Editorial Tables: Reciprocal Hospitalities - public programme

Editorial Tables: Reciprocal Hospitalities is an exhibition and public programme bringing together the publishing practices of Ruth Beale, Sezgin Boynik: Rab-Rab Press, Minna Haukka & Kristin Luke: The Mobile Feminist Library, Minna Henriksson, Rose Nordin and Elham Rahmati & Vidha Saumya: NO NIIN magazine. Co-curated by Lily Hall, Yvonne Billimore and Jussi Koitela.

Throughout the eight-week duration of the show, the public programme bringing publics and artists together activates matters, material and processes presented in the exhibition.

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With the contributing artists, designers, publishers and curators hosting tours, actions and discussions around their intersecting ‘editorial tables’, this event on Wednesday 25 January offered an introduction to each of their practices and the materials gathered together in the space.

The event began with a tour of The Mobile Feminist Library van by artists Minna Haukka and Kristin Luke. Following this, they guided us through their collections selected for Editorial Tables and introduced some of the live processes of maintenance and making that will be unfolding in the space over the coming eight weeks. They were joined by activist, writer and researcher Magda Oldziejewska who, with a focus on reproductive, LGBTQ+ and migrant rights, shared the histories and working practices of the Feminist Library.

Joining us digitally from Helsinki, NO NIIN Magazine founders and editors Elham Rahmati and Vidha Saumya gave an introduction to their magazine and welcomed Mavelinadu Collective, their guest in Mumbai. The collective talked about the process of founding and running Mavelinadu, a publication house and cultural platform that publishes the work of marginalised caste creators digitally, due to launch their first print publication in mid-2023.

After a short break and time for browsing, Minna Henriksson gave a tour of a new iteration of the Kiila Feminist Archive in London. Henriksson’s archive-as-artwork is based on her long-term studies of the early years (~1936-1939) of the artists’ and writers’ association in Finland, Kiila, as they continue to resonate in the present. In English, Kiila translates as ‘the wedge’. Henriksson foregrounds intersecting feminist issues at the core of Kiila’s founding principles, which have since been obscured, lost or actively written out of its histories. As an active current member of Kiila, she continues re-tracing, translating and subjectively situating these feminist orientations through the fiction writing of its founding female members.

Rose Nordin was joined by her collaborator, writer and researcher Priya Jay from publishing platform STUART for a conversation on ‘publishing paper prayers’; exploring expansions of the notions of publisher and publics beyond the material realm by drawing upon the form-changing process of paper burning as ritual practice.The conversation was an invitation and a gathering to reflect on the featured written fire prayers formatted in the traditional Malay poetic form of the Pantoum. Fire invites a delicate burning of the texts; a counterpoint to considering books as a violent or destructive act, and a gesture instead towards the transformative potential of paper invocations translated through flames.

Sezgin Boynik introduced Rab-Rab Press, an independent publishing platform based in Helsinki combining experimental art forms and leftist politics with scholarly rigour and punk attitude. Boynik opened up a number of recent, nascent and upcoming Rab-Rab projects and collaborations.

Ruth Beale and children from The Hundred Club - an experimental creative space for children to use arts and play to explore social justice issues - shared interview videos responding to the question “what would you change?”.

Recordings and materials from a number of the presentations will be made available online after the event.

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Editorial Tables celebrates the production and dissemination of knowledge through the act of independent, experimental and artist-led publishing, with a focus on intersecting feminist and decolonial perspectives. The project involves a range of publishing, archiving, print and distribution practices by artists, curators and art workers; bringing these into relation and dialogue in the lead-up to the realisation of the exhibition at The Showroom.