#asian zine fair

[cartoonistcoop]

ShortBox Comics Member Interview: cowlick

Throughout the month of October, the Cartoonist Cooperative will be sharing interviews with members of the Co-op who have a new comic available at the ShortBox Comics Fair 2024! 

NOTE: The Cartoonist Cooperative is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way formally connected with ShortBox.  

Today’s spotlight is cowlick @cowlickmeadow and their new comic for ShortBox, Those Who Leave

We’d love it if you could introduce yourself and tell us about your background in comics.

cowlick: Hi! I’m cowlick, an artist from the Twin Cities, now based in SoCal. Comics are my first and truest love; my earliest drawings were furry dog comics in my Chinese textbooks inspired by my brother’s Calvin and Hobbes & Garfield omnibuses that I would read back to back. I would often make small comics and zines on the side while working in previz for animation, but I’ve decided to pursue it seriously starting with my ShortBox comic.

Tell us more about your new comic?

c: Those Who Leave is a 23-page memoir about Chinese death and burial rituals. In addition to depicting the cultural incongruencies of diaspora, I wanted to showcase Chinese rural graves, which are overlooked in western media.

Tell us about your creative process; how did you develop this comic and what are the steps you took to bring it to the final stage?

c: Initially I was developing a lesbian slice-of-life comic, but my thoughts kept wandering back to my late-2023 China trip and visiting my Grandma’s grave for the first time, so I scrapped that idea for this one. I started by dumping the events that happened and my thoughts into a Word doc, then editing it for brevity. One of the core visuals in my mind from the start was depicting how buried bodies nourish the earth which then comes back to us as produce, so I built my story around that. After my outline, I went into thumbs and roughs without a script. I rewrote and re-did several parts as I was working on final ink, especially near the end.

Can you talk about your visual style? How did you develop it?

c: Since I was making a memoir set in China, I studied memoirs from Asian authors like Yeon-Sik-Hong and Nagata Kabi and Chinese village paintings. Earlier, I went to a Chiharu Shiota exhibition and her series “In the Earth���  stuck in my mind long after I left, which informed the visual style of my comic as well.

To me, style is a tool that changes to serve the story, and I’ll change mine according to what I want to express. I am easily demotivated though, so I tend to stick to simpler styles that are doable in a reasonable time frame. For example, there was more Chinese ink work that I cut out since I ran out of time, but I’d love to explore that in future works.

Read the rest of the interview HERE! And dont forget to check out the Shortbox Comics Fair to support these lovely creators!!

[anotherwaytosay]

June 14 at 8PM, at Molasses Books we're welcoming back Daniel Owen with his revised translation of Document Shredding Museum by Afrizal Malna, whose poetry "moves from intimate encounters between lovers and friends to mass environmental and semantic destruction, engaging with Javanese literary tradition and the archives of colonial and postcolonial violence" (World Poetry), Chloe Tsolakoglou with her translation of The Commune by Marios Chakkas, a novel written in 1972 under the military junta regime in Greece (great review of the novel in Jacobin here) in its first English publication (Inpatient Press), and Sarah Riggs with her translation (w/ Lindsay Turner) of Liliane Giraudon's Love is Colder than the Lake (Nightboat Books) where, at a certain point,  "we can note the numerous accommodations / for violence // hunger misery death seem / always necessary to the proper functioning / of the State." Read on for reader bios and further still for several highly recommended translation/literary events.

Daniel Owen is a poet, editor, and translator between Indonesian and English. Recent publications include a revised translation of Afrizal Malna's Document Shredding Museum (World Poetry Books, 2024). Daniel edits and designs books and participates in many processes of the Ugly Duckling Presse editorial collective and is a PhD candidate in the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley.

Chloe Tsolakoglou is a poet, translator, and PhD student in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Sarah Riggs is a prize-winning poet and translator, as well as visual artist and filmmaker. Her eighth book of poetry, Lines, is forthcoming with Winter Editions in 2025. She has translated from the French in recent years Etel Adnan, Olivia Elias, and Liliane Giraudon, and has co-edited with Omar Berrada Another Room to Live In, an NEA award-winning collection from the Tamaas Translation Seminars of fifteen Arab poets (Litmus, 2024). She lives in Brooklyn, where she writes, paints, and produces films, including the forthcoming Outrider, a documentary on the poet Anne Waldman.

***

June 14 - 16 at 41 Cooper Square: the Typographic Book Fair 2024 featuring presses, publishers, galleries, booksellers, etc., with lots of beautiful books. 

June 15 is the East Village Zine Fair at St. Marks Place, a celebration of  underground printmaking.

July 23rd - 25: Summer lectures hosted by the British Center for Translation and the National Center for Writing, tune in virtually!, for "Translating Don Quixote into Arabic" with Shadi Rohana, "Translators as Labour Organisers" with Mayada Ibrahim, Kira Josefsson, and Alex Zucker, and "The Place of Digital Publishing" with Sohini Basak, Eric M.B. Becker, Andrew Felsher, and Rachael Daum

July 24th at 6PM at Yu & Me Books, yours truly will be in conversation with Sam Bett for the launch of his translation of The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani (Soho Press)

[liminaldreamscape]

Charging Lucid Dreaming Oracle

Card 33 | Maintaining Consciousness

Initial Impression

Rolling hills that look like a body or a face

A window or a portal into an abyss, ocean, or the stars

Layers of worlds, realms that change how the same stimuli are interpreted or perceived

Up or down is perspective. No true compass

Associated Dream

Night of May 18, 2024

I had a variety of disconnected dreams, all of which I only remember in parts.

In one, I was watching a survival challenge.

In another, I was outside of a university with some of the organizing folks in the region. It was winter and there was snow on the ground. We congregated at a protest for Palestine after hearing that another organizer was arrested for posting a poem about intifada. At the protest, people working for the university or some other institution — but notably not cops or security guards — were carrying protestors out. These people were taking scarves off of protestors necks, supposedly to protect people's safety regarding choking. I remember thinking this logic made no sense.

The group of us were outside of a building, a little ways away from another group wearing traffic vests. The other group consisted of CUPE 4207 union members, led by former President Nathan, and some other older folks. We were waiting for them to join us, so we could coalition build.

In the last dream that I remember, I was at some sort of convention or event. The entire dream was colour graded in this blueish-gray and it was dimly lit. At the event, there were people that had booths set up like at a convention, but the quality of everything felt more like a grade school fair. A couple of men had a booth for dramatic and silly tarot readings. These men made suggestive faces at me to try to entice me to get a reading.

Another booth belonged to an East Asian man and was for a game called "Magic". I think it was a TTRPG. The booth, which was just a bristol board with information on it, was quite unimpressive to look at. Another man commented as much, saying that if the display was more visually appealing, Magic could really sell.

This second man then began asking for an East Asian woman he called "Eve". I knew this to be a character name, so I told him her real name and pointed him in her direction. The Magic-owner, East Asian man mused out loud about the other man's intentions in finding "Eve", who we both understood to be working on the Magic team. There was a giant banner in front of us belonging to the other man, which indicated that he was making a zine or something similar for Magic. I pointed out the banner and guessed that that was likely why he was searching for "Eve". The East Asian man agreed and said that he had hired the other man to make the zine and to handle all the print related things associated with Magic.

