Program

In this overview of risograph printing, Olivia Ongaigui of Pindot Press will go over the basic printing process, how risograph printing differs from laser printing and its uses, with examples and a live printing demonstration.

Bio
Pindot Press is a risograph printing studio specializing in serving the creative community in the Greater Toronto Area by offering risograph printing services. Pindot Press prints mostly zines and prints, with a collaborative approach.

The Black Lunch Table (BLT) project will host a virtual edit-a-thon with VABF. Participants will create, update and improve Wikipedia articles pertaining to the lives and works of Black visual artists.

All are invited, with no specialized knowledge of the subject or Wikipedia editing experience required. A brief overview of the basics of Wikipedia editing will be given at the start of the edit-a-thon. BLT will have resources and a list of suggested artists, cultural creators and institutions on hand. Join us!

Bio
The Black Lunch Table (BLT) is an oral history archiving project which was first staged in 2005 and is an ongoing collaboration with New York–based artist Heather Hart and Chicago-based artist Jina Valentine. The BLT’s primary aim is the production of discursive sites, wherein cultural producers engage in dialogue on a variety of critical issues. BLT mobilizes a democratic rewriting of contemporary cultural history by animating discourse around and among the people living it.

ASL available for working group upon request

Avid reader, bookworm and collector Reginald Moore will be sharing his favorite books from his vast personal library, including signed, limited and first editions. We will hear Reginald’s insight from years of collecting books, particularly that of Black publishers, and will discuss the ways in which we find the books that connect to us.

Bio
Reginald Moore is an avid reader, indiscriminate collector and occasional writer based in Tennessee. 

“Voz” is a community collaboration and multimedia project led by Michael Beserra generating a lasting cultural resource of contemporary Chicanx poetry for our current and coming generations in Los Angeles and beyond. He is building upon the legacy of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Tia Chucha Press, The Watts Prophets, and others who have challenged the under-representation of Black, Indigenous and Brown creative works in academic, civic and media spaces. Michael’s goal is to continue developing opportunities for Latinx youth to see (and hear) themselves reflected, foster multigenerational relationships with artists and tap into their abilities for creativity and self-determination.

In this public program and conversation, Michael Beserra and featured poet Iris De Anda will speak of the project’s history, necessity and relevance in Chicanx culture today.

Bio
ESTE catalyzes liberatory experiences through publishing and public programs. In collaboration with artists, educators, builders and more, ESTE remembers and invites other ways of being for our current and coming generations.

Cecilia Vicuña will speak of her life as a “no Book,” where the book is all and nothing at once.

Growing up in a wilderness full of books, in a context of paradoxical beauty later destroyed by the violence against the book and the wild, her response to censorship via the artist book subverts all categories.

Bio
Artist-poet Cecilia Vicuña creates songs, performances, installations, paintings, films, books, lectures and sculptures. Her object-making is always attentive to ethics, the earth and history—and her improvisatory, participatory performances emphasize the collective nature of action and creativity to bring forth justice, balance and transformation of the world. She has authored twenty-five books. Vicuña lives and works between New York and Chile.

Sponsored by the Libby Leshgold Gallery

Ho Sun Hing Printers first began as a rubber stamp company founded in 1908 by Lam Lat Tong. Lam grew his business to become Canada’s first Chinese-English print shop; the shop provided Vancouver’s Chinatown community with fine printing services. In the autumn of 2013, Ho Sun Hing Printers announced their plan to shut down through a series of closing out sales. The print shop officially closed in 2014 after over a hundred years in business. Yuen managed to purchase a handful of letterpress blocks prior to the shop closing down. As a letterpress printer, Yuen is hoping to reprint the blocks one day. For this book, Chinese letterpress blocks were accessed from the WePress Collective and lead type was accessed from Emily Carr University, both originating from Ho Sun Hing Printers. Ho Sun Hing Printers retells the story of the Lam family’s business. The Chinese text in this book was translated by Jodie Mak of Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice. An interview with Norman Lam, Lam Lat Tong’s grandson, is also included. The book is a combination of letterpress printing by Marlene and risograph printing by Moniker Press.

