Reading Room
On the first floor of 870 S. Raymond Ave
The Reading Room is a new incarnation of the longstanding exhibitor section, Friendly Fire, which featured select politically-minded and social-justice oriented publishers. Friendly Fire made a commitment to highlighting the intersection of grassroots struggles and histories of print publishing, which this Reading Room also attempts to underscore.
For LAABF 2025, the Reading Room features a curated installation of multimedia artwork by artists from Los Angeles, China, Iran, and Mexico and a non-circulating collection of thematically relevant artists’ books drawn from an open call to all LAABF exhibitors. We invite visitors to slow down and spend time with the material you find here. On display are many different approaches to documenting the times we live in. In contrast to the rapid speed at which visitors move through the Fair, the Reading Room offers an alternative space to engage in close reading, critique, and reflection.
This years’ participants include:
Cráter Invertido / Taller XD (N15) presents an artwork drawing from their recent publication, Marx Esotérico. The work references the imaginary presence of the border—from the specters that inhabit our land to the social mourning of necropolitics in México. An altar accompanies this artwork and honors the possibility of migration, which connects all of our struggles and challenges neoliberal colonial processes. “We take this invitation to contribute to the LAABF Reading Room as an opportunity to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people... Palestine is near! ¡Palestina está cerca!”
Travel bans and restrictions on Iranians have been a longstanding issue, dating back to the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, which have persisted throughout periods of political tension, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. falgoush’s (K14) installation will serve as a visual and interactive exploration of the Iranian experience at U.S. borders, using artist Shirin Fahimi’s personal experience of being barred from attending her exhibition in 2020—an incident that led to the co-creation of the artist book O Lone Traveller. The installation encourages reflection on the invisible costs of border-crossing while prompting broader considerations of the societal implications of such practices. By incorporating the book as both a reflective guide and a tool for reclaiming personal agency, the installation aims to empower visitors to engage with themes of surveillance, censorship, and resistance, while underscoring the importance of independent publishing in these urgent times of self-awareness and collective action.
Los Angeles Contemporary Archive’s (B13) Fixing Papers Collection explores how people create, enforce, and contest immigration systems. These text-based artworks and ephemera use bureaucratic materials to visualize the shrouded decision-making process and fixed categories that governments impose. In doing so, Fixing Papers hopes to disorganize and unsettle the categories our lives are made to navigate.
The installation by Squeeze sour (K1) + öö (uh uh) (L15) consists of a single large structure, made of smudged Riso-printed pages that invite readers to move through the work by hand. The reverse side of the pages remain blank, gradually collecting visitors’ fingerprints as they flip backwards. The work explores the threshold of book distribution through the lens of visa redistribution—where access, meaning, and authority are mediated by touch, delay, and silence.