Oracle Keywords

Boredom, saying "no", monotony, sleepwalking through life, staying conscious, practicing present-moment awareness

Connecting Pieces

Practicing mindfulness via perspective shifting

Throughout the dreams, I felt like I was just there, going through the motions. I felt disconnected and the events felt uninteresting. Notably, they are all related to things going on in my life right now. Perhaps a call for mindfulness in my relationships, in my organizing, and in my TTRPG work.

[beenamistryart]

Toronto is having its very first asian zine fair tomorrow! Join us tomorrow and support your local Toronto asian artists at the Tranzac Club from 12-5pm. Full vendor list and additional info here.

I’ll be selling copies of my Gender Euphoria zine, Empty Pasture zine, and some riso prints. 

[musterniillustrates]

hi and hello! i’m going to be tabling at toronto’s first asian zine fair at the tranzac club from 12PM-5PM on sunday, november 19th. i’m real excited about it, so swing down if you get the chance! further info on the event below:

| website | facebook event page | twitter | instagram |

poster by @sebbyconfetti

[fanzines]

One day I’ll go to Zine Day Osaka. But for now, I’ll just post about their upcoming Zine fair… 🇯🇵

[yosick]

Toronto’s First Asian Zine Fair Sunday, November 19th 12:00 - 5:00 pm Tranzac Cub Details here.

[eurphrasie]

🐇Hi, I’m Suki Hollywood (a.k.a Dracula), one of the co-creators of The Untamed Fanzine!

The Untamed Fanzine started as an email thread between my friend Flick and I. 2020 was a Bad Time, and like many people, we used the world of The Untamed as a way to escape. It goes without saying that were - and continue to be - completely blown away by the show. Both of us are writers, so we decided to turn our discussion into a zine. Voila!

The Untamed Fanzine includes the 12-page print edition and assorted goodies you see here, as well as access to the 80-page digital edition (80.....A4.....pages!!!). It is currently on sale at the online Glasgow Zine Fair for £5.50 (international shipping is available).

Once the print run is finished we will be opening up access to the digital zine on for free, with the option for donation. All of the profits from this project are going to besea.n, a UK based organisation championing East and South East Asian voices.

We also...are considering writing second issue! We are accepting submissions for essays, fan art, creative response and memes now. If you want to send anything our way, you can email us at @ yilingpatriach666@hotmail.com. (Flick came up with the name....I swear...)

Thanks so much to everyone in the Mo Dao Zu Shi, CQL and The Untamed fandom. We’ve had some really nice chats with people about the zine so far and it’s just nice to have some actual human contact in this lonely year.

Thank you for reading, and please consider reblogging this post for other fans to find - my Tumblr account is nearing deathlike levels of inactivity so I don’t have many followers! 🐇

Dracula

[nakasomethingkun]

Ezaaaaaaa OMG I just binge watched Enchante and it's such a gem of a show! I watched Cherry Magic because of you too so it's not like I went into it thinking that it wouldn't be good, but it surprised me just how much I'm liking it! Episode 8 was so good and so worth the wait, but now I'm worried about what's going to happen in the remaining 2 episodes 😭 I don't want anything bad to happen to Theo and Akk just when they got together 😭 What do you think is going to happen in episodes 9 and 10?

Yessss my plot to get people hooked on queer asian shows is working hohoho

Hey there!! I'm so glad that you're enjoying Enchante!! :D

that is a great question.... there are a few things that come to mind. first, I think the show is going to tie up any loose ends with the ambassadors. we'll see how Saifa is gonna be living his dream of becoming a singer for the simple price of playing cupid lmao, and we're definitely gonna be seeing Phupha and his mom (based on some clips in the BTS special). They're also gonna want to show what tf is up with Tan and how his relationship with Natee is gonna progress, since it's obvious that he likes Natee. As for Wayo - it looks like his arc is mostly resolved, but I can also see him having a brief interaction with our main boys so that he can get some closure with Theo, given that their last interaction was them throwing hands. Idk. Idc that much about wayo lmao

second, there's the issue of the literature major being phased out.... which I seriously wish will not happen!! because my baby Theo worked so hard on the zine fair!! but. I'm also prepared for the possibility of it happening, because it would be a pretty good source of conflict or dilemma for Theo's character and his relationship with akk e.g., will he change majors? I don't see it happening, given how stubborn he is and how much he loves literature. So will he change schools? Maybe :'( but it'll definitely be a struggle, since Theo obviously would want to always stay close to Akk.

third, they might include some reactions from theo's parents regarding his newfound romance, but I don't think it'll be angsty, since they've established that Theo's mom is okay with her son being queer. They might throw in the whole social class difference thing, but that wouldn't make sense. If status difference was gonna be an issue, theo’s parents would've never let him be close friends with akk in the first place. we already know that Im and Egg are gonna react like the supportive teasing queens they are in ep 9, so I'm looking forward to that :D I always love me some sibling dynamics!!

finally, and probably most obviously, they'll introduce Sun's character properly. He's definitely gonna play a big role in the last 2 episodes. He seems to genuinely like Theo based on the interactions we've seen of him and Theo, but we don't know yet what the nature of his feelings is. I think he's gonna show up in Thailand and trigger a whole crisis in Akk. We know from the trailer that akk is gonna have self-doubts about whether or not he's worthy of Theo, which is just so :((( I hope this doesn't entail him and Theo breaking up tho, because THEY JUST GOT TOGETHER. i'd be so mad if they broke up so quickly lmao. but i do think it'll be good to address Akk's insecurities, and I do think that it makes sense that his inferiority complex wouldn't disappear overnight after he and Theo got together. those things take time, you know?

I can also see them throwing in something that would make theo go back to France :( but if they do, my only wish is that akk will go with him lol

honestly, idk, anon. I personally think that the show has been well-paced so far, so I'm holding out hope that the writers won't throw in too much shit in the final 2 episodes unless it can all be resolved nicely and meaningfully. With all these things needing to be addressed, I hope that they won't have time to come up with some nonsense to drive theo and akk apart lol. so maybe we won't have to experience the penultimate-episode-angsty-break-up curse!!

[antiquatedfuture]

Antiquated Future Holiday Newsletter Of Zine-Like Delights

First off: We just made our 2019 bestsellers list! (We love lists.) Of the over 600 different items in our shop, these are the 20 zines, 10 albums, 5 books, and 5 miscellany things that sold the most. In other news: We now have all our favorite calendars & planners in stock, we're having a temporary store-wide cassette sale (that also includes a decent handful of LPs and CDs, as well), a zine sale on select titles, and we're restocking things every single day. In terms of holiday stuff: We'll be sending orders most days until December 23rd. We'll also be tabling here in Portland, Oregon at Publication Fair on December 22nd, for all your last-minute gift needs. And, if you can, please support the many fine brick and mortar stores that sell Antiquated Future goods. Oh, also: we just celebrated our 11-year anniversary! Thanks (as always) for supporting what we do and making it possible to continue this long. We're so grateful.

