Ulises Carrión, Aart van Barneveld, and Salvador Flores, Ephemera Issue 12, 1977. Courtesy of the Getty Research Institute.
The New Art of Making (Other Books & So)
Join The New Art of Making (Other Books & So), a two-part reading group led by Morgan Yanni, Reference and Special Collections Librarian at Otis College of Art and Design. Sessions will be held at JOAN on Saturday July 18 and July 25 (time tba), with a Zoom option for remote participants.
In conjunction with the exhibition a bookwork in many places (on view from May 24-August 9, 2026), participants will read and discuss Ulises Carrión’s 1975 essay “The New Art of Making Books” and use it as a starting point for thinking about the distribution and publication of books today. Published in the essay collection Second Thoughts (1980), the text advocates for the autonomy of the books, as an art object rather than container of narratives. The reading group will also explore the publication of Ephemera, a collaborative periodical published by Carrión, van Barneveld, and Salvador Flores, which published the mail art each artist received from an international network of participants.
Participants will examine Umbrella, the print journal founded and edited by Los Angeles-based librarian and curator Judith Hoffberg. Through reviews, news, and profiles, Umbrella documented the rise of alternative art spaces dedicated to artist books around the world. Hoffberg and Carrión maintained a close intellectual friendship throughout the years, grounded in the expansion of transnational artist networks. Through Hoffberg’s journal and archival collection at the University of California, Los Angeles, participants will consider how artist-book communities have been documented and sustained, while reflecting on the changing practices of preserving and circulating books today.
Participants are expected to complete the assigned readings prior to each session. Readings will be distributed one week in advance. To register, please fill out this form.
Visitors are welcome to take a limited-edition reprint of Umbrella, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January 1978), currently available at JOAN.
Morgan Yanni (she/they) is the Reference and Special Collections Librarian at Otis College of Art and Design, where she also teaches classes on visual culture and artists’ books. She studied Art History at UC Berkeley and pursued graduate studies in Art History and Library/Archival Science at Pratt Institute. Her interests include artists’ books, memory work, and critical pedagogy.