The Classroom
Codes, with C Magazine
C Magazine editors Joy Xiang and Maandeeq Mohamed mark the launch of C Magazine's latest issue #155 with a discussion about the ways in which artists and writers continue to explore codes as a way of reimagining the future. Drawing on critical writing and art practices of Matt Nish-Lapidus, Jon Corbett, Coco Zhou, Denise Ferreira da Silva, and Valentina Desideri (among others), they will explore codes as ethical, social, political, and legal boundaries, as the holder of secret meanings, as human-machine interfaces, and as forces of (and against) rebellion. Presented by C Magazine.
Organizing Power: Unionizing for Arts Workers
All working people have rights, whether we work at an art museum, a bookstore, or a school. Nationwide, arts workers have begun to unionize—they’ve enhanced their rights and improved their workplaces. But it can be difficult to know how to get started. Organizing Power is a series of Risograph-printed booklets which provide tools for union formation tailored to arts workers. Join artist Jessalyn Aaland and worker-organizers Jillian Grant, J Raul Guzman, Jessi Jones, Olivia Leiter, and Emily VanKoughnett to learn how arts workers successfully formed unions at Academy Film Archive, the Academy Museum, MOCA, the New Children’s Museum, and Skylight Books. Presented by Current Editions.
I See More Clearly in the Dark, with Vanessa Holyoak
This program features a reading and screening by Vanessa Holyoak in celebration of her latest novel, I See More Clearly in the Dark—a treatise on darkness as an urgent, vital recalibration for the late capitalist surveillance show. I See More Clearly in the Dark chronicles the experiences of a narrator as she wanders a dystopian near-future drained of life-sustaining darkness. The government has decided to wipe out national forests to install brilliant, homogenous resorts in which citizens are obliged to live under conditions of total illumination, with the forest’s expansive darkness remaining only as a memory and haunting source of imagination. Holyoak will share about the new publication and her practice of constructing uncanny, minimalist environments that allude to the cognitive overload of the present. Presented by Sming Sming Books.
Feminist Futurists, with Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Anuradha Vikram
This program centers a reading and discussion between X Artists’ Books speculative fiction authors Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Anuradha Vikram. Hakopian will read their publication The Institute for Other Intelligences (2022), which presents a transcript from a future convention for machine intelligences to discuss the human biases and omissions encoded in their training data. Vikram will read from Use Me at Your Own Risk (2023), a novel comprising five intricate narratives that take place in 2046, a near-future where both automation and climate collapse are more advanced. A conversation between the authors will follow. Presented by X Artists’ Books.
Clarion Series, with Nikita Gale, Harmony Holiday, and Janelle Zara
This conversation between Los Angeles-based artist Nikita Gale, author Harmony Holiday, and journalist Janelle Zara falls under the rubric of Clarion, a publication series that is developed in tandem with exhibitions at 52 Walker. Gale, Holiday, and Zara will share about their contributions to Clarion and their interdisciplinary practices of performance, poetry, and research. Presented by David Zwirner Books and 52 Walker.
Dancehall Queen. Erotic Subversion / Subversión Erótica, with Carla Lamoyi and Racquel Bernard
Carla Lamoyi and musicology scholar Racquel Bernard will discuss Dancehall Queen. Erotic Subversion / Subversión Erótica, a bilingual (English/Spanish) book published by the Mexico-based FIEBRE Ediciones and The Dancehall Archive and Research Initiative (DHA) of Kingston, Jamaica. This publication is an investigation of the musical and cultural scene developed around Dancehall Reggae and the rise of the Sound Systems within the popular neighborhoods of Kingston. It also focuses on the Dancehall Queen phenomenon: a style, aesthetic, and, eventually, dance competition performed by women amidst a cultural moment dominated by heterosexual men. Presented by FIEBRE Ediciones.
Image, Text, Abjection, Beauty, with Whitney Hubbs, Emma Kemp, and Vanessa Roveto
This experimental reading and slideshow event will place works from ITI Press’s latest publications in dialogue. Recent photographs by Whitney Hubbs and writings by Emma Kemp and Vanessa Roveto ask us to consider the blurring of love, humiliation, and humor that animates the work of these three Los Angeles artists. Set to a slideshow of Hubbs’ self-portraits, Kemp will read from her text Days, published with Hubbs’ images in ITI Press’s new BLIND DATES AND REUNIONS Series. Roveto will read from THE VALLEY, A VOID, the inaugural book in the new collaborative series Novella, co-published by ITI and SPBH Editions (Self Publish Be Happy). The presentations will be followed by a freewheeling conversation, and hopefully some laughing and crying. Presented by Image Text Ithaca.