The Classroom
Third FloorSMLXL: Publishing by Artists, Collectives, Institutions, and Networks, with Laura Coombs, Yusuf Hassan, Siddhartha Lokanandi, Manuel Raeder, and Rachel Valinsky
Ulises, a Philadelphia-based bookshop and project space dedicated to artists’ books and independent publishing, hosts a conversation around present conditions of independent publishing and cultural production through the lens of scale—from a single artist and the collective, to institutions and networks. This session brings together Yusuf Hassan (BlackMass Publishing), Manuel Raeder (BOM DIA), Rachel Valinsky (Wendy’s Subway), Siddhartha Lokanandi (Hopscotch Reading Room), and Laura Coombs (designer of Cyberfeminism Index and A Sexual History of the Internet). Inspired by the iconic, unruly Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau book S,M,L,XL, the panel interrogates the ways in which scale affects and bleeds across categories in contemporary publishing, often informing the core identities of those involved. Presented by Ulises and The Goethe-Institut-New York.
Two Thousand Years of Non-Urban History, with Ali Karimi and Jack Murphy
This program marks the launch of Two Thousand Years of Non-Urban History, a book that revisits the founding principles of architectural and landscape discourse in the Arabian Peninsula. The session addresses the book’s central provocation that the oil economy’s narrative overwrites older traditions of landscape and territory. Highways cutting across the desert, reclamation works reshaping the shoreline, and agricultural land cleared for new cities renders earlier spatial narratives as a distant pre-history, more fable than precedent. Against this mono-myth, Ali Karimi of Civil Architecture, in conversation with Jack Murphy of The Architect’s Newspaper, traces an alternative genealogy of the region drawn from instances of pre-oil planning: from desert kites to fish traps to water channels, and from narratives of geology, agriculture, mariculture, and seasonality. This genealogy upends conventional methods of thinking through architecture’s relationship to its context, and instead opens onto possible interventions into the spatial history of the Peninsula. Presented by Kaph Books.
How We Practice, with Carmen Winant and Drew Sawyer
For artists, everything has become “practice.” It is the way we work, make, and move through the world. In this collection of essays—part cultural criticism, part memoir—Carmen Winant draws on a decade of competitive long-distance running to consider athletic practice as analogous to artistic practice. Winant explores the demands of both forms of practice and asks: How can one term hold so much? And what might the terms of athleticism have to offer the world of artists? Presented by Dancing Foxes Press.
Designed to be Red, with Brian Johnson, Kathleen Sleboda, and Christopher Sleboda
This conversation brings two projects on Indigenous graphic design into dialogue. Designed to Be Red: Native American & Indigenous Graphic Works (DelMonico Books), edited by Brian Johnson (Monacan Indian Nation), is the first publication dedicated to Indigenous typography, poster design, lettering, and graphic arts across the Americas. Spanning nearly two centuries and more than 80 tribes and nations, it reveals a rich lineage of Native graphic art made alongside, despite, and in resistance to dominant colonial narratives, coinciding with an accompanying exhibition at NYC’s Poster House (September 25–February 21). Johnson, a partner at the design studio Polymode, is joined by Kathleen Sleboda (nłeʔkepmx / Nlaka'pamux), a contributor to the book, and Christopher Sleboda, who together run the design and publishing studio Draw Down Books. Their forthcoming publication in Fillip's Supplement series traces the evolution of several Indigenous writing systems and their intersections with modern typography, proposing future-looking methods and approaches. This session considers Indigenous graphic design as a living practice, and the work of publishing it into a field that has long overlooked it. Presented by DelMonico Books and Fillip.
Parapraxis: Publishing as a Practice of Knowledge Production, with Aurélia Niat Toundji, Salwat Idi, Esther Hien, and Neals Niat
Parapraxis is a critical theory of publishing developed by Aurélia Niat Toundji and Salwat Idi, founders and directors of cahiers manufactoriel. It treats publishing not as the end of research, but as a mode of exploration in which editing, assembling, and sequencing produce knowledge in circulation. Rooted in African oral and performative traditions, parapraxis understands knowledge as relational and in motion rather than fixed. It embraces non-linear and rhizomatic thinking, where meaning emerges through constellations of texts and images. In this program, Toundji and Idi are joined by artists Esther Hien and Neals Niat to discuss this theory and how it informs both their multidisciplinary practice and their approach to artist collaborations. Presented by cahiers manufactoriel.
Continental Censorship and Circulatory Concerns, with merath, kimi malka hanauer, Kennedy Jones, Christian Nyampeta, and Pascale Obolo
What does it take to move a text, and who decides? Censorship is rarely a straightforward ban. More often it is a logistics problem. The book is not simply forbidden; rather, its process is slowed, made expensive, suspicious, hard to pay for, and easy to intercept in transit. Racial and political control has generally worked on distribution before it works on content. It is easier to strangle a route than to argue with a book. This program invites artists and publishers to discuss censorship as both structural modality for publishing of all kinds, as well as a circumstance that affects some localities more acutely than others. Presented by merath.
The Surrealist Book: Radical Ideas, Revolutionary Forms, with Jodi Hauptman, Starr Figura, Abigail Susik, and Barbora Bartunkova
For artists and writers of the Surrealist movement, the book was the perfect medium—a vehicle for subversive experimentation and a testing ground for revolutionary ideas. Working collaboratively to unlock the unconscious, they transformed the bound volume into a provocative new art form, whether through illustrated volumes of poetry, manifestos, or antiwar pamphlets. To celebrate the launch of The Surrealist Book: Tomorrow Lives in Mirrors, published in conjunction with the exhibition opening at MoMA on October 4 and featuring artists' books from the Helen and Sam Zell Collection, this conversation between curators Jodi Hauptman and Starr Figura and art historians Abigail Susik and Barbora Bartunkova explores the books of André Breton, Claude Cahun, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst, Georges Hugnet, Toyen, and Unica Zürn, among others. The discussion considers how the Surrealists, working against conventions, embraced the book as a way to challenge the strictures of contemporary society. Presented by The Museum of Modern Art.