Six days, eleven rooms, 184 sessions, all of them between nine in the morning and nine at night. Nothing is streamed. Nothing is repeated. If two things you want are at 14.00, you pick one.
01 — the week
Thirteen hours, six days, printed at 420 × 594 mm and pasted on the Fanal Street hoarding every Monday night. Six hundred copies. They are gone by Wednesday and we do not print more.
Each day has its own character because each day has its own rooms. Tuesday is talks in the big vault; Wednesday and Thursday are benches and hands; Friday is sound; the weekend moves outside. Three of the day's sessions are listed here — the full grid runs to 184.
Talks only, forty minutes each, and no slides are allowed before 11.00. The Pitkali Vaults hold 420 and the balcony is unreserved.
Benches. Twelve places per session, three hours each, €14 on top of your pass because the materials cost us €11. You keep what you make.
The longest day: four sessions run to 180 minutes. If you have a pass and you are late, the seat goes to the queue at five past.
Sound all day in Hall B, which is a concrete shed and sounds like one until 16.00, when the drapes go up. Ear defenders at the door, free.
Everything moves into the courtyard. Four hundred chairs go out at 07.30 and come in at 22.00; if it rains we move to the vaults and lose 120 seats.
A short day and a slow one. Three sessions, then the courtyard is open until 21.00 with nothing programmed in it at all, which is the point.
We publish the seat count, the worst seat and the stairs before you buy, because a programme that hides them sells you a session you cannot sit through.
Barrel vault, stone floor, no rake. Rows 14 and back see the speaker's head and nothing else.
09.00–21.00 · step-freeA concrete shed on the water. Cold until midday, loud until the drapes go up at 16.00.
10.00–21.00 · step-freeForty-one steps up and no lift. We will carry anything but we cannot carry you, and we are sorry.
09.00–21.00 · 41 stepsBenches bolted down, twelve places at the front, forty-eight standing behind. Oil on the floor.
10.00–20.00 · step-freeOpen sky. Shade on the west wall after 15.00 and nowhere at all before it.
07.30–22.00 · step-freeSmallest room we have, and the only one that is always too hot. Twenty-four stools, no backs.
09.30–18.00 · rampOne of us walked the Thursday of the fifth edition on a day pass with nothing booked, and wrote down the part the printed sheet cannot carry. Five beats, 11,400 steps, one session missed by four minutes.
Everyone does. The Glasshouse is eight minutes from the Vaults and the grid says so in small type at the bottom of every column. Clay until 12.30, hands filthy, no lunch booked.
Paper by hand in the Reading Room: three sheets each, two of them bad. Haruo Kinoshita has made paper for fifty-one years and will tell you your first sheet is fine, which it is not.
Two hours with nothing in them. This is deliberate and it is the single thing people write to us about afterwards. Eat. The courtyard is nine minutes downhill and the bread comes out at five.
The late reading runs an hour with no microphone, so the back of the room genuinely cannot hear and we genuinely will not fix it. At 21.00 the doors are locked and you are outside with 89 other people.
Reading Room, Thursday 13.52 — somebody's notes from the paper sessionNo, and you should not want to. A six-day pass gets you into any talk with a free seat and any courtyard session. Bench sessions cost €14 more because the materials cost us €11 and twelve places is twelve places.
At five past the hour your seat goes to whoever is standing at the door. We have done this for six years and it is the only reason sessions start on time. There is no exception for a pass holder.
Three talks a day, audio only, published the following week. Bench sessions and the late readings are never recorded. If you want the thing, you have to be in the room, which is an unfashionable position and we are keeping it.
Nine of eleven rooms are step-free and we hold two spaces plus a companion seat in each of them until 48 hours before. The Reading Room is forty-one steps and we have not found a way round it. Write to access@ninetonine.mt.
Under-twelves are free in the courtyard and in the Vaults, not on the benches — there are blades on every table. The 17.00 demonstrations on Saturday are the ones built for them.
In full until 1 April, half until 25 April, nothing after that, and we resell your pass and send you the money if someone takes it. Last year 31 of 44 returned passes resold.
Day pass €18 · six-day pass €74 · bench sessions €14 on top. The box office at the Pitkali Vaults opens at 08.30 and takes cash.