Leonardo Bravo and Alexandra Grant in conversation at The Francis Kite Club

Join X Artists’ Books and The Francis Kite Club for an afternoon of conversation and oracle reading exploring the Itinéraires Fantômes oracle deck!

WHEN: Sunday, October 20, 2024. 2-5pm
WHERE: The Francis Kite Club
40 Loisaida Ave, New York, NY 10009
www.franciskiteclub.com

Free admission with RSVP here.

Itinéraires Fantômes is an oracle deck created by Alexandra Grant and Hélène Cixous. The images on the Itinéraires Fantômes cards come from family, friends, and artists who have been inspired by and inspired Cixous's writing. The deck was organized in conjunction with the exhibition Itinéraires Fantômes, curated by Marion Vasseur Raluy and Ana Iwataki, which runs through January 19, 2025 at the CAPC Musée d'art Contemporain de Bordeaux. 

Alexandra Grant will be joined by artist and curator Leonardo Bravo for a conversation about the deck and Bravo's card, Le Télégramme. Iman Richardson and Danielle Tegeder, New York-based artists and diviners, will read guests' cards using the Itinéraires Fantômes deck free of charge.

Drinks, coffee, and snacks are available for purchase at The Francis Kite as are the Itinéraires Fantômes decks!

Hope to see you!

Itinéraires Fantômes oracle deck launch at Philosophical Research Society

Philosophical Research Society auditorium and courtyard
3910 Los Feliz Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027

Saturday, August 24, 2024
7–10pm
$10

The Itinéraires Fantômes launch event at the Philosophical Research Society will include a conversation between artist and publisher Alexandra Grant and curator Ana Iwataki, card presentations by Los Angeles-based participating artists, oracle deck readings by Didi Beck, and signature Phantom Itineraries drinks. Itinéraires Fantômes oracle decks will be available for sale at the launch, with a discounted price from the cost of tickets. 

Itinéraires Fantômes is an oracle deck created by Alexandra Grant with Hélène Cixous in celebration of Hélène’s work. It is published by X Artists’ Books as part of X Topics. The Itinéraires Fantômes oracle deck was released earlier this summer at the CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain de Bordeaux in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name on view until January 19, 2025, curated by Marion Vasseur Raluy and Ana Iwataki. 

The Itinéraires Fantômes deck consists of 72 cards in six categories: animots, creatures, and entities that include Those from Below, Those from Above, Those Who Fly/Steal, who travel via Portals, manipulate Messages and Symbols, and have Superpowers. The cards are accompanied by a booklet in English and French.

The images on the Itinéraires Fantômes cards come from family, friends, and artists who have been inspired by and inspired Hélène’s writing and were designed by Unyimeabasi Udoh. Artists include: Adel Abdessemed, Pierre Alechinsky, Sara Barker, Gabrielle Berger, Louise Bourgeois, Leonardo Bravo, Maria Bussmann, Sarah Cain, Lewis Carroll, Bertrand Charneau, Maria Chevska, Michael Kennedy Costa, Laura Darbutaitė, Tacita Dean, Edgar Fabián Frías, Jeffrey Gibson, Francisco Goya, Alexandra Grant, Mathew Hale, Simon Hantaï, Johanna Hedva, Roni Horn, Victor Hugo, Hanna Hur, Franz Kafka, YeRin Kim, Lynn Marie Kirby, Jean-Jacques Lemêtre, Colin Lemoine, Laure Prouvost, Elsa Prudent, Addy Rabinovitch, Keanu Reeves, Cindy Rehm, Saranya Siegel-Berger, Shinique Smith, Nancy Spero, Luc Tuymans, Unyimeabasi Udoh, Roger Viollet, and Anna Winger.

Hélène Cixous is a multi-hyphenate French writer, philosopher and playwright born in Oran, Algeria whose writing, since 1969’s Dedans (Inside), has pushed against literary genres. As an academic, Cixous co-founded Paris University VIII in 1969 and founded the first Women’s Studies program in Europe. She has collaborated extensively with visual artists as well as contemplated their work in her writing. Cixous gave an early manuscript of her 2022 work Mdeilmm to Grant as the basis or inspiration for the Itinéraires Fantômes deck and exhibition.

Alexandra Grant is a Los Angeles– and Berlin–based visual artist whose work explores issues around communication across languages, literary traditions, and cultures. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries globally and she is represented by Miles McEnery Gallery in New York and carlier | gebauer in Berlin and Madrid. Grant’s first collaboration with Hélène Cixous, in 2013 was a two-city exhibition and participatory drawing project called Forêt Intérieure/Interior Forest at Mains d’Oeuvres in Saint Ouen, France and 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA.

