Open Press is a medium to extend the work of the writer, editor, and curator, to instigate new channels of reciprocity among those interested and engaged in what might constitute the literary at any given time. Over the course of two days, Open Press 2014 will feature roundtables, readings, panels, performances, a moveable book fair, and more in four “at home” locations across the Los Angeles area.
The idea of Open Press is to host a series of events (roundtables, readings, panels, performances, a moveable book fair, and more) on-site at each of our homes or headquarters. The co-curators (eohippus labs, Insert Blanc Press, Les Figues Press and the Poetic Research Bureau) have invited one or more literary projects they admire to participate in these panels, readings, etc.
We wish to transform our homes (or headquarters) into temporary public sites where literary practices can be discussed and engaged. In other words, Open Press will be a kind of literary moveable feast, in which we travel to four different sites over the course of two days in Los Angeles, CA.
http://openpressevent.blogspot.com/
hosts: Les Figues Press, The Poetic Research Bureau, eohippus labs & Insert Blanc Press
guest presses and projects: Counterpath Press, Ricochet Editions, Writ Large Press, The Song Cave, ypolita press, Entropy, Copilot Press, Anomalous Press, Gauss PDF and Phoneme Media
people: Tim Roberts, Diana Arterian, Chiwan Choi, Teresa Carmody, Andrea Quaid, Andrew Maxwell, Joseph Mosconi, Ara Shirinyan, Todd Colby, Jane Gregory, Graham Foust, Amanda Ackerman, Carrie Hunter, Janice Lee, Stephanie Sauer, Erica Mena, Harold Abramowitz, Mathew Timmons, J. Gordon Faylor, David Shook, Andrew Choate, Jay Erker, William Moor, Feliz Lucia Molina, Emily Hunt & Jen Lagendrost
Les Figues, Counterpath, Ricochet & Writ Large Press
Saturday, October 11 from 12 - 3 p.m.
Tim Roberts, Diana Arterian, Chiwan Choi, Teresa Carmody & Andrea Quaid
Les Figues Press will be joined by Counterpath Press (Tim Roberts), Ricochet Editions (Diana Arterian), and Writ Large Press (Chiwan Choi) in a roundtable discussion to ask: What does it mean to make books and curate literary experiences as an artist-run press? Together we will talk about philosophies, practices and materials; or, How can a book be a screen, wall or room of constellating bodies collecting pages into a spiral-bound whole?
Les Figues Press is a nonprofit literary organization and publisher. Based in Los Angeles, our mission is to create aesthetic conversations between readers, writers, and artists by publishing 5-7 books a year and curating and hosting literary events. We favor projects that push the boundaries of genre, form, and general acceptability and are aware of themselves as a textual body within a history and culture marked by constructs of gender, race, class, and sexuality. We embrace a feminist criticality and editorial vision.
www.lesfigues.com
Counterpath is a nonprofit publisher, gallery and event space, and bookstore. The press was founded in 2006 and has published nearly 50 titles to date. The gallery and event space—opened in late 2010 in downtown Denver, Colorado—has hosted over 100 exhibitions and events. The bookstore carries titles from small and independent presses. We are interested in linguistic and visual interventions in contemporary global culture and strive to encompass new conceptions of what compelling work can mean.
www.counterpathpress.org
Ricochet Editions, founded in 2012, is an imprint of Gold Line Press. Our mission is to publish innovative, trans-genre, and/or genre-less works that have a hard time finding homes in journals, competitions, and with other publishers. We publish 2 to 3 titles a year, ranging from small chapbooks to full-length books. We read submissions and bandy words about the manuscript(s) we hope to bring to print, fully devoted to engaging in an extended author-editor dialogue and working with authors on their manuscripts.
http://dornsife.usc.edu/goldlinepress/ricochet-editions/
Writ Large Press is a downtown LA based small press. Founded in 2007 to publish overlooked Los Angeles writers, WLP continues to experiment with the idea of publishing and explore the role of the book in society with DTLAB, a pop-up bookstore and performance space project, PUBLISH!, a continuing underground publishing project, and Grand Park Downtown BookFest, a festival for LA writers and publishers.
http://writlargepress.com/
The Poetic Research Bureau & Song Cave
Saturday, October 11 from 4 - 7 p.m.
Todd Colby, Jane Gregory & Graham Foust
The Poetic Research Bureau hosts The Song Cave, which began as a chapbook press with a very personal editorial sensibility (largely the work of two people, Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal), and has recently begun publishing perfect-bound books of poetry, translations and essays in handsome editions with a formidable house style. The PRB finds The Song Cave a sympathetic enterprise due to its sustained commitment to small format literature like pamphlets/chapbooks, and for making its archive freely accessible in digital form as online PDFs. The three readers at this event—Todd Colby, Jane Gregory and Graham Foust—are recently published by The Song Cave.
In the editors’ own words, “The Song Cave is dedicated to recovering a lost sensibility and creating a new one by publishing books of poetry, translations, art criticism, and making art prints and other related materials.”
www.the-song-cave.com
The Poetic Research Bureau is a valise fiction and portable literary service in Northeast Los Angeles. As an out-of-pocket California milk-crate boosterist enterprise, it serves as the irregular literary umbrella for projects such as Ara Shirinyan’s house of concept & constraint, Make Now Press; occasional poetry journal The Germ (‘97-’05), edited by Andrew Maxwell and Macgregor Card; and art-lit mag Area Sneaks, edited by Rita Gonzalez and Joseph Mosconi.
