Tiny presses, small publications, hand made books and diy production seem to be an ongoing theme this term. With USC’s shelf life taking place yesterday, and our own CalArts print fair coming up, this seemed like a perfect time to talk about small press projects.
SECOND STORY OF YOUR BODY
by Angela HumeThe Tiny Presses: Literary Citizenship class taught by Jen Hofer has been researching various tiny press practices from all over this term. (If you get a chance, take Jen’s class! It’s really wonderful) A few presses have visited the class talking about their various struggles and epiphanies since starting up presses, and a few have corresponded with the class over email. Each student in the class was asked to choose a press, and learn as much as they could as well as curate a few books for the class to read. I chose Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs based out of Brooklyn, NY.
The books are absolutely gorgeous, and all designed by Brenda Iijima, who I was fortunate enough to host an interview with. Her answers are a treat to read, and pertinent to both the writing and design communities. Definitely check out the books, they’re not expensive and presses like PP@YYL are completely financed by our peers in the design/writing worlds.
SIR by HR HegnauerBrenda, a running discussion in both the Tiny Press class as well as the design community has been the nature of “the book”. What is a book to you and to PP@YYL? This is a difficult question… I guess I am most interested in what the bare minimum pieces required to constitute a “book”?
Here is a rough draft of some notes pertaining to what a book might be in its potentiality. The aspect I’d like to stress most of all is that a book is a social document. A book is the skin and subcutaneous layers of culture in its formation, emergence and cohesion (how ideas link with other ideas). We need these documents as humans, to understand what we are being. How we are being. A book, if we think of it beyond genre is a body, a text, a script, a vision, a motion, a warning (of what it is not), and a guide—please add to this list. As humans we are very very susceptible to ideas. We digest ideas and they become the way we negotiate presence and action. That’s why we have to take our forms so seriously and try and anticipate subtle shifts in how we might be (begin new processes). Every acknowledgement, influence, appropriation, inclusion, etc. forms networks of relation. We are accountable to these flows of energy. We have to be utterly aware of what bodies we are placing in the position of power by these references in our work, in our published material. This then forms a contemporary identification—what it means to be in our present time. We indicate what we think is important, it is inevitable—so all acknowledgements, attributes, quotations etc. have to be very much considered.
PEACHES: THE YES-GIRL by Shelly Taylor A book is therefore what creates the future/or lack thereof if we are simply retracing endlessly problematic ways of being (see racism, sexism, poverty and other social issues that press upon human life). The way we enter into the environment and coexist is represented in how the text finds an ecosystem in a readership. This doesn’t seem like a functioning metaphor but I think it can be. Everything pertains to everything else. We use books to make this clear, to create receptivity, connections. We also talk, discourse, and use other modes of communication, but the book is important because it is a container and stores information and feeling for longer durations. What is really ephemeral is temporarily suspended. A book is like a refrigerator! I could say more—I should. But will abbreviate here for lack of time. Thank you for this feisty question!!!!
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