BOOK LAUNCH—PRINTED MATTER FOR DAMAGED SYSTEMS

Join us to celebrate Actions: 20 Years in and around the LA River and Crisis Archive, two titles from our recent imprint Printed Matter for Damaged Systems.

Actions: 20 Years in and around the LA River chronicles Lauren Bon’s sustained, site-specific inquiry into the Los Angeles River and the systems of power, infrastructure, ecology, and culture that shape the city. For more than two decades, Bon has worked through her art practice, Metabolic Studio, anchored by the river and its historic floodplain. Not A Cornfield (2005-2006) a 32-acre former rail yard and brownfield site became a field of corn, became an ideological blueprint for what followed. This volume gathers the methods, knowledge, and relationships generated through Bon’s work, carrying them forward into her continuing actions along the river and throughout the neighborhoods connected to it.

Crisis Archive connects movements, events, and forms of resistance without forcing history into a straight line. More than 175 photographs by eight photographers are joined by conversations among Lauren Bon, Red Rotkopf, and Richard Nielsen about participation, documentation, and accountability. Rooted in Metabolic Studio’s mission—“Artists need to create on the same scale that society has the capacity to destroy”—the archive is a folio of collective practice: gathering, occupying space, and bearing witness.