May 17th: Montreal Anarchist Bookfair Takes to the Airwaves and Online

Online, onscreen, on CKUT community radio, via street art in your town, and with dancing! Join us from anywhere and everywhere! This year’s Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, Sunday, May 17, 2020. Connecting ideas across distance from 10:30 a.m. to midnight EDT.

Tabling this year will be a bit different. But what would a bookfair be without books! We encourage you to “stroll around” the Tablers 2020 on May 17. You’ll find deals and free stuff, and you can support anarchistic publishers, artists, and others struggling to survive during COVID-19. In addition, check out the Art and Anarchy call for street art on physical walls in various cities, and online workshops, talks, and chat rooms. We’ll also be hosting a film screening and rounding off the day with a special DJ set “dance” party!

To listen or join into the workshops, 11 am to 6 pm, you need to download Mumble, a free open-source voice chat program, where we will be hosting them: here is an easy to follow guide!. You can also listen in on CKUT’s stream from 11 am to 4 pm! To watch the film, see Pom Poko. To dance via Zoom, see Beneath the Paving Stones.

We also have a public chatroom, accessible on any web browser here. It is important to note that what is said in this chatroom is** public**. Apart from anything else that people want to say, we’re hoping that this space can be used to request help with any problems one might experience with software or access to our event.

It won't be the usual way we ring in the Spring, but the @BookfairAnarMTL is happening this Sunday! #anarchism #solidarity #acab #artanadanarchy pic.twitter.com/zQUr1050EV

— LOKI (@lokidesign) May 16, 2020

Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, May 17, 2020, Schedule

All day – Art and Anarchy – Open Chat – Tablers

11 am : L’anarchisme et le Mouvement de la Science Transparente (fr)

11:30 am :  Liberating Sápmi: Indigenous Resistance in Europe’s Far North (en)

Noon :  Conversations with Gidimt’en: Updates from the Front Lines (en)

1 pm : Mutual Aid for Survival and Freedom (en)

2 pm : Collective Care vs. Containment (en)

3 pm : Antifascism during Pandemic (en)

4 pm : Dialed In: A Conversation with Radio Pandemic (en)

5 pm : Grief Space  (fr/en)

6:30 pm : Pom Poko (fr/en) (film)

9 pm : Beneath the Paving Stones, the Dance Floor!

Call for “Art and Anarchy” across Distance

The twenty-first edition of the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair has to look radically different this year, but we’re striving for as much connection across distance as we can during our daylong gathering on Sunday, May 17, 2020. To that end, rather than our usual Art and Anarchy exhibit in the physical bookfair space, we’re calling on people to physically share anarchistic art and banners on the streets of cities across the globe. It’s a way of embodying our love and solidarity for each other, and also illustrating quite literally that we’re still here, that anarchism is still alive and well.

The idea is simple. On or before May 17:

• Put up street art and/or a banner—your own and/or others’ creations
• Take photos, or get a friend to do so
• Post the photo(s) on social media, or get friends to do it, with the hashtag #ArtAndAnarchy. Include the location, as general or specific as you want
• Share it with us at (info [at] anarchistbookfair [dot] ca), so we can then post it on our website and potentially use it, with your permission, in a post-bookfair zine

Please spread the word far and wide. It would be so beautiful to see art and anarchism spread across borders and walls around the world, bringing us closer together.