This Half Letter Press book was translated and published in Spanish by the Martin Wong Fund, Solo Foundation. It was premiered at Mira Look Books in Madrid.
This post is a report on the recent Mira Look Books fair in Madrid. Your blogger sits with his pubs and others as an Anglo leftie in a fair full of other Americans from Spanish-speaking countries. Things to think about while twiddling one’s thumbs.
Right now I am sitting at home with a cast on my broken leg, downloading zines to print out for the 22nd Madrid anarchist book fair in early December (6, 7 & 8 at La Prospe popular school // #encuentrodellibroanarquistamad).
Like last year, I have a position there. (I blogged my 2023 experiences here.) So I’m trying to get a good selection of printed matter together.
With the help of a shipment of books from Minor Compositions, desperately wrangled from Spanish customs, my setup at October’s @MiraLookBooks fair in central Madrid was fairly ample. Anglophone theory and radical books may not have many customers in the Spanish capitol – (which is why mainstream Anglophone distributors ignore the Peninsula entirely) – but methinks it’s important to show the flag.
RU Confusing Art and/or/with Politics?
Mira Look is an art book fair, so I’m posting about it on “Art Gangs”. Increasingly “Art Gangs” content is converging with my “Occupations & Properties” blog on squatting, as you’ll see below. My schizo-studies is becoming contemporary reality.
So an Anglo is showing the flag, eh? It’s a lot of work just for that. How did this mania for book fairs begin? Never mind. I’ll just tell what happened.
Bibliophilic Solidarity: A Book Fair Journal
Friday, 25 October – I’m set up at the Mira Look Books fair at last. It was a struggle to get here as I broke an ankle earlier in the week. But with the help of my partner we trucked all the books, zines and table furniture to the fair.
Getting the books from the UK was another saga. Those from the USA still haven’t arrived after over a month in transit. (Getting material shipped from the colonies, is worse than it’s been since the 17th century.)
Blanca gave me a great position, directly in front of the main entrance. Things were slow at first. Very few folks. Only two conversations. As in a bookstore, readers accrue one by one. This seems a terribly laborious way to gather them. At 3:30pm, a post-lunch crowd at last drifts in. It’s a strain, sitting hour upon hour with the my leg propped up under the table. But it’s certainly a way to get some reading done!
I dug into the recent Cindy Milstein anthology, Deciding for Ourselves: The Promise of Direct Democracy. It’s quite informative on self-organized projects, occupations and the like.
A herd of young girls passes. I am a type of elderly spectacle.
The institutional exhibitors were on the terrace above us. I hobbled up there on my crutch and found a catalogue of action photos of the Grupo Zaj, a Fluxus-affiliated group which performed in Spain during the Franco dictatorship. I was amazed when I learned of their existence, and that they had performed in courtyards and taverns in the town near Franco’s palace. The artist Esther Ferrer was a member of that group.
Esther Ferrer, El hilo del tiempo (the thread of time). 1978; interartive.org
On a later foray I found a lovely catalogue of the Grupo de Callejeros who did escraches in the streets of Buenos Aires against retired militaries who had directed the pogroms of leftists during the dictatorship. (47 has promised the same for the USA; “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong” t-shirts feature among his supporters).
My neighbor in the tables is Rodrigo, an artist from Portugal. On the other side are artists from Peru, the Ediciones Valientes doing a good business in posters and zines. I faced an assembly of tables arranged in a square. Books from numerous Latin American publishers were displayed, many beautiful and intriguing things. A few folks in the center of the square did the selling for all of the consorted publishers.
Touch Don’t Touch
I love how the early evening visitors finger and flip the books. Many exhibitors don’t like that. Get greasy fingerprints on my limited edition, will you? But I’m happy to see people engage.
There is something profoundly relaxing.about watching crowds of people wandering through an art book fair. Most of the crowd is young. These days book fairs, zine fairs, all kinds of non-elite art and art-adjacent events are immensely popular and growing.
I enjoy the dance of glances with individuals. Do I engage with a comment? Generally after a touch, a leafing-through, or of course a direct question. One gets better at judging after a day or so. If they touch, I talk.
Sometimes you can see that a person wants to browse in peace by the little flinch they show when you look at them as they approach.
If I talk, it’s usually about the books of my publisher Minor Compositions from UK. I announce: “All of the titles from this publisher are available on the website as downloadable PDFs. For free.” Maybe this doesn’t help sales? Well, sure, but sales are besides the point for me. Plus I know a lot of folks don't have money for the books they might want.
Cardboard Consciousness
I spent Thursday doing prep. I made little book stands out of folded cardboard. I hobbled to the photocopy shop to make signage, and wrapped up the books ready to go.
Saturday, owing to a demonstration on the main drag blocking traffic, the cab driver let me off at the top of the bookstall street at the end of Retiro Park. I had to crutch down several blocks to the fair, past the book stalls of the Cuesta de Moyano. Downhill, fortunately, but still not the best for the broken leg. I found Kerouac's Desolation Angels, which I hadn't read.
Folks Show Up
Almost immediately as I returned the new director of the Reina Sofia was at my table. We chatted about Martin Wong since he had run the CA2M museum where Martin’s retrospective made its first European stop. I gave him a copy of the humble zine we made, still the only publication on the artist in Spanish.
