BABZ Fair (formerly known at the Bushwick Art Book & Zine Fair) is a weekend long event that features small press art and poetry publishers and individual artist projects alongside a program of performance, readings, and workshops.

The 5th annual BABZ Fair, the first at Knockdown Center, will be taking place Friday, June 2 through Sunday, June 4, 2017. The fair is organized by Blonde Art Books, a Brooklyn based project dedicated to promoting independent publishing & self-published art books through exhibitions, book fairs, talks, and online exposure.

Over the years the BABZ Fair has grown dramatically and this year the fair will feature art books and zines by over 100 publishers and artists from across the country.

This year we are collaborating with artist Andrea Arrubla to produce the weekend programming. The full program schedule, including a new expanded program series, and workshop series, will be announced shortly.

Food and beverages will be available for purchase throughout the weekend.

Full Program Schedule:

MIAMI BEACH
Saturday, June 3

2:00PM
Wonder/Troll Thread
Shit Advice w/ Diana Hamilton and friends

3:00PM
Cammi Climaco will be reading a series of short pieces from a book in progress titled What Else Is New (eye roll) and Janelle Poe will read from her recent publications including the collaborative zine, Black & White Studies. Presented by Small Editions.

4:00PM
Brownbook, along with Fully Booked and Edge of Arabia, co-presents a special doubleheader featuring two creative duos: the artists Shahrzad Changalvaee and Iman Raad, who live and work between Tehran and New Haven, will present a talk regarding their work, “Two-Headed Imagomancy,” an ongoing, collaborative lecture performance project; Bailey Sheehan and Rahul S. Shinde, artist–designers based out of Philadelphia, will perform excerpts from their new book, Moses Hammer. This presentation is guided by the unique, transnational artistic dialogues induced by the cultural climate of the United Arab Emirates.

5:00PM
Benjamin Santiago & the Spaundou Players perform a set of songs in the constructed language Spaundou (pronounced like “SPAWN-doo”). Despite some intended goofiness, Spaundou is a real language with its own rules and “cultural” references. It isn’t nonsense but has it’s own sense. It is a way to experience of being half-Filipino & half-Puerto Rican but speaking the language of neither place. Selections include songs from troh-seht whah-zhej ee-woon-doo-zha-mah ah-yoo-ohb as well as new material! Take a pamphlet and sing along!

6:00PM
THE GALA is an in-progress play by Sean J Patrick Carney. In rural Northern Michigan, the Old Mission Artists Colony prepares for its annual fundraising gala. A few miles away, an ecological terrorist cell makes their own plans for the gala, an extreme spectacle of violence to wipe out the artists colony for good. Readers include Azikiwe Mohammed, Darcie Wilder, Eric Allan Schwartau, Lorelei Ramirez, Brian Droitcour, Erin Schwartz, James Allister Sprang, Mike Pepi, Amy Zimmer, and Michael Welsh.

Sunday, June 4

2:00PM
Slow Youth presents: A reading by Ariel Goldberg, a writer and artist who recently published The Estrangement Principle (Nightboat Books), a book of essays on labeling art queer.

3:00PM
The Puerto Rico Review is a new biannual journal of original fiction, poetry, criticism, and, more broadly, political reflection delving into or stemming from Puerto Rican literature. Envisioned as a space for the generations that are currently witnessing the failure of the constitutional project of the “Commonwealth” (Estado Libre Asociado) of Puerto Rico, the journal does, indeed, place the history and literature of Puerto Rico under review. This bilingual reading will feature editor-in-chief Cristina Pérez Díaz and contributor Rojo Robles. Presented by The Puerto Rico Review / Topos Press.

The Puerto Rico Review es una revista de narrativa, poesía y crítica original, así como de reflexión política a partir de obras literarias puertorriqueñas. La invitación va a poner bajo review la historia y literatura puertorriqueñas. Proponemos un espacio y un puente para la última generación que creció bajo las ilusiones del intento fallido de industrialización y modernidad del Estado Libre Asociado. En esta lectura bilingüe contamos con la editora fundadora, Cristina Pérez Díaz, y con el escritor Rojo Robles.

4:00PM
Sean D. Henry-Smith, Al Schmidt, Natalia Panzer, Millie Kapp, Elsa Brown, and Xatherine Gonzalez will be reading the celebrate the release of Flash 3: Queer Drive published by Glass Press. The flash drive is filled with anti-racist LGBTQ+ affirming content (poetry, video, photo, bedroom fashion shoots, gifs, comics, music, mixes, visual art) and mailed for free to Gay Straight Alliances across the country.

5:00PM
The Pilipinx American Library (PAL) presents America is in The Heart: A non-linear medley performance/tribute to Carlos Bulosan’s semi-autobiographical first novel. Completed in the 1940’s, America is in The Heart is the earliest U.S. published, English-language narrative of a Pilipinx American experience. It is written from the perspective of an immigrant itinerant laborer at a time of extreme xenophobia and violent racism during the Great Depression. Writers and artists invited to respond to the novel are Gina Apostol, Aldrin Valdez, Paolo Javier, and other special guests TBA.

WORKSHOPS ON THE PATIO

Saturday, June 3

1:30-3:00PM
We’re Calling It Speedback, Led by Wendy’s Subway
For this hour, we’ll do some thinking about our interests and obsessions as writers, and about how we talk to others about those identifications. Then we’ll invite participants to share some of this thinking, along with their own work, in a series of structured, one-on-one conferences. Participants should bring around two pages of work-in-progress to share (a printer will be available if you arrive without a hard copy). Our goal will be to get everyone in the group a variety of feedback, then culminate with some notes towards future revision. Register by email at info@wendyssubway.com.

