Volumes

Volumes is a non-profit organisation and collective created in 2013 in Zürich. It is ran by Anne-Laure Franchette, Patrizia Mazzei and Gloria Wismer. The collective aims to support the various facets of international art publishing and introduce it to a larger audience in Switzerland through series of events and an ongoing research agenda.

Operating in various locations, Volumes organises large and small book fair events, which showcase the production of local and international independent publishers as well as self-editing artists who use small means of production. Exploring the creativity gravitating around the practices of art publishing, the collective regularly invites performances, installations, workshops, symposiums or projections within their events. In 2020 they launched their annual Book Award, to further showcase and support recent independent publications. They started alongside the Volumes Book Club, a series of talks, gathering people and books in a series of intimate events.

Since 2013, Volumes has also built a collection of art books, zines and magazines, thanks to the many donations received annually for their international open call exhibition. Taking this library as a site of investigation, Volumes has been researching new forms for organising and understanding the paradigm of the archive and the challenge of categories and inventories. To do so, they invite external voices to interact with what is there but also to look at what is not there and could be added, archiving the collection through curated constellations of publications which get showcased online, through talks and exhibition displays.

The archive is much bigger than what is visible online so please get in touch if you would like to make an appointment to visit it. We also happily accept donations of zines and printed matter at any time of the year. Feel free to mail publications to us.