Sitting immobile behind a table, it was great to see friends and comrades appear. Eli Lorenzi showed up, and Antoine Henry-Jonquères appeared with his hyper-active little boy. The kid was finally distracted when Antoine put his film camera in his hands. Shortly thereafter a guy passed by with a film camera hanging from his neck, and a vinyl record under his arm. Time and date?
Begonia Santa-Cecilia came by. She was involved in Occupy Wall Street, and although I was gone from NYC by then, I know her and her partner Luis virtually from the 16 Beaver Group online assemblings.
Later that afternoon, the director of exhibitions for the Fundación Juan March came flying by and bought my memoir. I was stunned! It was the only sale….
They have a Saul Steinberg show up now, and when I’m a bit better I’ll rush over. He was Anton van Dalen’s mentor, and the artist I first loved as a child.
The Mysterious Second Floor
I knew that the PichiFest people were in the fair, but I had no idea where they were. (My main fault on the fair was the lack of signage.) The Pichis had just concluded a fair at ESLA Eko in Carabanchel. Sadly this year my leg issues kept me away. I participated in their last fair and blogged about it, plus did an interview with them on my other blog – although it as well belonged on this one.
Finally I realized the Pichis were on the 2nd floor, hidden away in what used to be the Medialab auditorium. That floor was the most crowded, with zinesters and other publishers all jammed together. The Pichis were right inside the door, all cartoon animals and talking flowers.
An octopus (pulpo) eating itself. This is a very funny image in Galicia.
Besides the Pichis I ran into Carlos Sanjuan holding down the #leeressexy (Reading Is Sexy) table. Carlos is in Malaga, and heworked to set up the printing facilities at the bookstore and multi-use space Suburbia. I was recently there for the INURA meeting.
Carlos is also closely involved with the beleaguered social center Casa Invisible. I’m hopeful we can make a publication about that, together with SqEK comrade Miguel Martinez.
Meet, greet, and cook up schemes is what these fairs are good for.
“Back to Your Post”
I gimped back down to where I had draped a Casa Invisible book bag over the chair. I was just in time to catch the guy from @Holaporque wandering the fair with a silkscreen setup on a cart offering to print a new cover for your periodical. I had brought the London Review of Books, and he inked it with the motto of the day. I’m looking forward to the arrests.
My newspaper stamped. Thank you, ICC!
A Fashion Parade
Every fair and its crowd has a different temperature. This one was very middle class. I saw almost no punks, and only two trannies. The fair was not so large that the visitors couldn’t take a good look at every post. Most of the browsers had only a casual interest in what they were seeing. (As a jaded pro, I tend to bomb in on only the things that interest me in a fair like this, and pass by everything else.)
Like all artistical events, many fashionable folks were drifting by. Some loud patterned costumes were paraded. Hooray for them! All props to the fashionistxs.
My favorite bookbag –
BIENN
NNNN
NNALE
Afterword: Melancholia in La Serreria
It was fun, the Mira Look fair. Still there is a good deal of sadness for me to be in La Serreria Belga, yes, a former sawmill, but a building purpose-built for the Medialab Prado. That was an important center for collaborative media work, programming, innovative technology, and much more besides.
Ana Botella Serrano, Madrid's mayor from 2011-15, tried to close it during her term. (She was spouse of the radical right prime minister José María Aznar.) There was an international campaign to oppose that, and she backed off. I never understood it then, because Medialab Prado was such a clearly important think-tank and practical lab for technological progress. It was unique; it won European prizes.
The new mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, elected without a popular vote majority in 2019, succeeded where Botella failed. The left electoralists split, of course; otherwise the center-left Manuela Carmena would have taken the position.
First Almeida evicted La Ingobernable, the social center across the plaza. That building, he promised would be several things – a library, a health center, a museum. Naturally it remains vacant.
Very shortly thereafter he came for the Medialab Prado. It was closed, its staffing skeletonized and moved outside of the center of Madrid. Now Medialab does pimping programs for AI in the Matadero, the Slaughterhouse.
I blogged on this in ‘21 as it was developing – (“Tearing It All Down: The Twilight of the Citizen Participation Movement in Madrid”), and there’s no reason to go into it again here.
It just makes me sad. While I always love to see beautiful things, provocative books, and the people who make and enjoy them wandering together in herds, I know I'm also walking over the glittering shards and bones of a lost future.
LINKS
Grupo de Arte Callejero – "Aquí viven genocidas"
Lots online about them, but the exact book not yet
https://grupodeartecallejero.wordpress.com/2001/03/24/aqui-viven-genocidas/comment-page-1/
Mira Look art book fair
https://miralookbooks.org/
Grupo Zaj
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaj
“Martin Wong: Travesuras Maliciosas”
Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, 2022
https://ca2m.org/en/exhibitions/martin-wong-malicious-mischief
Suburbia, bookstore and multi-use space in Malaga
https://www.sub-urbia.es/
Entrevista a la Librería Suburbia
https://lanaveinvisible.com/2022/07/09/entrevista-a-la-libreria-suburbia/
@Holaporque
https://holaporque.com/historia/
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