3:30-5:00PM
Life Coloring Book, With Flat Fix
Bring your kids and come join Flat Fix for a Life Coloring Book coloring session (especially for kids, ages 3 and up). Oversized coloring books will be provided as well as jumbo crayons.

5:00–6:30PM
Soft Cover Book Binding for Artists and Publishers, With Small Editions
Learn how to create handcrafted books with a practicing bookbinder from Small Editions. During this workshop participants will learn how to fold and manipulate paper using specialist bookbinding tools, and will learn two versatile book structures – the pamphlet, the concertina, and the Japanese stab binding – which can be used to make artists books, present work, or to give as gifts. On completion of the workshop students will leave with a set of their own books and the skills to make more at home using minimal equipment.

Sunday, June 4

1:30-3:00PM
Memory Factory, Present by Parsons Fine Arts MFA
This project by Scynge Yunxin Xing explores how people’s experience and memories shape and influence the understanding of the books they just read and looked at. Xing will invite people for a conversation and ask various questions about the books they just read. In the end, a book will be made based on the answers and information collected from the conversation. It will be the book about the memories of books

3:00PM
Armageddon: Google Chess Victory
Endless Editions is proud to present the first ever Armageddon Chess Tournament.
Armageddon :: Google “Chess Victory” is an irreverent, sudden-death, winner-takes-all chess tournament. Armageddon sudden death play has a peculiar set of rules where games are started by drawing pieces to determine which color you will play. The player who wields black will have draw-advantage, meaning: if white does not check-mate black within the allotted time, black wins. In standard chess rules, the player who draws white is given advantage by making the first move, thereby dictating how strategy will be used.

Instead of following traditional rules, this tournament will feature extreme, and possibly not fair, methods of leveling the playing field, which will be announced the day of the tournament.

EXTENDED PROGRAMS SERIES (TEXAS)

Sunday, June 4

1:00-3:00PM
Artists Books Resource Roundtable and Q & A
Artists, writers, and publishers are invited to register for open conversations with some of the most fascinating curators, dealers, librarians, and organizers in New York. The intention of this program is to nurture discourse, discovery, and collaboration within the emerging publishing community. The first half of the program will be reserved for the roundtable discussions, topics will include: accessing local collections and diverse resources, learning about upcoming opportunities, and gaining feedback about publishing projects.

At 2:00PM, the program will be open to the public for a Group Discussion and Q&A moderated by Small Editions Director, Corina Reynolds.

Roundtable participants will receive a complimentary copy of Matter of Fact, a guide to NYC artists book resources (will also be available for purchase at the fair ) including an index of artists book collections, book shops, printers, binders, and workshops in the city.

Register by email at info@blondeartbooks.com, with the subject line Artists Books Resource Roundtable.

Presenters include: Glory Edim (Publishing Outreach Specialist at Kickstarter and founder of Well-Read Black Girl), Paul Romain (Programs and Development Manager at the Center for Book Arts), Max Schumann (Executive Director of Printed Matter), David Senior (Senior Bibliographer at MoMA Library), Robbin Ami Silverberg, (Artist & Director of Dobbin Mill / Dobbin Books), Farris Wahbeh (Benjamin and Irma Weiss Director of Research at the Whitney Museum of American Art), Tony White, (Associate Chief Librarian of the Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Martha Wilson (Founder of Franklin Furnace).

3:30-5:00PM
Artist-Run Reading Spaces, Panel & Book Display
From 1975 to 1978 in Amsterdam, Ulises Carrión operated Other Books and So, an artist-run bookstore and exhibition space dedicated to artists’ books and ephemera, which served as a key point of interchange between Latin American and European artists’ publishing communities. Drawing upon this example, this discussion brings together the founders of artist-run bookstores, libraries, and reading rooms. Ideas of circulation, access, and “making public” intersect both libraries and experimental publishing practices, and artist-run reading spaces offer alternative ways of actualizing these ideas outside of institutional paradigms. More than distribution points for texts, they function as social spaces of reading. Panelists will join in a 90-minute discussion of their projects, to be accompanied by a casual book display including items selected by the presenters and items from MoMA Library.

Panelists:
Gee Wesley, Ulises, Philadelphia
Rachel Valinsky, Wendy’s Subway, Brooklyn, NY
David Richardson, Dispersed Holdings, NYC
Kimi Hanauer, Press Press, Baltimore
Devin N. Morris, Brown Paper Zine Fair, 3 Dot Zine, Brooklyn, NY
Moderator: Sarah Hamerman, Artist Book Cataloger, MoMA Library

5:30-7:00PM
‘Nontsikelelo Mutiti convenes a community conversation centered around Black publishing and self determination. The discussion will be anchored by looking at the precedent set by the existence of The Negro Motorist Green Book published by New York City mailman Victor Hugo Green from 1936 to 1966, and The Black Book published in 1974.

This discussion seeks to investigate the role of publishing in the Black community today and asks the audience and panel to imagine what The Green Book and The Black Book of the 21st Century. What form could should these publications take? What could the table of contents be?

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About Blonde Art Books

Established by Sonel Breslav in 2012, Blonde Art Books is dedicated to sharing ideas, resources, and materials regarding independent publishing of art and poetry books. The blog strives to disseminate information about publishers and bookstores, artist and exhibition opportunities, and book production and funding resources.

In addition, Blonde Art Books has curated exhibition and organized programing at venues such as PS1, MoMA, Queens, NY; ICA, Philadelphia, PA; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Hyde Part Center, Chicago, IL; and The Silent Barn, Brooklyn, NY.

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