The Classroom
Craft & Conceptual Art: Reshaping the Legacy of Artists’ Books, with Zanna Gilbert and Megan N. Liberty
On the occasion of the final venue of Craft & Conceptual Art: Reshaping the Legacy of Artists’ Books opening at Minnesota Center for Book Arts in August, exhibition curator Megan N. Liberty and Zanna Gilbert, Senior Research Specialist at Getty Research Institute, will be in conversation about the exhibition’s research process and resulting catalog. The two consider the challenges of working with archival materials, the process of sourcing and selecting historical images and texts, and how best to complement these with contemporary writing. The publication was designed specifically to be a research resource and to encourage further investigation, exhibitions, and writing into artists’ books. Gilbert and Liberty will address how this catalog can contribute to the existing canon of books on books, and how the design and layout choices take into consideration the publication’s research uses.
The World Has Already Ended: A Tale of Relations, with Star Feliz and Jennifer Uribe
The new publication, When Eye Land, builds on Star Feliz’s research-based installation practice, which centers colonial maps, travel photography, and historical and fabulated letters. Their work explores the construction of the Dominican Republic’s national identity as a spiritual, socio-political, ecological, and cognitive process. Jennifer Uribe, Afro-Dominican scholar and PhD candidate in the UCLA Department of Sociology, voyages into conversation with Feliz to bring ghosts and colonial calculations/hauntings/apparitions to the fore, from the seat of empire. Together, they explore how black feminist concepts of resistance and refusal transmute the excesses of violence that live within our collective identities. This is the origin story of nationalism, the anthropocenic break—the birth of Latin America, a persistent urging to conjure other worlds. Signing to follow at the Printed Matter table. Presented by Printed Matter, Inc.
TOTAL LANDSCAPING, with Anna Cho-Son and Nora Khan
Active Cultures and X-TRA present TOTAL LANDSCAPING, a gathering space and series of programs inspired by an ongoing eponymous reading group organized by the two LA nonprofits. This overarching project sets off an exploration of the spatial politics of LA, from orange groves and botanical gardens to the city’s utopic housing experiments. Co-organizers Anna Cho-Son and Nora Khan introduce the project and present findings from the group’s sessions to date. This panel introduces No Canyon Hills, a group of land stewards, plant wildlife activists, and residents mobilizing against the development of the Verdugo Mountains. Led and moderated by TOTAL LANDSCAPING curators Anna Cho-Son and Nora Khan, the conversation will explore organizing tactics, the need for living documents, and the future of housing in Los Angeles. Exploring the methodologies of co-operative study, site-specific investigations, and the importance of interdisciplinary gathering—and featuring special guests at the table—they ask: How might records, research, and conversation themselves uncover new ways to relate to the notion of site? Presented by Active Cultures and X-TRA.
Zines, with Ari Marcopoulos and Hamza Walker
On the occasion of Ari Marcopoulos’s latest publication, Zines (Aperture, 2023), the artist will be joined in conversation with Hamza Walker, curator and director of LAXART. Ari Marcopoulos: Zines is the first overview of the photographer’s committed zine practice, including a selection of recent personal zines never before released. Beginning in 2015 and presented chronologically per year, this collected volume features more than one hundred zines—including some made during the pandemic, when Marcopoulos worked primarily on the screen, making PDF zines—punctuated by individual images presented at full scale. Presented by Aperture.
a symphony a work in progress (pt. II, andante), with Yusuf Hassan and Kwamé Sorrell
Artists Yusuf Hassan and Kwamé Sorrell (co-publishers of BlackMass) discuss their 2023 LAABF exhibition: a symphony a work in progress (pt II., andante). Building on a show first staged at Printed Matter in 2022 by Hassan, the reimagined installation-as-publication carries on a performatory exchange around motifs in music, sculpture, and architecture through an array of printed pieces (including simple folded sheets, rubber stamp prints, xeroxes, broadsides, and c-prints). Hassan and Sorrell will speak to how the show assembles an improvisatory visual dialogue across a range of interests seen through the lens of publishing, grounded in the printed form. Presented by Printed Matter, Inc.
