This website is a definitive record of the diverse events which made up the Booknesses Project, hosted by the Department of Visual Art (DoVA), Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), South Africa, from 21 - 26 March 2017.

The project comprised workshops in

• papermaking, facilitated by Phumani Paper (UJ) and Mary Hark (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
• paper engineering, facilitated by Stephan Erasmus (book artist, Johannesburg)
• bookbinding, facilitated by Heléne van Aswegen (Stellenbosch University) and
• Book arts in the classroom, facilitated by Wilhelm van Rensburg (UJ)

A lecture series presented by

• Buzz Spector (Washington University in St. Louis, USA) titled Buzz Spector: The Book under (De)Construction and
• Susan Gosin, (Dieu Donné Paper, New York, USA) and Eliza Kentridge (Poet, UK) who presented Kentridge's new book Selected Signs

A Colloquium, Booknesses: Taking stock of the book arts in South Africa with keynote addresses given by

• Sarah Bodman (UWE, Bristol, UK) titled: Communities of practice - building an internationally connected practice in and for the book arts and
• Robbin Ami Silverberg (Dobbin Mill and Books, New York, USA) titled: The Aegean Sea: The compulsion to make books

with papers presented by 42 local and international speakers and two roundtable events titled

• South African practitioners and studios working across disciplines and
• South African book arts as a democratic force

Booknesses also held three exhibitions

• Booknesses: Investigating the Body. Emandulo, Chris Diedericks and Charles Hobson which opened on 23 March at the gallery of the SARChI Research Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture, UJ
• Booknesses: Contemporary South African artists' books, opened on 24 March by Robbin Ami Silverberg at the FADA Gallery, UJ and
• Booknesses: Artists' books from the Jack Ginsberg Collection, opened on 25 March by Sarah Bodman at the UJ Art Gallery with an extensive public, scholar and student walkabout/ education program.

A closing event, Jack Ginsberg and William Kentridge in Conversation, was moderated by Prof. Jane Taylor on 26 March at the UJ Theatre.