Ana Iwataki is a cultural historian, writer, and curator from and based in Los Angeles.  She is also a PhD candidate in Comparative Media and Culture at the University of Southern California. 

We invite you to Working together, talking together, a conversation co-presented by X Artists' Books and / (Slash). Working together, talking together is a trialogue with Lynn Marie Kirby and collaborators Jordan Stein and Tanya Zimbardo in celebration of Time & Place: on the work of Lynn Marie Kirby, our new book about Kirby’s work.

The Lounge at 1275 Minnesota St.
1275 Minnesota Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
https://sfartbookfair.com/Programming

Sunday, July 21, 2–3pm 
Free Admission

Time & Place: on the work of Lynn Marie Kirby explores the artist’s work through a collection of newly commissioned writing and previously published essays by Etel Adnan, Barbara McBane, Charlie Hewison, Glenn Phillips, Etienne Kallos, Lynne Sachs, Jeffrey Skoller, Jordan Stein, Jalal Toufic, Carolina Magis Weinberg, Tanya Zimbardo, and interviews with Kirby and Lissa Gibbs, Alexandra Grant, Megan Kiskaddon, Rachel Ralph, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. In lieu of standard photo documentation, the book includes Kirby's black & white scans. 

Lynn Marie Kirby is a San Francisco-based artist focused on questions of place, the residue of history, and social choreography. Her conceptual practice engages time as a material, different sensory systems, improvisation and collaboration, accidents that make her jump, and forms of contemplation. She is the co-author of XAB's previous publication Oracular Transmissions and a collaborator on X Projects’ Itinéraires Fantômes oracle deck.

Jordan Stein is a curator based in San Francisco and the author of Rip Tales: Jay DeFeo’s Estocada & Other Pieces (Soberscove Press, 2021) and Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts, a monograph on the singular Japanese-American artist (Pre-Echo Press, 2024). In 2017, he founded Cushion Works, an exhibition space that aims to link past and present through the varied presentation of critical— and often overlooked—artworks, histories, and ideas.

Tanya Zimbardo is a San Francisco-based curator. As an Assistant Curator of Media Arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, she has organized several exhibitions. She has co-edited exhibition catalogs for the museum and for guest curatorial projects including the recent publication "Bonnie: Ora Sherk: Life Frames since 1970" (Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture). Zimbardo has curated exhibitions and screenings for nonprofit organizations and contributed to publications including Feminist Media Histories, INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media, and VoCA Journal.

Please join us at SculptureCenter on July 11 for the presentation of An Operational Account of Western Spatio-Temporality by Miljohn Ruperto. Ruperto will “guide” us through his new booklet edition followed by a conversation with artist Paul Pfeiffer.

SculptureCenter
44–19 Purves Street
Long Island City, NY 11101

July 11, 6:30–8pm 
Free Admission

An Operational Account of Western Spatio-Temporality comprises three flipbooks and an accordion-fold booklet. The booklet presents an essay that examines three forms of time as philosophized by the Ancient Greeks—aion, chronos, and kairos—to map the boundaries of and discern the influences of Western spatio-temporality. The essay serves as a guiding narrative to help readers identify the source or essence of Western subjectivity.

Each of Ruperto’s flipbooks depicts a disembodied head in movement. “The Baroque Is a Geometric Imposition Upon Wild Nature” features the head of Medusa; “History Awaits Immanence,” the head of John the Baptist; and “Western Temporalities Incline Towards a Tripartite Structure,” a triface image of Christ. Each of these figures is drawn from classical art historical references.

An Operational Account of Western Spatio-Temporality was designed by artist, designer, and independent curator Margaret Tedesco and published by X Projects, part of X Artists' Books. Copies will be available on site at SculptureCenter during the event.

Miljohn Ruperto lives and works in Los Angeles. Ruperto is interested in developing approaches to interrogating and expanding our conception of nature and history: e.g. historiography, the history of nature, and the nature of nature.

Paul Pfeiffer lives and works in New York. Known for his highly sophisticated use of digital technologies and new media, Pfeiffer edits iconic images or found footage of sporting events, concerts, or Hollywood films to explore our culture’s obsession with spectacle and uncover its hidden psychological cost.

For more information and to RSVP, please click here.