NEW ZINES Cat Party #2- Essays and comics about cats. Highlight: a wild, long-form fairytale cat comic from Dame Darcy of MeatCake fame! ($3) Cat Party #3: The Collectible Cat- An entire Cat Party issue about cat collectibles. TV lamps, cross-stich samplers, bone-China mugs, and the stories behind their existence. ($3) Country Songs For Driverless Trucks- A second short collection of short poems from Murder City Devils' frontman Spencer Moody. Playful, silly, occasionally gruesome. ($5) Delicate Pipes- A distilled personal history of digestive issues. Coming at the material from a variety of different approaches and interspersing collage work, Delicate Pipes is part personal zine, part art object. ($7)

DRIVEL #1- It's finally here: the new zine from our all-time best-selling zinester, Gina Sarti! Welcome to DRIVEL, her new zine series, an old-school variety zine in all its glory ($5) Eulalia #2- A gorgeous little zine dedicated to friends dealing with grief and to a late great cat. Words and images in tribute, in support, in mourning. ($5) Lullaby for the Drowned- A heartfelt, compact zine from Jonas (Fixer Eraser, We the Drowned, a million other great zine series). ($1)

Mugs- A mug-shaped zine about mugs called, simply, Mugs. Collecting them, loving them, stories about them. ($4) Pro Wrestling Feelings #7- The latest issue of everyone's favorite wrestling zine. A cool deep-dive for wrestling fans and a curious peek into a very specific subculture for everyone else. Comes with two wrestling DVDs! ($10)

Radical Domesticity Zine Gift Pack- All current issues of the ever-lovable Radical Domesticity, wrapped up and stuffed full of extras. Comes with a handmade card, a double-sided fortune teller. Nicely wrapped, tied with a bow. ($20) Self-Guide- An illustrated series of "ten guiding principles" from Portland zinester and comic artist Michelle Zellers. Inspiring, useful, aesthetically pleasing. ($4) Shared Sentiments- A visually lovely, simple, straightforward zine that brings a lot of joy. The perfect little gift for the person in your life who likes perfect little things. ($4) Terrestrial Invaders- A series of encyclopedic entries written as though insects are constantly at war with humans. So good and weird and fun. ($1.50) What's a Per-Zyne?- An introduction to the personal zine (by way of a big box, full of zines, opened decades ago). ($1)

NEW CALENDARS & PLANNERS

2020 Famous Faces Calendar- Paintings of legends from across the musical map: soul to country, garage rock to jazz, surf to folk revival, and beyond. From Shana "Crawdad" Cleveland, from La Luz and Shana Cleveland & The Sandcastles. ($8) 2020 Justseeds & Eberhardt Press Organizer- A stunning planner, unlike any other. Each month features a full-color, politically-minded spread from a different Justseeds artist. (Pocket & Planner-Size) ($15 & $18) 2020 Lunar Phase Calendar Poster- The lunar phases among night-blooming flowers. ($18)

NEW STICKERS Cat In Mirror Sticker- Some mirror time. For all self-appreciation states and existential crises. ($1) Deth P. Sun Sticker Pack- Five stickers from comic artist extraordinaire Deth P. Sun, detailing the adventures of a cat-like creature traversing fantasy realms. ($4) I See It All Surfer Cat Sticker- Good eyes, on a surfboard. ($1) Pumpkin Patch Sticker- Cute ghosts, black cat, pumpkin patch. ($1)

NEW POSTCARDS Home is a Feeling Postcard- The feeling of home. Perfect for all wanderers. From letterpress artist Hope Amico. ($3) Keep Writing Postcard Pack- An assortment of postcards from letterpress artist Hope Amico and her long-running Keep Writing postcard project. Get yourself a pack of five or a pack of ten. You won't regret it. (5 for $10, 10 for $20) What Have You Got To Lose Postcard- A handsome letterpressed tooth. ($3) You Are Your Only Critic Postcard- An ever-important letterpressed reminder. ($3)

NEW BOOKS All Friends Are Necessary- A new novella from Tomas Moniz, one of our all-time favorite writers. ($12) NEW MISCELLANY Raven Notepad- A raven, looking cool and spooky. On a notepad. ($4) Zine Fest Bingo- One perforated sheet of four bingo cards to play during those long days at zine fests and events. A lot of fun for those who love zine culture. ($2)

NEW MUSIC Adam Lipman- The Slouch- An absolute gem of low-key indie rock. A casual croon over warm tones, a rhythm section moseying sweetly along, feeling good. Musical contributions from David-Ivar Herman Düne and Franklin Bruno (Nothing Painted Blue, The Extra Lens). (cassette tape) ($8) Failed Flowers- Faces- Led by Anna Burch and Fred Thomas (Saturday Looks Good to Me, City Center), Failed Flowers is an overlooked supergroup of power-pop perfection. Released on Slumberland, as part of their 30th anniversary seven-inch series. (7" + digital download) ($8) Half Shadow- Dream Weather Its Electric Song- Long one of Portland's best kept secrets, Half Shadow makes dream narratives into softly psychedelic minimalist dark-folk anthems. (LP or cassette tape) ($8 & $15)

Haunted & Comme À La Radio- Split LP- A split LP of "not noise, not music, not poetry" from Haunted and Comme À La Radio, two artists pushing boundaries. Spoken word cut-up broken-sound collage. (LP) ($20) Lisa Schonberg- UAU: Music for Percussion- From ace percussionist Lisa Schonberg (Secret Drum Band, Kickball, Explode Into Colors) comes a song cycle made at "the intersection of art, ecology, entomology, and bioacoustics." (CD) ($7) Strange Parts & Ogikubo Station- Split Tape- A split between psych-poppers Strange Parts and punky power-pop band Ogikubo Station (Mike Park of Asian Man Records and Maura Weaver of Boys). (cassette + digital download) ($8) Various Artists- Dreamlife: A Summer Mixtape to Benefit Womanly Mag- A benefit compilation full of gifts: synth-pop, bedroom-folk, post-punk, hip-hop, electro-pop, and many things in between. (cassette + digital download) ($8)

NEWS *In addition to the wonderful novella above, Tomas Moniz just released his first full-length novel, Big Familia, on University of Chicago Press. *For all you zine readers and creators who have opinions: Quimby's Books zine queen Liz Mason is conducting a zine survey, as part of a bigger project. Make your voice a part of it!

*On January 2nd, we’ll be kicking off a new series at Powell’s City of Books called First Word. We’ll be curating a night of readings and music in the biggest indie bookstore in the world! Very exciting. Free and open to the public. See you there. Until next year, Antiquated Future

[believexfanzine]

Emmanuel Jasmin of DELUSION OF TERROR RECORDS

(Manila, Philippines)

April 2015/Believe Fanzine issue #4

delusion.of.terror@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/dotrecordsdistroph03

instagram: dotrecordsph

Kamusta Emman? What made you want to start a label? How was the first release?

Hi Rann! All is well. Just finish listening to Feral Trash 'Trashfiction'LP. Awesome stuff,i highly recommend it. Regarding the label,the label started out after me and my younger brother went on a small South East Asian tour back in 2003. It started out as a distro at first since i've acquired a lot of Hc punk titles from those places i've visited. The label part was born a couple of months after with the idea of releasing local and foreign bands that i like. The 1st official release came out as a collaboration with friends from the now defunct Take 4 Collective. That was the Vitamin X "Pissed Off" CD back in 2005, since the band was currently on tour in the region at that time. Working with friends make things more easier and less complicated so to speak.

 Since that time, where have you looked for inspiration and guidance in running the label? How much have your ideals and views changed since the beginning of it all?

Running the label is more of a trial and error thing for me. It has been a learning curve for sure. One thing i learned about running the label is that you need to have a steady source of income to finance it, in other words you need to have a regular job. Since i consider the label more of a hobby, I always save up money from my work to keep the financial side of the label active and current. I dont rely much on label/distro sales to finance or cover up the cost of running the label. There are expenses that will surely arise when you least expect it. So the best way for me to deal with it is to allocate some of my personal earnings which would serve as the backbone of the label/distro finances. So far i was able to manage it. I always keep in mind that the main reason why the label got started is to release bands that i LIKE regardless if its going to sell or not, at least I'm able to see something materialize out of the band's hard work. That is more than enough for me.