Bio
Marlene Yuen is a Vancouver-based artist who received her bachelor’s of studio arts in 1998 from the University of British Columbia. She has exhibited at galleries, artist-run centres and cultural events in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Belgium and Japan. Her main focus is on handmade books using printmaking processes; her books have been retained in special collections nationally and internationally. Her current subject matters deal with Chinese Canadian labour history and preservation of Vancouver’s historic Chinatown.

Co-presented by grunt gallery

Two transcripts of conversations between friends/colleagues reveal the informal genealogy of a work in progress, published in multiple iterations incrementally. They condense three years of collective/solitary rumination on the idea of the body public. By dissecting the published body into five parts—face (cara/cover), circulation, spine, guts, and feet—the co author attempts to understand how each limb/organ/system functions in relation to/isolation from the whole.

PUBLISHING AS BLOODLETTING is a social media play that precedes a printed essay on circulatory tactics in developing world megacities, circulatory ennui in European art schools, and the circulation of knowledge from vernacular producers to institutional managers. Written and performed in collaboration with Amy Wu, Florian Cramer, Ming Lin, Reinaart Vanhoe, Sami Hammana, and Simon Kentgens.

THE SECRETARIAL SPINE is a fragmented series of conversations (and one monologue) generated during Unbound Libraries, a worksession on digital libraries and forms of knowledge organization curated by Constant, a F/LOSS design and research outpost in Brussels. Written in collaboration with Andrea González Garrán, Czar Kristoff, Dante Carlos, Jessica Gysel, Kristian Henson, Loraine Furter, Maria Mazzanti, Matthew Stadler, and Mia Melvær.

Bio
Clara Balaguer is a 
cultural worker and grey literature circulator. From 2010 to 2018, she articulated cultural 
programming with rural, peri-urban, and diasporic communities from the 
Philippines through the OCD, a
 residency space and social practice platform. In 2013, she co-
founded Hardworking Goodlooking, a cottage industry
 publishing hauz interested in the material vernacular, collectivizing
 authorship, and the value of the error. Currently, she 
heads the Social Practices department at Willem de Kooning 
Academy and teaches in the Experimental Publishing masters of Piet Zwart
 Institute. Frequently, she operates under
 collective or individual aliases that intimate her stewardship in a
 given project, the latest of which is To Be Determined.

In this pre-recorded talk between Whess Harman and Brandi Bird, the Project Manager and Term Editor of the Together Apart Zine respectively, they discuss the unexpected obstacles of producing a project meant to forefront togetherness and kinship during a pandemic, increasingly dangerous land defence work and protests for Black Lives Matter. Many of the contributors of these zines, all queer Indigenous artists and writers, formed kinship through land defence solidarity—work that was intensive and close to home. Our hearts all came to an abrupt stop as urban actions ceased due to the uncertainty of COVID-19. The zine has become a refuge: a togetherness that can be disseminated as we navigate intimacy in the nowness of a world tipped over.

Bio
Together Apart Zine is an ongoing project supported by grunt gallery following the Together Apart, Queer Indigeneities Symposium held in Spring 2019. It has developed into a peer mentorship project consisting of editorial terms headed by emerging queer Indigenous artists and writers interested in self-publishing.

Co-presented by grunt gallery

Artist Ken Lum will be in conversation with curator and writer Kim Nguyen to discuss his latest book, Everything Is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991–2018, published by Concordia Press in January 2020. Everything Is Relevant is a collection of texts that include diary entries, articles, catalogue essays, lectures, curatorial interventions and more. The two will discuss Ken’s diaristic approaches to critical writing and the social responsibility of cultural production that comes through his writing and work.

Bios
Ken Lum explores issues of identity, immigration, language and spatial politics through a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, performance, video, photography and critical writing. Lum’s artistic practice often raises questions that are left unanswered, prompting viewers to decipher potential solutions to universal concerns. He is a prolific writer. A book of his writings titled Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life 1991–2018 was issued by Concordia University Press in January 2020. He is an active curator, co-curating Shanghai Modern: 1919–1945, Sharjah Biennial 7 and Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia. His art has been widely exhibited since the 1970s.