Join us at The Poetic Research Bureau to celebrate the release of Miljohn Ruperto’s An Operational Account of Western Spatio-Temporality, our latest X Projects edition. Miljohn Ruperto will be in conversation with XAB author Mashinka Firunts Hakopian.

An Operational Account of Western Spatio-Temporality, an edition by Miljohn Ruperto, comprises three flipbooks and an accordion-fold booklet. The booklet presents an essay that examines three forms of time as philosophized by the Ancient Greeks—aion, chronos, and kairos—to map the boundaries of, and discern the influences of, Western spatio-temporality. The essay serves as a guiding narrative to help readers identify the source or the essence of Western subjectivity.

Each of Ruperto’s flipbooks depict a disembodied head in movement. “The Baroque Is a Geometric Imposition Upon Wild Nature” features the head of Medusa; “History Awaits Immanence,” the head of John the Baptist; and “Western Temporalities Incline Towards a Tripartite Structure,” a triface image of Christ. Each of these figures is drawn from classical art historical references.

Miljohn Ruperto (b.1971 Manila, Philippines) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Ruperto is interested in developing approaches to interrogating and expanding our conception of nature and history: e.g. historiography, the history of nature, and the nature of nature.

Artist, designer, and independent curator Margaret Tedesco has collaborated with artists, writers, choreographers, and filmmakers for over three decades. In 2007, she established 2nd Floor Projects, an artist-run exhibition and publishing imprint, and received the Southern Exposure Alternative Exposure Award.

Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is an Armenian writer, artist, and researcher born in Yerevan and residing in Glendale, CA. She is an Associate Professor in Technology and Social Justice at ArtCenter College of Design, and holds a PhD in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania. With Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson, she makes up one-third of the collective, Research Service. Her writing and commentary appear in Performance Research Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, Meghan Markle’s Archetypes, and elsewhere. Her research focuses on practices that generate alternative imaginaries of the future.

X Projects, established in 2021, explores the creation of artworks, editions, and ideas outside the confines of traditional book publishing.

On Valentine's Day, please join us the Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for an Art Talk with Patty Chang, Vishal Jugdeo, and XAB artist Miljohn Ruperto moderated by XAB author and X Topics editor Anuradha Vikram about the exhibition Scratching at the Moon.

Miljohn Ruperto's An Operational Account of Western Spatio-Temporality is our second X Project!

And Anuradha Vikram's Use Me at Your Own Risk was the first novel we published at XAB.

Via ICALA's website: "Engage in a moderated discussion around the themes of Scratching at the Moon and the interrelations found in the work of exhibition artists Patty Chang, Vishal Jugdeo, Miljohn Ruperto with moderator Anuradha Vikram."

For more information and to RSVP, please visit: https://www.theicala.org/en/events/547-art-talk-with-patty-chang-vishal-jugdeo-miljohn-ruperto-br-moderated-by-anuradha-vikram

A reading of Use Me at Your Own Risk: Visions from the Darkest Timeline
followed by a conversation about the book as it relates to queer literature and history, and a live DJ set. 

Human Resources

410 Cottage Home St
LA CA 90012

https://www.h-r.la/event/use-me-at-your-own-risk-visions-from-the-darkest-timeline/

About the book:

Use Me at Your Own Risk: Visions from the Darkest Timeline by Anuradha Vikram takes place in 2046, a near future where both automation and climate collapse are more advanced. In five provocative sections, Use Me at Your Own Risk confronts the ethical challenges inherent in our unprecedented shift to automation. Vikram sets the stage for these imagined futures in vivid detail, describing environments, complex characters, and events in disparate locations from New Delhi to Los Angeles. Described by Vikram as an activist art project, this speculative novel asks us to question our role in the destruction of our environment, the impact of automation on society, and heightened inequity across class, race, and gender.

Use Me at Your Own Risk: Visions from the Darkest Timeline
Author: Anuradha Vikram
Foreword: Alexandra Grant & Addy Rabinovitch
Design: Margaret Tedesco
Cover Art: Isip Xin

Grand Central Art Center and X Artists’ Book, in association with Sargent’s Daughters invite you to join us in celebration of the release of Yaron Michael Hakim: Psittaciformes.

Yaron Michael Hakim: Psittaciformes is a 104-page publication published in conjunction with an exhibition curated by John D. Spiak at Grand Central Art Center (GCAC), California State University, Fullerton, Santa Ana, California (September 4, 2021–January 9, 2022) and a companion project by the artist presented with artist Elliott Hundley in his Los Angeles-based studio (October 30, 2021–January 14, 2022).