 Along with the label, you've obviously expanded your focus beyond just local bands and included mostly bands from Asia. What made you focus on such area?

As previously mentioned my idea of starting the label is to release bands that i like. So i dont confine my releases to just local bands. I do think that there are tons of good bands out there that needs to be heard beyond our waters. I believe that we should keep an active and open communication with neighboring scenes in our region. Doing co releases with other labels/bands outside our country is a good way to promote our own scene to them,the same goes with their scene to us. Having our own releases being available in other countries means a lot as well. It's more of a mutual cooperation.

 How did you start connecting with bands outside your own country?

I started being in contact with bands outside our country thru zine writing and tape trading. Prior to me having a label/distro i used to edit my own fanzine called Resist To Exist. Thru my zine i was able to reach out to various zinester outside our local scene. It gives me a better perspective / insight to know whats going on beyond our own scene at that time.

 In relation to the previous question, how do you choose the bands that you want to release/ co-relase or distro?

Before i join a particular release i always make sure that i like the band. That's the most important thing. Music & lyric wise should be appealing to me. I want the band to be part of the label for the right reasons, at the same time most of the bands i work with are the ones i have an affinity with. As for the distro titles,same thing. I always carry titles that i like. I often distribute bands that have made an impression or impact on me. The distro part pretty much describes my musical taste.

 Doing record label over the years, what's your stand in this digital age with free download of music from the internet and at the same time vinyl records started to increase its demand?

It always goes down to the listener if they ought to get thier music online for free or buy the actual physical copies. To each thier own. If you think that it would be more convenient to just download the music online and just pop it on your ipod or whatever devices you have then feel free to do it. Maximize the technology you have but i do hope that you'll be able to get something out of it. Whatever floats your boat.

As for Vinyl records making a huge comeback,it's kinda like a double edge sword. It's good in a sense that a lot of bands are able to release their stuff in that format and it's one of the many ways to properly document thier recorded material which is great. The only problem that im seeing is that the prices of vinyl records are getting more expensive. Expensive in a sense that there those who would sell a particular release higher than the normal price. I mean i dont have a problem if you make money out of your label releases as long as you do it fair & square. What i dont really like are the bootleg copies which are being sold at insane prices. Just because this release was done in a limited pressing doesn't justify the idea of selling it 5x times the original price when it 1st came out. A bootleg is a bootleg.

 What is your favorite thing about running Delusion of Terror Records/Distro?

The thing i like most about running the label is being able to release bands that i love and adore. It's an awesome feeling working with bands that you strongly believe in. Helping them spread thier releases to a wide array of folks and getting positive & not so good feedback makes you want to strive more and work harder for future projects.

 Do you think the future is still bright in the Philippine hardcore punk scene?

The local scene is pretty much alive and kicking and it still has a lot to offer in my opinion.There are a lot of good bands here that are worth checking out. We just need to go over the extra mile to further boost our scene here. If a band releases a demo or zine maker has new issue out go buy and pick a copy. If someone puts on a show always pay the required entrance fee and dont fuck things up. Small stuff like these definitely helps the scene. Complaining and whining about everything you despise about the scene wont do you any good if your not doing anything to help or rectify the situation. Talk without action equates to nothing.

 What advice can you give to kids who want to start a label/distro?

- If you’re going to do a particular release always try to check which format suits your budget so you can plan it well.

-Release bands that you strongly believe in.

- Always do a test print of the cover/sleeve of your releases to ensure that you have the right information,same goes with the proper length & width of the layout before sending them to the printing press.

-Feel free to trade your own releases with other label/distros. It helps spread the label name and it promotes the bands as well.

 Maraming Salamat Emman! Where can we check out your distro and releases?

Thanks Rann for the interview, appreciate the support. All the best with your upcoming projects. Mabuhay ka!

For updates regarding the label/distro you can check the following pages. Thank you for reading and have a good day! :)

[zedecksiew]

Creatures of Near Kingdoms

This is CREATURES OF NEAR KINGDOMS. It is an illustrated catalogue of 75 imaginary Southeast Asian plants and animals. It answers some pressing questions:

Q: Where does the haze come from? A: It’s moths. Moths made of ash!

Q: Where do hellhounds go when they are good boys? A: The street. Their jinn masters have all converted, and dogs are haram. :(

Q: Why does Borneo look like a big fat giant mudskipper? A: It is a big fat giant mudskipper.

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I wrote the texts. Sharon Chin made the art. The animals are linocut prints. The plants are pattern designs.

We spent years on this. Now it is a physical thing: 158 pages of paper and ink, glue and fine factory dust, something we can finally hold in our hands -- thanks to Maplé Comics.

You can hold it in your hands, too! Creatures Of Near Kingdoms is available online >>>HERE<<<

(Or you can PM me, if we are connected on social media. With postage, it costs RM25 for peeps in Malaysia, and USD17 for folks overseas.)

It’s also in brick-and-mortars! Kinokuniya and Lit Books, currently; it’s slowly making its way to other good Malaysian bookstores.

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The texts are a mess inspired by folklore, naturalist’s handbooks, D&D monster manuals, and watching monkeys steal jackfruit from the tree in our yard.

Sharon showed some of the lino-prints at Run Amok in 2016; she exhibited the pattern designs at Chan + Hori Contemporary last year.

We were lucky to work with Jun Kit, who did the design and layout and also the fucking lovely cover. Its colours look like our evenings -- the distant pink sunset; a refinery gas-flare lighting the foreground.

Plus Shika Corona did our profile portraits. I love Shika and am on a mission to put her into as many things I work on, as possible. 

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via GIPHY

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Maplé Comics (ma-pley; yes, that’s intentional) is excellent.

Mainly an imprint for Malaysian indie comics -- slice-of-life strips, travelogues, etc -- plus they are open to trying weird things. They were very, very patient with us. 

All of Maplé’s books are priced around the RM20 mark. That’s the Malaysian book-fair-going, reading-public norm.

Making Creatures of Near Kingdoms as a hardcover art book would have been the natural choice for Sharon and I -- but we felt that it could, and should, go further than that.

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The people who blurbed the book are my heroes:

Hanna Alkaf has been super supportive. How does she do so much? Her debut, The Weight Of Our Sky, is available on preorder, and on every most-anticipated list imaginable.

Leena Wong recently discovered a new species of marine animal omg! (Sacoproteus nishae, a sea slug that looks like a bunch of green grapes. She named it after trans activist Nisha Ayub.)

Hassan Muthalib -- film historian, Father of Malaysian Animation. His Sang Kancil shorts were formative to me. And anyone else who grew up here in the late 1980s, probably.

It’s hard for Sharon and I to see Creatures Of Near Kingdoms straight any more. But if these people like it, we’re reasonably certain it’s not bad.

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“Near Kingdoms” -- as in taxonomic ranks, mysterious alam ghaibs, and the idea that nature is foreign?

Also: it was only after we got the book back from the printers that I saw the title acronym-ed as CONK. Which is fucking great, I love it -- but it wasn’t intentional. How did I not realise it before I am SO BLUR.

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(Note to nerdz: 

I don’t think CONK is RPG-friendly; the creatures within are too subtle, too "normal” to be gameable.