On the importance of multilingual publishing, with Naomi Spence and Haley Penn
Naomi Spence, Speciwomen’s Director of Artists Liaison and Guest Editor of Speciwomen Issue 5, and Haley Penn, ex-Editor of Graphite Journal at UCLA, will discuss the making of a bilingual issue on Cuba and its diaspora. Aligned with Speciwomen’s mission to shift representation in the arts, this conversation will survey how broadening access through multilingual publishing is impactful in order to reach a wider audience within the US and beyond. Spence and Penn will discuss the making of Speciwomen 5, from collaborating with artists overseas to the process of designing a bilingual issue, as well as through the diversity in discourse that translated works can create. The conversation will be followed by a brief introduction and screening of short films by Sandra Ramos, whose work plays the element of water in order to comment on political thought, power structures, and capitalist spaces. Presented by Speciwomen.
Plaza Stage
Presented in partnership with Floating and dublab, with programming by Chulita Vinyl Club, International Anthem, Leaving Records, RVNG, and KCHUNG.
DJ sets with KCHUNG and T-Kay
KCHUNG Morning News
Nina Keith
Diatom Deli
Masahiro T
M Sage
V.C.R
Exhibitor Projects
Printed Matter presents a symphony a work in progress (pt. II, andante), building on an expansive installation-as-publication first staged by artist and publisher Yusuf Hassan in 2022. For this re-imagined presentation, Yusuf is joined by Kwamé Sorrell—co-publisher of BlackMass—to incorporate a second “slow” movement in response to the first, carrying on the performatory exchange around motifs in music, sculpture, and architecture. With an array of printed pieces, including simple folded sheets, rubber stamp prints, xeroxes, broadsides, and c-prints (as well as video work, sound work, and found objects), the exhibition assembles an improvisatory visual dialog trained on emblems, monuments, diagrams, and language, here understood through the lens of publishing and grounded in the printed form. This exhibition is realized with the generous support of Phil Aarons and Shelley Fox Aarons, with additional support provided by the LAABF Committee. Our thanks to LAXART, Hamza Walker, Kameron McDowell and Tim Fleming for their additional support.
La Tierra Mia - A Chicano Park is a publication and project presented by artist Bob Dominguez that archives memories of Chicano Park in San Diego, which was collectively renamed La Tierra Mia during a standoff in the 1970s. The publication catalogs photos and notes from contributors who have shared a connection to the park over the past 50 years. For LAABF 2023, Dominguez presents photographs and artifacts from this important history, and in doing so, hopes to formulate a story of not only the past, but also the maintenance of history for the future.
poster, performed is a collaborative project by Tricia Treacy + Arzu Ozkal, Wylie Kasai, Steve Bowden, and Mark Zurolo that explores design processes by combining digital media, computer algorithms, and experimental print techniques. The project engages in a dialogue between human and machine generators through the familiar poster format, which has retained its influential role amidst cultural changes brought about by digital printing. Using installation and performance, this project weaves digital content from folders, including submissions from participants around the globe, in order to create a one-of-a-kind computer-generated composite form.
Timeless Art Book Gems is a survey of underground photography and 1960s Japanese art books presented by KOMIYAMA TOKYO, a long-running vintage art book store in Tokyo. The project brings together photographs, zines, and drawings across many different genres from the age of Provoke and Daido Moriyama to 80’s queer magazines, fetish art, and alternative comics. In doing so, KOMIYAMA TOKYO contextualizes contemporary Japanese photobooks within a rich history of subversive independent publishing over the past several decades.
Laurence McGilvery & The Box LA present a special selection of rare and out of print books, catalogues, periodicals, and ephemera. This collaboration between Laurence McGilvery, notable antiquarian bookseller and collector, and The Box LA/Box Editions, a gallery and record/book publisher, engages both forgotten art histories and the work of emerging artists who straddle a similar ethos of risk and experimentation.
Active Cultures and X-TRA present TOTAL LANDSCAPING, a gathering space and series of programs inspired by an ongoing reading group facilitated by the two LA-based organizations. TOTAL LANDSCAPING sets off an investigation of sound, video, and publications in order to explore the contentious spatial politics of Los Angeles. From a survey of land use to a history of publishing in student-led activism, this partnered presentation shares research, records, and resources as exercises in landscaping. Each day gathers around a central theme, explored through activities such as curated conversations and artists readings. Altogether, the project aims to offer tools and opportunities for participant-generated texts and in-the-moment research by way of mapping structures, sites, and power across our experiences of Los Angeles.
Signings & Launches
P49 Launch and signing of Water of the Dead, by DAAY. Presented by AA Print and Publishing.
O24 No More Internet, Just Dreams! by Emilia García. Presented by Can Can Press.