The publication includes a foreword by John D. Spiak, GCAC Director/Chief Curator, text by poet Amy Gerstler, and a conversation between artist Yaron Michael Hakim and former LACMA Curator and current MoCA Senior Curator José Luis Blondet.

This publication was designed by Stephen Serrato for ELLA with assistance from Gabrielle Pulgar, edited by John D. Spiak, text edited by John Farmer, photographed by Ruben Diaz, color corrected by Tony Manzella and his team at Echelon, and printed in by Stanley So and his team at Permanent Printing LTD.

Use Me At Your Own Risk: Reading

Et al. books, 2831 Mission Street, SF, CA
Author Anuradha Vikram in conversation with Dorothy Santos

https://etaletc.com/events

Join us at LAABF in the Classroom for an event with XAB authors Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Anuradha Vikram!

https://laabf2023.printedmatterartbookfairs.org/sunday

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
152 N Central Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90012

This program centers a reading and discussion between X Artists’ Books speculative fiction authors Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Anuradha Vikram. Hakopian will read their publication The Institute for Other Intelligences (2022), which presents a transcript from a future convention for machine intelligences to discuss the human biases and omissions encoded in their training data. Vikram will read from Use Me at Your Own Risk (2023), a novel comprising five intricate narratives that take place in 2046, a near-future where both automation and climate collapse are more advanced. A conversation between the authors will follow. Presented by X Artists’ Books.

Free and open to the public!

The Queer Book Bazaar is a market and exhibition of local book dealers, independent publishers, and literary vendors. Live performances by queer musicians, dancers, and performance artists will be scheduled throughout the day on the Fiesta Hall stage.

Speakers and Performances

Boris Dralyuk: 11:00am-12:00pm

Rasheed Newson: 12:30pm-1:15pm

Rick Castro and Sam Sweet: 2:00pm-2:45pm

Fainting Party / La Femme Pendu: 3:00pm-4:00pm

K Bradford Performance: 4:00pm-5:00pm

Join X Artists’ Books at Acid-Free Book Market at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, on Sunday, June 18 at 2:30 pm for a reading and discussion around Use Me at Your Own Risk, a new novel by Anuradha Vikram, between the author and Nora Khan. Use Me at Your Own Risk takes place in 2046, a near-future where both automation and climate collapse are more advanced. In five provocative sections, Use Me at Your Own Risk confronts the ethical challenges inherent in our unprecedented shift to automation. Vikram sets the stage for these imagined futures in vivid detail, describing environments, complex characters, and events in disparate locations from New Delhi to Los Angeles. Described by Vikram as an activist art project, this speculative novel asks us to question our role in the destruction of our environment, the impact of automation on society, and impending heightened inequity across class, race, and gender.

The author and Nora Khan will discuss the themes presented in the book and the impetus for writing this first novel. Concerns represented in the book include climate change, queer sexuality, media saturation, intergenerational conflict, and financialization. 

Thursday, March 30, 6:30 – 8:30 pm Eastern Time

On March 30, 6:30pm in the New Museum Theater, Rhizome will host the book launch for two new books, The Institute for Other Intelligences by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, and Air Age Blueprint by K Allado-McDowell, moderated by Elvia Wilke. The event will feature performative readings followed by a moderated talk and Q&A with the authors. Get your tickets here.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), consciousness, and human subjectivity will be explored in two new books launching at an event hosted by the Museum’s digital art affiliate Rhizome, featuring performative readings and a panel discussion moderated by writer Elvia Wilk.

In The Institute for Other Intelligences (X Artists’ Books, 2022, eds. Ana Iwataki and Anuradha Vikram, design by Becca Lofchie, illustrations by Fernando Diaz), author Mashinka Firunts Hakopian fuses speculative fiction and media studies into an imagined future where machine intelligences gather annually, to discuss the inherent vices of their human-made code. Hakopian presents a series of speculative exchanges and documents from these imagined meetings to critically consider current approaches to nonhuman intelligence.

Weaving together fiction, memoir, theory, and travelogue, K Allado-McDowell’s Air Age Blueprint (Ignota Press, 2023, cover art by Somnath Bhatt), was written with an AI writing partner, GPT-3, and human editorial input. A young filmmaker’s life is disrupted by a fated encounter with a Peruvian healer. Their travels lead them to meet K—a double agent working between art and technology—who invites them to test a secret program called Shaman.AI. Their human-machine experiment, rooted in magic, produces a key to rewriting reality—one in which entangled human and nonhuman intelligence will remake our technologies, identities, and deepest beliefs.

