“Booked” was an artist book and zine festival held at Tai Kwun Centre for Arts, a former and currently renovated police station/prison/barracks in Central, Hong Kong at the end of February, 2021.
This was the third iteration of “Booked”, exceptional in 2021 given the current global pandemic. The organizers addressed this concern by spreading out distributors, producers, self-produced and independently published material over a wide area of the sprawling compound and limiting the audience by way of pre-registration.
free face mask distributed at “Booked”
Nevertheless, over a period of four days, over five thousand people visited the site and no Covid “wave” came about due to the event. (As an aside, Hong Kong has maintained an exceptionally low daily count of Covid cases for a city of 9 million +; every visitor wore a face mask, as is common in all areas of the city, and rooms were well ventilated. This can be contrasted with the Printed Matter Art Book Fair in New York City which choose to go virtual in 2021).
Lik Ink was able to participate in the event, thankfully depleting its stock far more effectively “live” than as an online shop, while concurrently renewing acquaintances and meeting new people/artists, challenging the assumption that “selling” was the most important undertaking. But as with the proverbial child in a candy shop, it was also impossible to resist consumption: below you will find Lik Ink’s purchases at Booked, providing an encapsulation of the event as well as demonstrating its variety.
Lik Ink’s table at “Booked” and unidentified visitor
Please Note: for further information, all artists/publishers have a link embedded in their name or a URL listed in photograph of their product. Most products can be found somewhere online.
First off, a self-printed and handmade card stock color production by Christy Leung (found at Instagram: chr_sty). Situated in a room housing individual artists, Leung created onsite as well as offering her wares for sale. This affordable (HK$20 or 2 euros) sheet was cut in a way that compressed it to a small booklet and then expanded into a poster. The concept (as explained to me by Leung) is (as it says in Chinese) “being or make a . . .” trash/trash can, and so “keep me . . .” The photos show various bereft pieces of trash on the street as well as graffiti from the 2019 Hong Kong street protests, equating that with what has been discarded: “I am weak (belong to vulnerable group) and speak light (not powerful), never false or empty.” While speech, especially certain terms and phrases, have been severely curtailed under Hong Kong law, it was possibly to find some “residue” at Booked.
Christy Leung’s foldable poster
In the same room, I found a table of material staffed by some of the members of Woofer Ten. The table had a variety of material related to grass-roots, community-oriented and “mutual-aid” organizations in Asia, including Woofer Ten’s catalog detailing their history, productions and events.
Woofer Ten’s four year catalog of events
I bought this publication (below) which contains scholarly and historical articles about the use of wood block printing by collectives in Indonesia, Taipei and Tokyo, as well as a “punk collective” in Bali whose organizational methods and programs were described in a funky comic strip.
Also in the same room was Hong Kong Old Textbooks, who makes Risograph-printed postcards and A4 size posters that re-uses imagery from said textbooks while adding pithy, humorous and melancholic Chinese language commentary, this card saying “I love Hong Kong” (in large type) and “I hate Hong Kong” (in small type), a contradictory sentiment that many of us in Hong Kong can understand.
postcard by Old Hong Kong Textbooks
In a small room off of the previous room I found this organization:
Popo-Post Art Group’s zine. The group can be found online at: Instagram pppostartists and Facebook Popo-Post Art Group
And I’m sorry I didn’t take a photograph of their set-up, as it mimicked a fruit-sellers impromptu street stall, with cardboard boxes full of fruit. I bought their magazine which also included a piece of fresh fruit and a choice of packaged fruit-themed erasers.
two page spread from Popo-Post Art Group’s zine
two page spread from Popo-Post Art Group’s zine
In another room I found Tianacloudland, who makes diminutive books that are sometimes sold in gumball machines. Likewise, their catalog is tiny:
Tianacloudland catalog
Tianacloudland catalog
Mark Pearson is a British photographer who runs a photographic gallery in Tokyo. “How Many More Must Die” is a collection of photos of squashed giant cockroaches that anyone who lives in Hong Kong should be familiar with. Thankfully, though they are big they are not as plentiful as your American variety.
Flavio Trevisan is a Canadian artist whose books have the banal veneer of an academic textbook but are actually an “artist book”, which in some case act like a flip book.
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The last two selections act as catalogs/archives; rather chaotic but wholly informative archives, that also stand as historical markers. The first is Elaine Ho’s project “Display/Distribute” and its 2017 catalog, a paperback sized, newsprint quality booklet that lists innumerable zines and publication from in and around Asia, as well as including theoretical essays and commentary. The project also elicits consumers to become distributors through a step-by-step program in which people pick up publications and then re-distribute them wherever they travel.
The essays also describe long-gone zines and projects that act as precedents for “Display/Distribute”, and while 2017 might seem to make a sales catalog obsolete, the booklet’s function as an archive makes for an enjoyable and elucidative read, with its ramshackle content nicely matched by an aesthetic that sees some pages cut off at the edges.
The last, and most expensive purchase (HK$350 or 35 euros) is a co-production of Afterall Books and Chimurenga, a fascinating compilation of essays, news articles, posters and ephemera from the 1977 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, held in Lagos, Nigeria.
Afterall Books is a research institute and publisher that studies and archives art exhibitions from the past that might otherwise disappear. In this case, the Chimurenga publication team states that while Festac ‘77 was legendary among the participants, there was an inclination to keep the legendary details as an oral history, a thing only discussed amongst intimates. Nevertheless, the project was discussed for many years, finally accumulating a huge amount of data.
Festac ’77 was funded by Nigeria’s immense oil-generated coffers, which led to the inevitable criticism that the money should have been spent on Nigeria’s burgeoning population and infrastructure, as well as the festival being criticized for its own shortcomings via shoddy guest housing and transportation. All this is honestly documented in the catalog, as well as information about political prisoners and dissidents from other African nations.
Nevertheless, the scope of participation, which included just about every continent on the planet, as well as the individual performers and performing groups is truly impressive and culturally enriching. Just take for example the retinue of musicians which included (for example) Stevie Wonder, Sun Ra, Gilberto Gil, and Fela Kuti, not to mention countless dance ensembles, theater groups, poets and writers.
The book is so dense, with its photocopied news articles, diagrams, essays and photographs, that I am far from finding my way around it, keeping getting lost in it, and keep asking myself “how come I didn’t notice this before?” I come away from a session with a real feeling for the event, the time, and the place.