O28 Launch of H.R. Giger - Necronimicon, reproduced by Crisis Editions.
I27 Launch and signing of All the photos • Berlin, by Winnes Rademächers. Presented by FELDER BOOKS BERLIN.
G21 Signing of Where My Heart Settles Down, by Wang Yingying. Presented by Jiazazhi.
Q20 Launch of THE STUD PIN ARCHIVE AND EPHEMERA 1970-1999, by Chloe Miller/Stud Pin Archives. Presented by LAND AND SEA.
G16 Launch and signing of TE AMO, by Luis Cobelo. Presented by Raya Editorial + La Chancleta Voladora.
G12 Signing of L.A. Vedute, by Thomas Locke Hobbs. Presented by The Eriskay Connection.
K15 Signing of Sarah Cain: Enter the Center, by Sarah Cain. Presented by DelMonico Books.
H5 Launch of Public Domain 3: Freak Mexicano, by Pamela Ramos, and My Dark Architect: Reader, by Patrick Jackson. Presented by Apogee Graphics.
H5 Launch and signing of Compost This Book, by Cass Marketos. Presented by Apogee Graphics.
P18 Launch of Cegła Magazine 2001-2021, Monograph of Magzin. Presented by Cegła (Brick) Magazine.
K9 Launch and signing of Seasonal Concepts & Springtime in Southern California Posters, by Jake Longstreth. Presented by Nino Mier Gallery.
O6 Signing of Sheer Drift: The Snake America Newsletters by Sami Reiss. Presented by Shining Life Press.
P14 Launch of Ghost Orchid by Cristina Molina. Presented by Antenna Press.
A Launch and signing of When Eye Land, by Star Feliz. Presented by Printed Matter.
Aileen Getty Plaza Ed Templeton signing. Presented by Printed Matter and Aperture.
N38 Launch of Yellow Magic Tarot, by Maeve Bowman, Presented by Angel Tears.
K16 Signing of Still, by Brian Calvin. Presented by Almine Rech Editions.
J14 Signing of The Enigma of Belonging, by Binh Dahn. Presented by Artbook and Radius.
G11 Signing of potential sightings. Presented by Volker Renner.
G13 Signing of Zines, by Ari Marcopoulos. Presented by Aperture.
J14 Signing of Publish Your Photography Book, by Mary Virginia Swanson. Presented by Artbook and Radius.
G5 Launch of Good Morning. Presented by Editions JOJO.
G5 Signing of Dori, by Kaamna Patel. Presented by Editions JOJO.
Q8 Launch of Collecting Memory, by Molly Maltman. Presented by New Dimension.
H16 Signing of The African Desperate, by Martine Syms. Presented by Nightboat Books.
G1 Signing of City Confessions, by Ed Templeton. Presented by SUPER LABO.
Offsite Programs
Mornings in the Garden: Talks on Bookmaking and Collaboration
Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles, 901 E 3rd St, Los Angeles, CA 90013
Hauser & Wirth Publishers and Printed Matter present a series of three conversations in the mornings before the Fair focusing on the ways artists, designers, editors, and publishers work together. These programs will take place each morning at 10 AM in the Garden at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles, just a 10-minute walk from The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Fuel up with complimentary coffee and tea service provided by Manuela, the gallery’s onsite restaurant.
On Friday, August 11, Designer Garrick Gott and editors Karen Marta and Jake Brodsky will be in conversation about books that activate artists’ archives, including Hauser & Wirth Publisher’s new publication, Ed Clark: The Big Sweep.
TATTOOPUNK Fanzine Takeover
Braindead Studios, 611 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Celebrate at Braindead Studios after the Fair on Friday. With set by DJ Shadow Man and DJ Aldubber, plus free drinks and surprise guests!
MEMORIA, SALSA Y RESISTENCIA
Ansonia Records, 12820 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90066
This showcase is based on “Where We Were Safe,” the award-winning interactive documentary/oral history archive of the lost places of Salsa music in NYC such as clubs, record stores, and outdoor venues. Original posters, archive photos, oral stories, vinyl records, and rare video footage of these historical landmarks of Salsa culture will be on display. DJ sets by Linda Nuves (L.A) & Nochenegra (Mexico), food by Simon Mexican Seafood and complimentary drinks by Jumbo Time Wines. Publications and ephemera for sale by Terminal Ediciones and vinyl with El Marchante & Estuario.la.