But! I wrote it parallel to my games stuff, so there’s some cross-pollination. The Sacred Agarwood and the Spirit Tiger are basically from this book? I’ll write a supplementary RPG zine for CONK at some point, probably.)

[peckhampeculiar]

Turn up for the books

WORDS: GARTH CARTWRIGHT;  PHOTO: LIMA CHARLIE

Down a cobbled alleyway next to Peckham Rye Station’s railway bridge huddles Books Peckham. This tiny shop is a discreet gem hidden away from the hustle and bustle of the main street. A small, portable sign at the corner of 125 Rye Lane and the alleyway notifies passersby of “secondhand books”, but for those who venture down here, past Asian Takeaway and a juice and ice cream vendor, there exists a treasure trove of books and zines.

“I’ve been a zine distributor since 2004,” says Books Peckham’s proprietor Peter Willis. “I’m from Cambridge originally and I was making zines and selling them at local gigs – punk gigs, stuff not covered by the mainstream media.

“I’d do zine fairs and review other zines, stuff from the USA. In 2007 I moved to Camberwell to study illustration at the art college and I’ve been here ever since.

“The stuff I was doing was initially illustration-based, but I was involved with the punk scene and then I got involved with the London Zine Symposium – we did it for seven years. That was the big one. There were four of us and it cost about a grand to put on.

“When the couple involved broke up we lost the funds for venue and table hire. Since then I’ve been involved with the South East London Zine Fair. We’ve held two at the Amersham Arms and one at the Montague Arms.”

The zines Peter stocks at Books Peckham range from Maximum Rocknroll – the foremost American punk publication that is more than three decades old and is still going strong in inky black and white – through to tiny publications devoted to specific subjects. There’s a glossy third wave feminist zine that mixes fashion shoots with polemics and a £15 book zine of “found” photographs. It’s a fascinating and eclectic collection.

“I like the direct interaction with people,” says Peter of the zine community. “I write and trade zines with people – I’d send 10 copies of my zine to someone doing a zine and vice versa and, that way, we got to spread the zines around.

“When I’m doing a zine I will only print up 50 on average. Two hundred is the biggest print run I’ve done. I like to keep my zine print runs small – sell out of one then move on to another. That said, if I run out of copies and someone orders a copy, I can run off other copies – five or 10 – and that means I have stock again for fairs.”

We talk about the iconic punk zine Sniffin’ Glue, edited by Mark Perry, which started out in Deptford in 1976. “I like the fact that I’m operating not too far away from the historic base of punk zines,” Peter says.

In addition to zines, Books Peckham sells – obviously – books. For a small shop it has a vast selection that, when the weather is good, spills onto tables outside the shop. Titles range from art monographs to works by famous authors, pulp fiction and eccentric bohemian musings – and everything is very reasonably priced.

Before he opened in Peckham, Peter had a stall at the Camberwell Sunday Market. “I did every Sunday I wasn’t working and it just took off,” he says. “At the first market I did, I sold two thirds of my stock.

“The first day I met a guy who lived on the Peabody Estate nearby. He bought two books and he said, ‘Do you want to buy 3,000 books?’ I thought he was joking but it turned out he was a former book dealer and had all this stock.

“I was happy doing the market but then they finished it in September last year. I did a couple of fairs – at DIY Space and other alternative spaces – so I was keeping my eyes open.

“I heard of this place but by the time I got a day off work to look at it, it was gone. A florist took it, but only briefly. Then I saw a sign in the nail salon at the corner of Rye Lane and the alleyway saying ‘shop for rent’.

“I got the key on Christmas Eve, went to Cyprus until January 10 and I’ve been here since. This was the cheapest place I could find and Ali, the landlord, is really cool – he didn’t ask for a deposit and it’s weekly, so I have the option of walking away if I can’t sell enough stuff. It allows me to enjoy it and everything I do feeds into Books Peckham and beyond.”

Peter doesn’t earn a living from Books Peckham at the moment. He makes enough from book and zine sales to cover the rent, but beyond that his shop is a labour of love. To cover living expenses he works for Camden Arts Centre and shares an illustration studio in the Bussey Building.

“Our studio is called Studio Operative – it’s me and Alice Lindsay – and we publish an illustration journal called Limner,” he says. “We’ve done four issues of that as well as artist monographs. We’ve just done one with Chris Harnan, he’s an artist who lives around here.”

Peter has enjoyed his first year as a bookshop owner. “It’s been great,” he says. “Straightaway it was better than I thought it would be. There’s not been a week when I’ve not covered the rent. People find me from Instagram or from the street. I’ve met poets and artists and book collectors and all kinds of local people. I enjoy chatting with everyone who comes through. If things get quiet, well, that gives me time to read.”

As we chat, a constant flow of people drop by to buy and sell books. Books Peckham is only open three days a week, and there’s no guarantee which three – so stumbling upon an antiquarian treasure or pulp gem is a matter of chance.

“Because I’m on shift work I’m unsure which days [I can open],” Peter says. “I put up on Instagram the days I’m open each week.

“I’m sorry I can’t be open more days, but most people understand that this isn’t work as such. It’s not a grand scheme. I definitely need to be wary of not burning out because I’m essentially working seven days a week, with Camden and the studio and Books Peckham.”

Hopefully the shop will continue to develop organically, allowing Peter to spend more time in SE15. Right now his focus is on a new zine, one that’s related to his shop.

“I’m doing The Books Review of Books, a zine focusing on what I sell and people I’ve met who are doing interesting stuff,” he says.

“It seems like doing the book stall I’ve met so many people who are doing great things, so I want to make it more visible – what I do and what they do.”

[whalepunksart]

Thesis Update #3

This week I went to several events. There was the Brooklyn Books Festival on the 15th, the New York Art Book Fair on the 21st, and that same night on the 21st me and a few other people from class had our art on display at Greenpoint Gallery in Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn Books Festival did not have a lot I was interested in, as it was mostly children’s books, but walking around and asking people questions helped me learn a lot about publishing. I even collected a few business cards from some publishers to check out in the future. One publisher I found very interesting was Together Tales. It was close to what I’m interested in--interactive storytelling, mostly gamified storytelling. The woman at the stall also told us about directories for women of color in illustration as well as LGBT folk in illustration! Overall it was a very enlightening experience.

The New York Art Book Fair was fun and colorful. I got to see many artists show off their zines and prints. There were so many different stalls, and it was so lovely to see so many Asian artists make beautiful art and comics that I could relate to. There was one stall shared by two girls that had the funniest zines, short stories making light of weird, fetishist microaggressions that are almost a daily thing for Asian women.

The exhibition at Greenpoint Gallery was a fun and rewarding experience. It was the first time my work has ever been in a non-school gallery show, and the night got even better when someone bought my work! It was a very touching moment for me, because I’ve always told myself that I make my work for me, and me only as a way to sort of prepare myself for the inevitability of rejection. This experience was incredibly validating and important to me. Whenever people have paid me for art, it has always been through commission--I never thought people would ever take interest in my own personal work, and it was such a pleasant surprise when someone did!

As for actual updates on my thesis, the last week and a half has been incredibly hectic for me and I think I’ve fallen a bit behind. I’m still working on character concepts, but I thought I’d have more characters completed by now. I think I may be experiencing a case of artist’s block, and it didn’t help when I veered off the thesis outline I had laid out for myself and decided to start drawing a background when I meant to start drawing backgrounds in october.