Kim Nguyen is a writer and curator based in San Francisco, where she is the Curator and Head of Programs at the CCA Wattis Institute. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include Jeffrey Gibson: Nothing is Eternal, Cinthia Marcelle: A morta, Akosua Adoma Owusu: Welcome to the Jungle, Abbas Akhavan: cast for a folly and Ken Lum: What’s old is old for a dog. Recently, Nguyen led the Wattis’s sixth research season dedicated to the work of Trinh T. Minh-ha. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and periodicals nationally and internationally. She is currently completing her first collection of writings.

Reinterpreted Facsimile: N.E. Thing Co. “Companies Act” (2020) questions the definition of “facsimile” pertaining to artists’ books and examines what information gets lost by adhering to it when remaking culturally significant texts. Using the physical republishing of “Companies Act” (1978) by N.E. Thing Co. as a case study, this presentation aims to clarify the methodology and process used to reproduce the book and draw attention to its associated implications toward the field of artists’ books and print design. The standard logic of reprinting a manuscript generally follows the idea of “facsimile reproduction,” which is defined as reproducing manuscripts as close to the original as possible. This project aims to expand on this concept by proposing the concept of “reinterpreted facsimile” that adds contextual elements to the republished manuscript that would not exist otherwise. The conclusion of Smith’s work explores and defines the idea of a reinterpreted facsimile that productively blurs the line between art and print design.

Bio
Ryan Smith is the co-founder of Brick Press and a sessional faculty member at Emily Carr University. Brick Press is a Vancouver-based art + design bookstore and publisher that provides a platform for Canadian and international authors. Brick Press books rely on collaboration and experimentation through the medium of print.

The practice of publishing is not the process of putting a final and unalterable object into the world, but a practice of offering a substrate for emendation, revision, call-and-response, iteration and the birth of new texts. A series of provisional thoughts about the poetics, politics and pleasures of the unfinished.

Bio
In her practice, Rasheed grapples with the poetics, politics and pleasures of the unfinished. She creates ecosystems of iterative and provisional projects. These projects include sprawling, “architecturally-scaled” Xerox-based collages; large-scale public installations; publications; digital archives; lecture-performances; library interventions; poems/poetic gestures and other forms yet to be determined.

“All of our dreams of Decolonization must turn into framework, exercises, mutual aid, zines, DIY companions, artwork, performance rituals, poetry manuals, ceremonial offerings, savage kinship, untamed melodies, & love.” —Demian DinéYazhi’

Join artist, poet and curator Demian DinéYazhi’ in conversation with curator, educator and organizer PJ Gubatina Policarpio. They will discuss DinéYazhi’’s transdisciplinary practice—spanning poetry, performance, publication and visual art—reflecting the artist’s commitment against Indigenous violence and towards radical Indigenous survivance and empowerment. They will reflect on previous and upcoming collaborations including the 2019 exhibition and publication Solidarity Struggle Victory curated by Policarpio.

Bios
PJ Gubatina Policarpio is an educator, curator and community organizer. He has organized exhibitions, publications and public programs at Southern Exposure, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Asian Art Museum, Dixon Place and NURTUREart. PJ is the co-founder of Pilipinx American Library (PAL), an itinerant library dedicated to Filipinx perspectives. Born in the Philippines, PJ lives and works between San Francisco and New York City.

Demian DinéYazhi’ (born 1983) is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist, poet and curator born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) and Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Their practice is a regurgitation of purported Decolonial praxis informed by the overaccumulation and exploitative supremacist nature of hetero cisgender communities post colonization. They are a survivor of attempted european genocide, forced assimilation, manipulation, sexual and gender violence, capitalist sabotage and hypermarginalization in a colonized country that refuses to centre its politics and philosophies around the Indigenous Peoples whose Land it occupies and refuses to give back. They live and work in a post-post-apocalyptic world unafraid to fail. @heterogeneoushomosexual