BlackMass Publishing and MoMA host an afternoon of workshops, presentations, and conversations with Wendy’s Subway, Letra Muerta, Du-Good Press, Jenna Hamed, and BlackMass Publishing focused on exchanging and gaining knowledge about the history, techniques, and resources around artists' books. Using Ed Ruscha's book-making practice as a starting point, this gathering allows artists, students, designers, publishers, and distributors to share stories, practices, and networks to participate in a community of artists making books.
BlackMass Publishing is an independent press promoting and publishing material by Black artists. At once a structure of coherent units and a collection of disjointed parts, BlackMass invokes an aggregate of Blackness, of matter in resistance. Combining archival photographs and found print material with poetry and jazz music, BlackMass grapples with the blurred lines and idiosyncrasies that make up the collective improvisation of African diasporic culture. BlackMass has publications included in the book collections of the MoMA Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, RAW Material Company (Dakar), the Center For Book Arts (New York), the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the New York Langston Hughes Library, and Evergreen State College.
Registration
Register now for Another Way Out of This Box on Saturday, November 4, 12:00–5:00 p.m. ET
Schedule
11:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. - Coffee and check-in
Cullman Mezzanine
12:00–1:00 - Publishing in Tempo: Imagining the Artist’s Book with Wendy’s Subway
Cullman Classrooms
In this workshop participants will think about (artist book) publishing as a capacious site for interdisciplinary artistic practice. Through a series of prompts, and by looking at examples of relevant artists’ books, participants will consider the book as a medium through which to experiment with the translation of form, time, movement, and genre.
1:00–1:15 - Break
Cullman Mezzanine
1:15–2:30 - Voir Dire: Jury at the Cross Section of Justice with Du-Good Press
Cullman Classrooms
This screenprinting workshop is organized around the “folded zine” as a document of cooperation that brings power to the people. Together, participants will create a collaborative zine onsite while working within a two-sided poster format to design, develop, print, and distribute a singular publication. By allowing artists to work together in a limited time frame, this workshop will be an exercise in democratic truth. Rather than creating a random drawing of names, participants will be asked to draw randomly from their past to make an impression.
2:30–2:45 - Break
Cullman Mezzanine
2:45–4:00 - Fifty-Six Sounds: A Type-Influenced Bookmaking Workshop with Jenna Hamed and Letra Muerta
Cullman Classrooms
Participants will create compositions with several languages’ onomatopoeias using the Latin alphabet and various typefaces. Using to Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip as a starting point, we will explore concepts of typographic scale, perspective, and layout by activating the techniques used in Ruscha’s graphic works. Participants will stencil, stamp, collage, and monotype print, resulting in a collectively assembled 56-page accordion book.
4:00–4:15 - Break
Cullman Mezzanine
4:15–5:00 - Another Way Out of This Box: A Selection of Publications from the MoMA Library Collection with BlackMass Publishing
The Celeste Bartos Theater
BlackMass Publishing has selected a group of publications from MoMA’s Library collection to dissect and analyze through a material and theoretical lens. BlackMass Publishing will present images of the selected publications and discuss the impact of these artists’ books on their practice and ideologies.
5:00 - Toast and farewell
Cullman Mezzanine
Participants
Du-Good Press (Leslie Diuguid) has embraced screenprinting as a medium because of its capacity for seemingly endless methods of expression and experimentation. In 2017, she founded Du-Good Press, New York’s first Black woman–owned fine-art printshop. She has since gained prominence collaborating with artists, designers, and illustrators to create innumerable lasting impressions in a space tailored to optimize versatility. The results are works that connect art, industry, and commerce.
Jenna Hamed is an artist, art worker, and educator based in Queens, New York, with roots in metro-Detroit and Jerusalem, Palestine. Hamed’s background in tactile-driven, analog practices and critical examination of art production has influenced her current interests in documentation methods through image-making, poetics, archiving, and the book format. You can find some of her image- and text-based works in small press publications. You cannot find most of Hamed’s work, as she produces publications, prints, and writings in limited or unique editions, distributed when, where, and to whom she feels like.
Letra Muerta is an award-winning publishing house originally founded by Faride Mereb in Venezuela in 2014 with the help of friends and colleagues. After relocating to New York City, Letra Muerta opened its doors in Brooklyn as a design studio, workshop, and archive center under the leadership of Faride Mereb and Oriana Nuzzi. While the studio welcomes participation from all, Letra Muerta primarily supports the work of Latin American artists, particularly women and other people on the periphery. The studio space is open to the public Monday through Wednesday, where you can find Faride or Oriana on site.
Letra Muerta es una editorial fundada por Faride Mereb en Venezuela en el 2014 con la ayuda de colegas y amigos. Luego de años de trayectoria y múltiples reconocimientos, abre sus puertas en Williamsburg, Nueva York, como un estudio de diseño editorial, centro de talleres y estudio de archivos bajo la dirección de Faride Mereb y Oriana Nuzzi. En el taller todas las personas son bienvenidas, pero mayormente nos enfocamos en proyectos y artistas de Latinoamérica, y en especial el trabajo hecho por mujeres, y quienes habitamos en los márgenes del mundo. Para conocer más sobre nosotros, pueden encontrarnos en el estudio de lunes a miércoles.
Wendy’s Subway is a reading room, writing space, and independent publisher in Bushwick, Brooklyn. We support emerging artists and writers in making experimental, urgent work and create alternative modes for learning and thinking in community. Wendy’s Subway is dedicated to encouraging creative, critical, and discursive engagement with arts and literature. We prioritize collaboration and horizontal decision-making in our work toward being a responsive and sustainable organization. Our interdisciplinary program includes free readings, talks, performances, and reading groups, as well as sliding-scale writing workshops and intensives. We offer residencies designed to uplift artistic and scholarly research, archival and library projects, and independent publishing practices. Our multi-series publishing initiative includes artists’ books, poetic texts, and hybrid-genre works by time-based artists. Our non-circulating library holds a collection of over 3,000 titles, ranging from poetry and fiction to criticism and art books.
Accessibility
American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and CART captioning are available for public programs upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. MoMA will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made with less than two weeks’ notice. Please contact [email protected] to make a request for these accommodations.
The Adobe Foundation is proud to support equity, learning, and creativity at MoMA.
Access and Community Programs are supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Major funding is provided by Volkswagen of America, the Agnes Gund Education Endowment Fund for Public Programs, The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art Endowment for Educational Programs, the Jeanne Thayer Young Scholars Fund, and the Annual Education Fund.