Below is the background I started sketching out:

Here are the concepts I’ve been doing for one of the characters of my story, Nalini, but I’m not to happy with how stiff they look. I realize I might have been trying to be too perfect about it and ended up wiping my own style out of it completely. I intend to redo them in a looser, less time-consuming style.

[zines-in-chinese-cultures]

Resisting in place: zine-making as decolonial practice in Aotearoa, New Zealand (21 Jan 09:00-11:00 GMT)

Kerry Ann Lee

(she/they, Red Letter Distro/ Enjoy Contemporary Art Space/ College of Creative Arts, Massey University) This presentation will focus on zine-making in Aotearoa, New Zealand by artists of Chinese heritage and Asian diaspora, as a creative method of self-expression, identity construction, and decolonisation as Asian Tauiwi (non-Māori). Central to this practice is kaupapa Māori framework of whakawhanangatanga (establishing connections), kōrero pono (storytelling) and manaakitanga (share resources), towards finding solidarity and articulation in turbulent times. Examples include activist-based independent publishing, poetry, visual art, design and zine-making spanning over the past two decades. These examples will evidence forms of care and resilience that are cumulative in effect, and evolve intergenerationally, transnationally and cross-culturally. The presentation asks us to consider the usefulness of zines and zine-making in bolstering Asian diasporic voices before the pandemic, during Covid-times, and to consider the future beyond our present moment.

Kerry Ann Lee is an artist, designer and scholar from Pōneke Wellington, New Zealand, who is well known for her work with self-published fanzines over the past two decades. She is the founder of the Red Letter Distro (redletterdistro.com), a punk rock mail-order catalogue-cum-‘occasional distro’ of curated zines, comics and artist publications. Since 2001, Red Letter has supported zine makers through zinefests, art book fairs, exhibitions, talks, workshops, mail order catalogues and distribution networks around the world including in Mexico, USA, Australia, Ukraine, The Philippines, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Lee teaches illustration and graphic design at the Wellington School of Design at Toi Rauwhārangi, College of Creative Arts at Massey University. Lee’s research explores urban settlement and culture clash occurring in the Asia-Pacific region. This includes the illustrated artist book and national touring art exhibition 'Home Made' (2008) which celebrated an alternative pictorial history of Chinese settlement in New Zealand. She was the Creative Director for the Asian Aotearoa Arts Hui 2018 (www.aaah.org.nz) and is co-chair of Enjoy Contemporary Artspace. Lee regularly exhibits artwork nationally and internationally. www.redletterdistro.com Instagram: @redletterdistro Instagram: @kerry.ann.lee

[ozgeersoy]

Publishing as Method: In Conversation with Ozge Ersoy and Paul C. Fermin

On publishing cultures and trends, conceptualisations of “Asia,” and care and community during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This interview was originally conducted in December 2020 for the publication anthology of Publishing as Method (curator Lim Kyung-yong) in ArtSonje Center, Seoul. As part of this project, around forty initiatives around Asia were interviewed about their publishing activities, including archives, artist-run spaces, collectives, publishing houses, bookshops, art book fairs, and design studios. The conversation with Özge Ersoy, AAA’s Public Programmes Lead, and Paul C. Fermin, AAA’s and IDEAS Journal’s Managing Editor, is shared below. It has been updated and revised for IDEAS Journal.

Lim Kyung-yong (LKY): It seems that the small publishing culture is now quite active in Hong Kong. So is the annual Hong Kong Art Book Fair. What is the reason for the emergence of this kind of publishing culture in Hong Kong? Many artists or curators seem to use these publications as a stage for themselves, and as this publishing culture spreads throughout Asia, cooperation projects through publishing are increasing. How does AAA diagnose this trend?

Özge Ersoy & Paul C. Fermin (ÖE & PCF): We’re just as excited about all the book fairs and small publishing and distribution platforms that have emerged in Hong Kong in the last ten years—Small Tune Press, Zine Coop, Display Distribute, and Queer Reads Library, immediately come to mind—they breathe so much life into the scene. We believe publications made by these independent publishers are sites where art history is being circulated and contested, and that their voices are critical for a fuller understanding of lived realities on the ground—narratives unable to make it past the usual gatekeepers, or that do not register in, say, more academic discourses. That’s one reason they’re part of our Library Collection.

At the same time, there’s a much longer history around art publishing in Asia that we are committed to study and share with our communities. It Begins with a Story: Artists, Writers, and Periodicals in Asia—the 2018 symposium AAA organised in collaboration with The Department of Fine Arts at The University of Hong Kong, and the second symposium presented at Focal Point in collaboration with the Sharjah Art Foundation—was inspiring on this point, as it explored the countless ways periodicals have acted as sites of exhibition, artistic experimentation, and art history making, while shaping communities around them. For instance, Anthony Leung Po-Shan presented a paper on a group of Hong Kong artists invited to write and develop works for the Hong Kong newspaper Mingpao in the early 2000s, playing a crucial role in connecting art with society and politics.

On IDEAS Journal, we also have pieces that do the work of historicising various publishing cultures. Our former AAA colleague Michelle Wong wrote about three moments of art writing circulation in Hong Kong, with one of her case studies stretching back to the 1960s. Display Distribute wrote an ambitious piece that historicised zines and independent publishing cultures in East and South East Asia, locating alternative trajectories to the usual Western-dominated narratives in the region. Artist Merve Ünsal wrote about the prominence of self-publishing practices of artists and art initiatives in Istanbul, helping us understand it as, in part, a response to the lack of public funding and institutional support, and also a symptom of the need of self-historicisation in a geography ridden with coups, ruptures, and ideological shifts—and this is important to acknowledge.

Karen Cheung reminds us that smaller publishing platforms, especially with regards to zines, have been proliferating because they’re ideally suited to responding—real-time—to ongoing events and movements, given their low costs, ease of production, the fact that they’re less beholden to gatekeepers and institutional constraints, and how in many ways they capture visceral and affective perspectives often neglected in more traditional publishing platforms. Zines come to be a “perfect representation of the spirit of camaraderie and mutual support amongst strangers at protests.” A question we’re starting to ask, so powerfully articulated by Joy James (credit to Eunsong Kim for this reference), is the extent to which acts of care and support under situations like these become stabilising functions of what she calls the “captive maternal.” An open question for which we don’t have any good answers in the context of Hong Kong.

That said, it’s important to acknowledge that practitioners in the cultural field operate under ever increasing precarity, and so whatever “emergence” or “trend” we’re seeing must also be understood as adaptations to decreasing social safety nets across the board, including for many artists and writers and freelancers lumped into that category euphemistically called “flexible labour.” Attempting to navigate the high barriers to entry—internships, gatekeepers, cultural capital, proximity to “global cities,” not to mention discrimination faced along various axis including race, class, gender—these all contribute to what Byung-Chul Han diagnoses as our “burnout society” (credit to Patrick Blanchfield for this reference). In this sense, the “cooperation projects” you’re noting, and perhaps we can also add the increased attention to “mutual aid” projects, come to be means of survival and solidarity under neoliberal precarity. While none of this is news at this point, we feel it is important to reiterate.

LKY: Within a heavily capitalised and highly developed society like Hong Kong and Singapore, a role seems to be required to produce knowledge or information and classify it. For example, we can expect various roles from Singapore for the practice of art in Southeast Asia. I wonder how AAA recognises “Asian” art, how AAA understands and conceptualises “Asia.”