Books will be available for purchase at the event. The Institute for Other Intelligences is also available for order through xartistsbooks.com here.

Join X Artists’ Books, Poetic Research Bureau, and 2220 Arts + Archives for a launch of The Institute for Other Intelligences by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian (XAB, 2022). The event will feature readings by the author, K. Allado-McDowell, Emily Martinez, and Lauren Lee McCarthy. Please RSVP.

About The Institute for Other Intelligences:

The Institute for Other Intelligences (X Artists’ Books, 2022) brings speculative fiction and media studies to bear on an imagined future where machine intelligences convene annually for curriculum on algorithmic equity. The book presents a transcript from one of these conferences, in which a community of “AI agents” gather at a school for oppositional automata to deliver lectures on the human biases and omissions encoded in their training data. The resulting manuscript, published on the occasion of the Institute’s millennial anniversary, revisits sociotechnical systems from its founding in the 21st century. Drawing on feminist, queer, and critical media scholarship, the trainings collected in the book aim to optimize the operations of future generations of intelligent machines toward just outcomes. Hakopian uses these speculative exchanges to invite the reader to consider how critical approaches to nonhuman intelligence might reroute our current path toward destructive technofutures and allow us to conceive of another way forward. 

Edited by Ana Iwataki and Anuradha Vikram for X Topics, The Institute for Other Intelligences includes an introduction by Vikram, design by Becca Lofchie, and diagrammatic illustrations by Fernando Diaz, a scientist whose work focuses on the quantitative evaluation and algorithmic design of information access systems.

About the Author:

Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is an Armenian writer, artist, and researcher born in Yerevan and residing in Glendale, CA. She is an Associate Professor in Technology and Social Justice at ArtCenter College of Design. In 2021, she was a visiting Mellon Professor of the Practice at Occidental College, where she co-curated the exhibition “Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI” with Meldia Yesayan at Oxy Arts. With Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson, she makes up one-third of the collective, Research Service. She is a Contributing Editor for Art Papers, and her writing and commentary have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Performance Research Journal, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Meghan Markle's Archetypes. She is the author of The Institute for Other Intelligences (X Artists’ Books, 2022).

About the Readers:

K Allado-McDowell is a writer, speaker, and musician. They are the author, with GPT-3, of the books Pharmako-AI, Amor Cringe, and Air Age Blueprint, and are co-editor of The Atlas of Anomalous AI. They created the neuro-opera Song of the Ambassadors, and record and release music under the name Qenric. K established the Artists + Machine Intelligence program at Google AI. They are a conference speaker, educator and consultant to think-tanks and institutions seeking to align their work with deeper traditions of human understanding. K’s work has been covered by The New York Times, The Atlantic, WIRED, Bookforum, Artforum, Lithub, The Warburg Institute, and the Institute of Network Cultures.

Emily Martinez (they/she) is a new media artist working with machine learning, queer methodologies, and consensual tech. She is a 1st generation Miami Cuban and a self-taught coder who believes in the tactical misuse of technology. Her art has been exhibited internationally, mostly through collaborations with Anxious to Make and Queer AI. Her latest project, Ultimate Fantasy is a collection of short stories, poetry and art generated by Queer AI, an artificial intelligence trained on a corpus of queer theater. When Emily is not working, she is learning to love and doing her energy work.

Lauren Lee McCarthy is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. She creates performances inviting viewers to engage. To remote control her dates. To be followed. To welcome her in as their human smart home. To attend a party hosted by artificial intelligence. Lauren is the creator of p5.js, an open-source creative coding platform that prioritizes inclusion and access, and an associate professor at UCLA Design Media Arts. She has been recognized as a United States Artist Fellow, Sundance New Frontier Fellow, Eyebeam Fellow, and Creative Capital Grantee.

Please join us in welcoming Maya Dunietz back to Bemis to celebrate Root of Two, the book and the exhibition, at the Bemis Center on September 17, 2022. Included throughout the day will be two performances, a hands-on musical score workshop, and a celebration to release the exhibition catalogue. Bites and drinks will be served. RSVP for this event here.

September 17, 2022

2pm – 6pm CT

2 PM: Root of Two performance by Carmina Escobar + Dorian Wood

3:30 PM: Score workshop with Maya Dunietz + Keren Rosenbaum

4:30 PM: Catalogue Release + Remarks

5 PM: Root of Two performance by Maya Dunietz + Keren Rosenbaum

Bemis Center for
Contemporary Arts

724 S. 12th Street
Omaha, NE 68102