Printed Matter's annual contemporary art book extravaganza The NY Art Book Fair opened last night, and I dropped by today to take some shots of the festivities for the blog. Easily one of my favorite yearly art events in New York, the fair hosts an overwhelming amount of booths, lectures, screenings, performances, and more by 200+ participating independent publishers, booksellers, zinesters, and artists. The fair is at PS1 in Long Island City, it's free, and it will be open today until 7pm, Saturday from 11am-7pm, and on Sunday from 11am-5pm. Also, be sure to scroll down to the end of this post for a round-up of media art and digital culture-related highlights.

Electronic Arts Intermix Project Room
Everyday

EAI's project space, installed in MoMA PS1's basement vault, will feature STAGED DIRECTIONS, a special ongoing program of early and recent videos by artists, including rarely seen works drawn from EAI's extensive archive. STAGED DIRECTIONS features conceptual videos that involve rules, instructions, or tasks, incorporating the script or the instruction manual into the action and placing the artist's directions on stage and in front of the camera. The screening program includes works by Vito Acconci, Cory Arcangel, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Dara Birnbaum, VALIE EXPORT, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Joan Jonas, Mike Kelley, Kristin Lucas, Kalup Linzy, Shana Moulton, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Seth Price, Anthony Ramos, Martha Rosler, Carolee Schneemann, Stuart Sherman and Lawrence Weiner, among others.

Fillip and AAAARG.ORG Project Room
Everyday

Since 2005, AAAARG has served as an online research tool for tens of thousands of students, educators, curators, and artists seeking access to books and essays on critical theory, art, architecture, and film. Developed around a near-10,000-item printed card catalogue that indexes the content of the AAAARG Web site, The AAAARG Library creates a temporary, participatory space for the free redistribution of textual material. The Library will exist alongside the paid economy of the Fair, offering an extra-institutional space that will develop through a symbiotic (rather than an oppositional) relationship to the systems of exchange that structure the Fair.

During the course of the three day event, a librarian will be on staff in Fillip's project room (I01) to fulfill book requests using the material available on AAAARG. A computer and scanner will also be on location enabling patrons of the Library to share material with the communities of both the Book Fair and AAAARG. Exhibiting publishers are strongly encouraged to submit material to the Library and may do so at any time during the project.

A Cultural Reader Presented by Golden Age
Saturday, November 6, 12:00 p.m., the Classroom

A Cultural Reader, seven minute micro-lectures by Maxwell G. Graham (director, Renwick Gallery), musical duo Javelin, Hanne Mugaas (director, Art Since the Summer of '69 and curatorial associate, Guggenheim Museum), writer William Pym, and artist-writer Tim Ridlen. Organized by Martine Syms.

NY Art Book Fair Conference: Experimental Libraries and Reading Rooms Panel
Saturday, November 6, 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Note: Conference sessions require paid admission

What constitutes an experimental library? What is the impetus to create such a library and what impact do such spaces have on our exchange of ideas, the conduct research, or creation of art? Does this impulse stem from a need to create an intellectual community outside of academia, address an underrepresented subject, articulate an intellectual curiosity, or simply nostalgia for printed books and libraries, these spaces share the common trait of presenting unique collections of research material to the public. Martha Wilson of Franklin Furnace will give an introductory presentation. Participants include: Wendy Yao, Ooga Booga; Andrew Beccone, the Reanimation Library; Robin Cameron and Jason Polan, the Assembled Picture Library; Tiffany Malakooti and Babok Radboy, Bidoun Library. Moderated by Renaud Proch, Independent Curators International (ICI).

Saul Anton in conversation with Boris Groys on Groys’s new book, Going Public. Presented by e-flux.
Sunday, November 7, 12:00 p.m., Conference Room

If all things in the world can be considered as sources of aesthetic experience, then art no longer holds a privileged position. Rather, art comes between the subject and the world, and any aesthetic experience used to legitimize art must also necessarily serve to undermine it. In Going Public, Boris Groys looks to escape the limitations understanding art through aesthetic and sociological means, which always assume the position of the spectator, of the consumer. Let us instead consider art from the position of the producer, who does not ask what it looks like or where it comes from, but why it exists in the first place.

Paul Chan reading from his new book, Phaedrus Pron, followed by a book signing. Presented by Badlands Unlimited.
Sunday, November 7, 3:00 p.m., Conference Room

Published as a limited paperback and an unlimited ebook, Paul Chan's Phaedrus Pron recasts Plato's legendary dialogue on art, erotic love, and madness as unyielding sexual prose that stretches the limits of intelligibility and sense. "Written" by typsetting the original text with computer fonts created by Chan that transform the conventional alphabet into an array of erotic idiolects, Phaedrus Pron unfolds as a relentless exchange of erotic verse between a philosopher and a young man in search of rhyme and reason.

Print & Demand #2 with James Goggin, Jiminie Ha, Rob Giampietro, and Caleb Waldorf. Presented by Triple Canopy
Sunday November 7, 4pm, Conference Room

The second in an ongoing series of conversations exploring how print culture is being changed by the manifold forms of online publication, and how public spaces are being constituted around those forms. Caleb Waldorf, Triple Canopy creative director and co-organizer of The Public School Los Angeles, will moderate a discussion about the role played by design in shaping digital forms of publication: How are certain tropes of print publication—and the reading and viewing experiences they have engendered—being translated for new media (while others are being jettisoned entirely)? How has the shift from graphic design to user design, with its focus on interaction and interface, changed the way publications function? Participants include: James Goggin, design director at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and principle of Practise; Jiminie Ha, an independent designer and founder of W/——— project space in Chinatown; and Rob Giampietro, a designer and writer and principal at Project Projects.