In a world ruled by tech bros and geriatric shitposters, going to a book fair is subversive af. Think about it. You have to actually stop scrolling and go to an IRL location. When you’re there, you’ll flip through print publications that weren’t recommended by an algorithm. You might purchase some of them too. You may even read them, an act that would require you to divert your eyes from screens teeming with slop and rage posts and ads— so many ads!— and all the other garbage that makes rich dudes richer and the rest of us broke and miserable.
Certainly, I’m not the only person who thinks reading paper > reading screens because Printed Matter’s L.A. Art Book Fair was slammed on Sunday afternoon. Now, this is a long-running, well-attended event. In fact, I wrote about the size of the crowd on this very blog two years ago. But, the weekend-long indie and DIY book extravaganza has since moved from MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary to ArtCenter’s South Campus in Pasadena. It appeared to be a bigger venue, given all the rooms at the art school that were in use, but it was still overflowing with people. There were corners of some exhibit halls where crowds were so thick that they were virtually impassible, but that might have had more to do with the layout than the amount of people.
Honestly, the crowd flow was the big drawback of this year’s L.A. Art Book Fair. Browsing is a challenge when you feel like you’re always in someone else’s way. Every interaction, whether it’s with a vendor or a friend, must be brief. Plus, the signage wasn’t all that great. It was very easy to walk in circles without realizing that there are two buildings, both of which had multiple exhibit halls in them. I know that there was a map online, but do you really want to stare at your phone while walking through a crowd? Do you want to stare at your phone at all when you’re at a print media event?
What the L.A. Art Book Fair had to its advantage was an excellent breadth of vendors. The range of publications extended from pocket-sized zines to large, glossy art books. There was material available in multiple languages and publications catering to diverse interests. Across the board, everything I saw was high quality. Maybe it was a good thing that the event was so congested. If there had been more room to browse, I probably would have blown through my budget by the time I ventured into the second building.
It was inside the most crowded of the rooms I visited where I met Yoel Gaetán, an L.A.-based journalist and historian who has written extensively about Puerto Rican music scenes in books released through Forgotten Youth Records. I picked up a copy of his mammoth Boricua punk oral history, Alcantarillados: 30 Years of Punk in Puerto Rico, 1980 -2010. It’s about 400 pages and filled with interviews, photos and flyers. Plus, the book came with a CD sampler.
I spent a pretty good chunk of time trying to find Bibliomancers’ booth. Of course, it wasn’t until I gave up that I happened to stumble across the booth. Bibliomancers is a very cool local publisher and co-founder of Analog Book Fair, which is happening again in June at 2220 Arts + Archives. Bibliomancers’ latest book is Cults That Kill, but I gravitated towards The Spectral Vision of Gothic Romance, which probably makes sense for someone who spent a good chunk of 2023 watching every single episode of Dark Shadows. The Gothic Romance book is a fantastic collection of genre book covers, much of which are in that dramatic romance-meets-horror style that you may have seen more recently on the cover of Anna Biller’s (excellent) novel Bluebeard’s Castle.
Right next to Bibliomancers was Falgoush, an art and publishing collective focused on Iranian stories. Their latest project is Dast Dar Dast, a mix tape of folk music from Afghanistan and Iran. When I say mix tape, I mean that literally, it is a cassette release (with a digital download code included) packaged in a minimal, pomegranate red case. It immediately grabbed my attention, so I bought one of the few remaining copies at the booth. It’s a wonderful mix that offers a contemporary interpretation of traditional music.
The important thing that I want to point out here, though, is that events like L.A. Art Book Fair are places where you can come into contact with artists and ideas that might escape you when you limit yourself to whatever the algorithm decides to throw your way. It’s pretty unlikely that I would have heard Dast Dar Dast on Instagram. And Alcantarillados was released a while back, but I hadn’t heard of the book until the L.A. Art Book Fair. The algorithm wants to keep me locked in a loop of ‘80s – ‘00s tunes that I’ve already heard a million and one times, when really I want to find out about punk from Puerto Rico or folk from Iran and Afghanistan. The only way out of the boxes that these platforms try to trap us in is to get into the world and start looking around for yourself.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs or listen to the latest Beatique Mix. Follow on Instagram or Bluesky for more updates.
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