As a research bloc, the PRB attempts to cultivate composition, publication and distribution strategies that enlarge the public domain. It favors appropriations, impersonations, ‘compost’ poetries, belated conversations, unprintable jokes and doodles, ‘unoriginal’ literature, historical thefts and pastiche. The publication emphasis is on ephemeral works, short-run magazines and folios, short-lived reprints and excerpts in print-on-demand formats, and the occasional literary fetish objects of stupidly incomparable price and value.
The Bureau also hosts a reading series at 951 Chung King Rd in Chinatown, and invites writers whose work lacks the ‘commercial tendency’ while harboring the bright, high-minded intentions that often lead to broad panic, righteous perversions, improbable arguments, and the ill-served cul-de-sacs of genius. The series is programmed by the aforementioned Messrs Maxwell, Mosconi and Shirinyan. If you’re sympatico, passing through town, or need a megaphone, 50 seats and a big blank space, give us a write.
eohippus labs, ypolita, Entropy, Copilot & Anomalous Press
Sunday, October 12 from 12 - 3 p.m.
Amanda Ackerman, Carrie Hunter, Janice Lee,
Stephanie Sauer, Erica Mena & Harold Abramowitz
eohippus labs will be joined by ypolita press, Entropy, Copilot Press, and Anomalous Press for a panel: We are starting from the premise that our bodies’ sensory capacities have been compromised. For example, our ability to smell or taste has been weakened or coerced. Visual culture is primary at the expense of other sensory engagements. Bodies are continuously manipulated in their many forms of labor. Therefore, we introduce our panel discussion with a set of questions around a central question/concern: How do various literary practices—reading, writing, editing—navigate a body whose sensory capacity has been compromised?
eohippus labs is a Los Angeles based micro literary project co-edited by Harold Abramowitz and Amanda Ackerman that publishes innovative writing in a variety of forms.
www.eohippuslabs.com
ypolita press is a lowercased chapbook press, started in 2006 and edited by Carrie Hunter, which has a growing library of nearly 20 chapbooks. Though not exclusively female, ypolita press is a feminist press which seeks to publish that which runs towards the experimental, the lyrical, the anti-lyrical, sometimes the avant-garde, sometimes conceptual, sometimes purely emotive, sometimes straightforward.
ypolitapress.blogspot.com
Entropy is a new website, co-edited by Janice Lee, featuring literary and related non-literary content that seeks to engage with the literary community, that becomes its own community, and creates a space for literary and non-literary ideas. Entropy covers diverse topics such as experimental literature, video games, graphic novels, science fiction, film, art, translation, the poetics of spaces, small press practices, and more.
www.entropymag.org
Copilot Press is publishing as an arts practice co-directed by book artist Stephanie Sauer. Each book is a collaboration between author, content and designer, resulting in one-of-a-kind structures built to pour out onto your palms as you handle, read, interact. Continuing in various traditions of independent publishing, we produce largely hand-bound works that speak in dialogue with rooted and transitory voices across the globe, and play with distribution methods that vary according to each piece.
www.copilotpress.com
Anomalous has its sights set on publishing literary text, advancing audio forms and creation, and supporting all sorts of alternative realities of the near future. The online publication is available in both visual and audio forms on various platforms. In March of 2013, Anomalous launched its first round of print chapbooks.
www.anomalouspress.org
Insert Blanc Press, Gauss PDF & Phoneme Media
Sunday, October 12 from 4 - 7 p.m.
Andrew Choate, Jay Erker, William Moor, J. Gordon Faylor,
Feliz Lucia Molina, David Shook, Emily Hunt & Jen Lagendrost
Insert Blanc Press presents a performance across multiple media and languages with J. Gordon Faylor of Gauss PDF and David Shook of Phoneme Media. Sharing a vision of the arts as inextricably linked; Insert Blanc, Gauss PDF and Phoneme Media foster creative practices that tend to cross language barriers and drift across lines of digital and print media as well as across mediums from film to printmaking, and writing to painting, photography and etc. These three presses have brought together a diverse collection of artists and writers over the years and for Open Press will present the work of Andrew Choate, Jay Erker, William Moor, Feliz Lucia Molina, Emily Hunt and Jen Lagendrost. The performance at Insert Blanc HQ will include writers, translators, and visual artists that often come to their work through attempts to swim in the gooey center while lingering at the edge of various margins.
Insert Blanc Press produces innovative art & literature in Los Angeles, CA. Founded in October 2005, Insert Blanc Press produces over twelve individual projects a year across various media. Publishing large format hardbound artist monographs, photography and print editions, hardbound and perfectbound books of contemporary literature, handmade chapbooks, magazines, ebooks, audiobooks, digital albums, and video projects. Insert Blanc Press also recently started The People, a podcast featuring the voices and ideas of The People that make up the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, the west coast, and beyond. Insert Blanc endeavors to create dynamic conversations among the artistic disciplines and to support emerging artists and writers in the interest of contemporary arts and letters.
http://insertblancpress.net
Founded in 2010, Gauss PDF is a publisher of digital and print works. Its releases include ZIP files, PDFs, Word documents, mp3s, JPEGs, print-on-demand books, and videos, among other media. Transdisciplinary in spirit, Gauss PDF aims to foster cross-genre feedback through an open and expanding network of artists and non-artists from around the world.
http://www.gauss-pdf.com
Phoneme Media is a publishing and film production house committed to discovering international writers, translators and artists, and connecting them to new audiences around the world through translation.
http://phonemebooks.com/