ÖE & PCF: AAA gets the “Asia” question a lot—and for good reason. Lee Weng Choy even wrote an essay about it in 2004, in which he opens by wondering how often AAA deals with the “Asia” versus “Asian” distinction.

While it may seem like a hedge to say that’s an impossible question, and that any response risks a number of essentialising and reifying moves—really, one sense in which we understand “Asia” is as this endlessly constructed, contested, and contradictory space. It is imagined. It is historical and material. It is produced and reproduced.

“Asia” as a signifier has been wielded aspirationally as an organising principle for transnational solidarity or so-called “Pan-Asian” unity, while also being deployed for more nationalistic, imperial expansion. We like how David Xu Borgonjon, who we worked with on a solid IDEAS essay about the racial politics of art school recruitment, noted that “Asian” is also a fetish category. Because while Weng distinguishes “Asian” as an adjective (characterising something as “Asian” in its essence), against “Asia” as a signifier of a more “deliberately complex, contested, and constructed site,” David makes a distinction between “Asian” as “a biopolitical concept of race” versus “Asia” as “a geopolitical concept of place.” Lots of ways to frame this.

You also see “Asia” crop up in the competitive logic of “global cities” (as outlined by Saskia Sassen)—for example in the Brand Hong Kong campaign, launched by the government in 2001, where they attempted to rebrand HK itself as “Asia's World City”—this marketing/PR/branding exercise in turn becoming another site of ideological contestation for actors across the political spectrum.

But that discussion seems like a quaint, distant memory, with all the structural and material violence being unleashed, literally, everywhere right now in 2021. Stuart Hall put it so powerfully when he questioned his own discipline of cultural studies, asking “what in God’s name is the point”—given the urgency on the streets. He added that anybody taking these issues seriously as an intellectual practice “must feel, on their pulse, its ephemerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little we’ve been able to change anything or get anybody to do anything.”

Your question also raises the issue of knowledge production and circulation. Elite capture and co-optation is a very real thing, something Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò has written about quite persuasively. Who are these sorts of discourse ultimately for? What structures do they obscure and reproduce? How is the very discourse itself structured in advance by the subject positions of the speakers in relation to the state? Jackie Wang reminds us how market logics are often behind the compulsion to brand one’s analysis as the latest “hot take,” how you’re pushed to distinguish yourself and set yourself apart from others—as opposed to how your work builds upon and is in conversation with others—and basically how damaging this is for knowledge production.

On that point, it’s only right for us to acknowledge some people and institutions who have been influential for the two of us on the “Asia” question—especially the ways they help trouble narratives centring the nation-state or region in Asia, which in turn helps us see critical differences, entanglements, and linkages across these arbitrary demarcations. Climate change, for example, is no respecter of national borders—and groups like Feral Atlas have spoken to this point—“nature” as something that precedes and exceeds the human. At the same time, Iyko Day cautions us that certain calls to move “beyond the human” assume—and problematically so—a shared humanity that can be deconstructed in the first place, instead re-inscribing the very Eurocentric frameworks we hope to disrupt.

And then there’s also Third Text Asia and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, or more recently the fascinating work by folks at Verge: Studies in Global Asias. Individual scholars like Chen Kuan-Hsing, more specifically his 2010 book Asia as Method, still gets a lot of traction too—even if in productive disagreement—challenging us to think of Asia as itself a site that generates theory (not simply a site for “Western speculation”), enabling certain decolonial efforts. But we'd also like to acknowledge our indebtedness to scholars like Iyko Day, Shih Shu-mei, Lisa Lowe, Neferti X. M. Tadiar, Raewyn Connell, all our AAA Researchers—the list could go on—with the main point being that we aren’t thinking in isolation, and that countless others have been thinking longer and deeper about these issues—and one challenge for us has been enquiring into what’s actually helpful for clarifying the stakes, or what’s simply a form of co-opting or re-inscripting of the status quo.

Two of AAA’s own projects on the “Asia” question include Mapping Asia in 2014, and more recently the MAHASSA project, spearheaded by our AAA Researchers led by John Tain, which brings together a diverse group of faculty and emerging scholars to investigate parallel and intersecting developments in the cultural histories of Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. We present this project in partnership with The Dhaka Art Summit and Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University, with support from the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative, and have organised several talks and panels alongside closed-door sessions. For us, one of the most generative discussions involved the politics of famine in the context of anticolonial and antiauthoritarian struggles in South Asia and North Africa, and how social realism and abstraction responded to narratives of nationalism. The hope is to better understand common and divergent trajectories in cultural histories within Asia and across regions, rather than trying to find the definitive word on what Asia might be.

One last thing we want to say about this is that we aren’t actually walking around all day thinking about abstract notions of “Asia” and the impossibility of defining it—because no one is. (Well, actually, someone out there probably is…)

LKY: AAA has worked with many institutions, not only in Asia but also around the world. As you know, more and more countries around the world are now becoming culturally, politically, and economically conservative in their own interests. We experienced globalisation and took it for granted, but domestic centralism related to the coronavirus and minority hatred is also strengthening. How is this situation affecting your activities? AAA works on an invisible global art network, but it also seems that such a network is being threatened. I wonder how AAA recognises and responds to this situation.

ÖE & PCF: First, we want to express our gratitude to you and The Book Society, who in many ways are helpful models for responding to this trend—we want to ask you this same question! How do you do it? Every time we visit Seoul, we make it a point to visit your space, and last time we were touched to see a poster on your front door in support of Hong Kong. We also want to acknowledge your generous book donations to our library over the years. Even this very project is another instance of Book Society reaching out and thinking critically with institutions across the region. How can we continue to collaborate with and support you?

But, yes, your question notes the re-emergence of nationalistic and far-right movements across the globe. COVID-19 has exacerbated existing inequalities, and there continues to be a disproportionate effect on the same, already struggling communities. According to a recent World Health Organization report, low-income countries have received just 0.2 percent of all COVID-19 shots, while wealthier nations have received more than 87 percent. Some are referring to this as vaccine apartheid, as yet another example of this moment’s necropolitics. There is so much suffering and grief right now, more than any one person is able to properly frame or comprehend—it staggers us; it exceeds us.

Given the health crisis and the conservative pressures you mentioned, we are all pushed to think about existing structures for education, community, and care. Many of our collaborators across the region are asking how to re-imagine these structures, and our ongoing online conversation series Life Lessons started in response to these questions. Some examples include Melati Suryodarmo and Ming Wong speaking about traditional performance forms in Asia that influenced their teaching practice and the types of kinships they’ve developed around their work; Suzanne Lacy and Wu Mali discussing how social practice builds on feminism and ecology; Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh and Zeyno Pekünlü discussing collectivity as a form and method of learning, and the role of the university as both an enabler and an obstacle in developing collective pedagogical models.

Also, over the last year, AAA has made accessible several Research Collections that look at artist-driven initiatives that take mutual support and solidarity as their core values. Womanifesto, a feminist biennial programme that was active in Thailand from 1997 to 2008, is an example we would like to highlight. This initiative started with an exhibition in the mid-nineties to make space for women artists, and has evolved into a biannual event with exhibitions, workshops, residencies, and publications, which reflected the changing strategies in contemporary feminist thinking and practices. For those interested, we would recommend the discussion “Backyards and Neighbourhoods” that brought together artists Varsha Nair and Phaptawan Suwannakudt with scholar Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez, where they discussed what has changed since the mid-1990s—around the time of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing—when women artists and curators sought to create spaces for visibility and representation.

