Opening Night
The official kick-off event of LAABF 2023 and your first chance to explore and browse! The evening will feature outdoor performances from the legendary Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra & Friends, and the launch of a ticket edition and mural by artist Carolina Caycedo.
Salenta The Selecta
Linafornia
Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra
Opening Night tickets are $25 and include a limited edition artwork by Carolina Caycedo, as well as multiple re-entry throughout the Fair weekend.
LAABF 2023 Opening Night is generously supported by cargo.site.
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.
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 not only a story of 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 + 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.
7pm | Opening Reception and Artists, Reading with Ariana Reines
We open with an iteration of Artists, Reading with widely-acclaimed poet Ariana Reines. Artists, Reading invites poets, writers, and artists to read from texts-in-progress, texts that inspire their practice, and artists’ writings. The series was originally conceived in partnership between LA-based Poetic Research Bureau and X-TRA.
Ariana Reines is a poet, Obie-winning playwright, & performing artist from Salem, Massachusetts. A SAND BOOK (2019) won the Kingsley Tufts Prize & was longlisted for the National Book Award. She has created performances for Performance Space NY, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Stuart Shave / Modern Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, & many others, sculpture & performance collaborations with Oscar Tuazon & Jim Fletcher, taught poetry at UC Berkeley, Columbia, & NYU, & been a Visiting Critic at Yale Sculpture. In 2020 Ariana founded Invisible College, a study hall for ancient & sacred texts and poetry: invisiblecollege.art. Her next book is THE ROSE.
Offsite Programs
After Dark, with Cult Classic
Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles 929 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90015
IdealBlackFemale
Lara Sarkissian
CHRYSALIS
DJ Warning
8ULENTINA B2B DISASSOC8
DJ sets and festivities after the Fair. Free to attend!