread, once you find out, it's already too late, with a thousand stitches you're sewn in.

Fiercely he recoils, pounces, stripping skin from bone, rising up through tatters of the body and vanishing in the dark.

Throat after throat, yours after mine, ever closer, ever stronger, skin grows into alien skin, ever tighter, ever warmer.

Up there unknown. There up high. It was and is and shall be. Endlessly there. There the only one. That star above the mount.

poet and author goes, goes the silent needle,

Drawing together cheeks, backs, breasts, sweaty extremities, already in enmity you pant after me, already from me you cannot get free. What is mine, what is yours, you measure with a stone between the eyes – the needle shoots, piercing the palm to slacken and let go.

(From the collection of poems Samost (Aloneness), Litterae Slovenicae, 2008 translated by Alan McConnel-Duff)

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photo Jože Suhadolnik

Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City

Books and the public use of Reason Dr Slavoj Žižek, AcSS When Paul says that, from a Christian standpoint, “there are no men and women, no

Jews and Greeks,” he thereby claims that ethnic roots, national identity, etc., are not a category of truth, or, to put it in precise Kantian terms, when we reflect upon out ethnic roots, we engage in a private use of reason, constrained by contingent dogmatic presuppositions, i.e., we act as “immature” individuals, not as free human beings who dwell in the dimension of the universality of reason. The opposition between Kant and Richard Rorty with regard to this distinction of public and private is rarely noted, but nonetheless crucial: they both sharply distinguish between the two domains, but in opposed ways. For Rorty, the great contemporary liberal if there ever was one, the private is the space of our idiosyncrasies where creativity and wild imagination rule, and moral considerations are (almost) suspended, while the public is the space of social interaction where we should obey the rules so that we do not hurt others; in other words, the private is the space of irony, while the public is the space of solidarity. For Kant, however, the public space of the “world-civil-society” designates the paradox of the universal singularity, of a singular subject who, in a kind of short-circuit, by-passing the mediation of the particular, directly participates in the Universal. This is what Kant, in the famous passage of his “What is Enlightenment?”, means by “public” as opposed to “private”: “private” is not one’s individual as opposed to communal ties, but the very communal-institutional order of one’s particular identification; while “public” is the trans-national universality of the exercise of one’s Reason: “The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men. The private use of one’s reason, on the other hand, may often be very narrowly restricted without particularly hindering the progress of enlightenment. By public use of one’s reason I understand the use which a person makes of it as a scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him.”

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The paradox of Kant’s formula “Think freely, but obey!” is thus that one participates in the universal dimension of the “public” sphere precisely as a singular individual extracted from or even opposed to one’s substantial communal identification – one is truly universal only when radically singular, in the interstices of communal identities. This space of singular universality is what, within Christianity, appears as “Holy Spirit,” the space of a collective of believers subtracted from the field of organic communities, of particular life-worlds (“neither Greeks nor Jews”). And what has all this to do with books? Books, even more than newspapers or phone or internet, continue to be the main space of the public use of reason outside the private domain of state or religious or any other form of communal control. Books are the immediate and most important base of our freedom. •

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In the Realm of the Book Ljubljana – the World Book Capital City 2010 23 April 2010 - 23 April 2011 Published by The Municipality of Ljubljana Responsible Person: Zoran Janković, Mayor Editor Manja Ravbar Introductory and Danilo Türk, Zoran Janković, Majda Širca, Boris Pahor, Manca Košir, Accompanying Texts Uroš Grilc, Andrej Blatnik, Matjaž Berger, Milan Jesih, Miklavž Komelj, by: Svetlana Makarovič, Slavoj Žižek, Ženja Leiler, Slavko Pregl, Igor Lukšič, Mitja Čander, Uršula Cetinski, Aldo Kumar, Barbara Kelbl, Alenka Gregorič, Simon Kardum, Jelka Gazvoda English Translations and Language Editing Ago d.o.o., Ljubljana Photography Jože Suhadolnik Miha Fras Jaka Adamič Stane Jeršič Boštjan Pucelj Fotoatelje bobo Design Petra Černe Oven Print B&P Circulation 800 copies, Free Publication Ljubljana, April 2010

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CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana 655.3.066.11(082) 304.44(497.4Ljubljana)«2010«(082) 028(082) IN the realm of the book : Ljubljana - the world book capital city 2010 : 23 April 2010 - 23 April 2011 / [editor Manja Ravbar ; introductory and accompanying texts by Danilo Türk ... [et al.] ; English translation Ago ; photographs by Jože Suhadolnik ... et al.]. - Ljubljana : The Municipality, 2010 ISBN 978-961-6449-33-5 1. Ravbar, Manja 250562816

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Ljubljana â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the World Book Capital City