Two other archival collections we would like to highlight were spearheaded by a team led by Chương-Đài Hồng Võ: Manila Artist Run Spaces Archive, featuring material on six initiatives active between the mid-eighties and the early 2000s, and Green Papaya Art Projects Archive, which comprises substantial materials on the longest active, artist-run organisation in Manila. Ringo Bunoan, who has been instrumental in the work around these archives, asks at what cost artist-run spaces in the Philippines adapt themselves to the current crisis characterised by pandemic fatigue and unfair practices in the arts field: “To be truly alternative now, artists must be part of the reckoning and reconfiguration of the structures that perpetuate divisions and inequalities that have long plagued the art scene in the country.”

As always, we keep learning from artists.

LKY: In addition to archive activities, AAA is engaged in activities such as research, publication, and exhibition. Please introduce some of them. In particular, I would appreciate it if you could explain AAA's publishing programme.

ÖE & PCF: AAA’s publishing practice started twenty years ago and has gone through many changes in form and content. At the beginning of AAA’s journey, our Co-founder and Director Claire Hsu printed 1,000 copies of the exhibition catalogue for China’s New Art: Post-1989 (1993), organised by Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, as she received its publication rights. AAA then sold the books as part of its first fundraising project, and the sales allowed AAA to hire its first librarian and start building its database. Later, AAA produced monographs like Wu Shanzhuan Red Humour International (in collaboration with Inga Svala Thórsdóttir) (2005) and From Reality to Fantasy: The Art of Luis Chan (2006). Between 2012 and 2015, AAA published four bilingual volumes of an e-journal called Field Notes, featuring contributions by more than one hundred scholars, critics, artists, and curators. Each issue focused on a theme: from the significance of archival practices in the region, to the popular Mapping Asia project that challenged our inherited notions of bounded territories, turning instead to myth, liminal spaces, and active entanglements.

More recently, AAA shifted gears and, since the last four years, has been focusing on its online publication IDEAS Journal, which allows for a more flexible and responsive publishing schedule. IDEAS commissions essays, conversations, and also more visually driven notes, with a rigorous yet hopefully unpretentious style for people who like reading things with clear stakes—in other words, propositions and analysis over merely descriptive commentary. IDEAS is more interested in new ways of thinking, rather than simply new things to think about. It’s important for us to acknowledge Claire Hsu and Doretta Lau for bringing IDEAS into being; Janet Chan, Emily Wong, and Chelsea Ma for being fabulous and editing its Chinese language version; and Karen Cheung, without whom we would be lost, heartless, and lacking a decent soundtrack for our emotional undercurrents. All the incredible writers we’ve gotten to work with deserve recognition here, too—IDEAS literally doesn’t exist without them. Christina Yuen Zi Chung was the first writer Paul was privileged to work with when he joined, and in many ways she continues to be the gold standard and inspiration for us both. It was such a pleasure working with her that we invited her back to do a public talk on “Reimagining Feminism in Hong Kong.” Shout-out to the brilliant Christina.

We also have an AAA office in Delhi with an amazing team headed by Sneha Ragavan, where they’ve lead research projects like the Bibliography of Modern and Contemporary Art Writing of South Asia, gathering more than 12,000 pieces of published art writing in thirteen languages from the twentieth century. This bibliography is available online as an interactive online database. They also collaborate with foundations and sponsor research grants around art writing, artistic research, and visual culture. Currently they’re working on a three-volume set of dossiers, which bring together art writing from the region.

Finally, we’ve also been building editorial collaborations and partnerships, such as Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series that we contribute to, along with the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. This partnership has resulted in three publications so far: Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992–98 (2018), FESTAC ’77 (2019), and Uncooperative Contemporaries: Art Exhibitions in Shanghai in 2000 (2020)—all focusing on exhibition histories.

LKY: What are your main projects now? I wonder about future plans.

ÖE & PCF: It’s AAA’s twentieth anniversary, and for us, this is an opportunity to celebrate all the artists and educators who have contributed to AAA and its communities. There are two ongoing exhibition projects we would like to highlight. The first is Learning What Can’t Be Taught at AAA Library, which looks at the major changes in art education in China from the 1950s to the 2000s through a selection of artworks, archival materials, and interviews. The exhibition focuses on six artists from three generations who were each other’s teachers and students at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou: Jin Yide, Zheng Shengtian, Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, Jiang Zhuyun, and Lu Yang. With this exhibition, we’re asking whether “artistic attitude” can be taught or passed down from one generation to another. In a text for Art & Education, Anthony Yung (who has been leading this research at AAA for the last decade) and Özge mention how Zheng Shengtian, who was born in 1935, studied art in the 1950s, and experienced the political turmoil in China in the second half of the twentieth century, has continued to test the boundaries of what is suitable for teaching and learning. When we recently asked Zheng about the moment when he turned from a student to an artist, he responded with a sentence that still resonates with his students: “I am still waiting for this moment to come.”

We are also excited about the exhibition Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys, which just opened at Tai Kwun Contemporary, and features newly commissioned works that engage the archive of the late artist Ha Bik Chuen, who was a self-taught sculptor and printmaker. Ha’s personal archive covers fifty years of art in Hong Kong. Curated by Michelle Wong, this exhibition invites artists Banu Cennetoğlu, Kwan Sheung Chi, Lam Wing Sze, Raqs Media Collective, and Walid Raad to explore the potentials and the limitations of archives, as well as our sense of scale, self, and history vis-a-vis Ha’s own archive. Özge is currently working on bewitched, bewildered, bothered, Banu Cennetoğlu’s artistic contribution in the form of talks, film screenings, and a publication, which delves into the politics of posthumous archives. The publication, titled The Orpheus Double Bind, features the English translation of a text by the literary critic Nurdan Gürbilek. Interested in how the author questions their authority to give voice to the dead, Gürbilek writes: “Orpheus looks back; because he wants to transcend the threshold of death and see Eurydice in all her invisibility, to give form to her dark obscurity. This desire the writer feels, for the darkness of the other, is at once the writer’s source of inspiration and his destructive act: Orpheus loses Eurydice a second time because he wants to bring her back, wants to give form to her absence; but what makes the work possible, in all its obscurity, is this gaze that wants to give form to absence.”

Another thing we’re excited about is working with Gudskul, a collective from Jakarta, to develop programmes around self-organisation and collective learning; and also the Mobile Library: Nepal project, which offers support for community-based, collaborative initiatives and universities in Nepal—spearheaded by Susanna Chung and Samira Bose. Co-presented by Siddhartha Arts Foundation, this project is another example of how we work collaboratively with like-minded organisations in Asia to enrich reference points within Asia. Lots of things to look forward to.

Paul is especially grateful to be working on an upcoming IDEAS essay by Eunsong Kim, whose writing over the years—clarifying, poetic, transformative, and always committed—should be on syllabi everywhere. She’s also working on a book for Duke University Press called The Politics of Collecting: Property & Race in Aesthetic Formation, and recently co-launched offshoot journal. Shout-out to the mighty Eunsong Kim. Thank you so much for existing—accelerating reality—a reminder that nothing’s ever a given. Wu-Tang forever.

Özge Ersoy is AAA’s Public Programmes Lead. Paul C. Fermin is AAA’s and IDEAS Journal’s Managing Editor.

All images are courtesy of Özge Ersoy.