Queer.Archive.Work
QAW was incorporated in the State of Rhode Island on March 2, 2020 to support artists and writers with free, open access to space and resources for experimental publishing, with a special focus on queer practices. QAW includes a non-circulating library of books, zines, tools, objects, and downloadable files, a shared publishing studio (with Binch Press), including extensive risograph, screen-printing, letterpress, and other print and publishing resources, and digital meeting spaces. Programming includes Studio Residencies, Studio Membership, Open Library Hours, Open Studios, workshops, publishing, and online Queer Hangouts. QAW aims to be accountable, to center marginalized voices through intersectional work, and to cultivate anti-racist, safe platforms for independent, queer publishing.
Series Titles
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I’ve been looking for queer typography. Is anyone else out there? Who else is searching? I wonder if this is even a valid question. Looking for queer anything often feels lonely. The word queer resists definition, sometimes aligned with ideas about rejection, refusal, deviating from the expected, away from the normative. It’s certainly a political word, one that’s taken on expansive qualities throughout its history, qualities that aren’t necessarily confined to gender and sexuality… Originally delivered as a talk at the Type Directors Club “Type Drives Communities” Conference, February 2021. -
Urgency Reader 2: Mutual Aid Publishing During Crisis began with a 10-day open call that was announced on March 18, 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The call for work was motivated by two desires: 1—to collectively document some of the extraordinary conditions, dynamics, and emotions being experienced while in quarantine, and 2—to provide some relief to artists and writers impacted by the crisis, in both creative and monetary forms. How might publishing as artistic practice embody communal care? More than 100 artists and writers submitted work, mostly generated during quarantine. Contributors were compensated a total of $2,295, using funds from ... -
Urgency Reader is a quick assembling of texts, risograph printed in Pawtucket, RI, and bound as a book at the last minute to launch at the Odds and Ends Art Book Fair at Yale University Art Gallery on December 6, 2019. Suggested topics from the open call included ⊹urgency, ⊹craft ⊹queerness ⊹gender ⊹transformation ⊹kinship ⊹race ⊹survival ⊹post-apocalyptic practice ⊹futurity ⊹pedagogy ⊹surveillance capitalism ⊹death of capital ⊹radical publishing ⊹decolonization ⊹augmentation ⊹resistance ⊹sci-fi ⊹collective care ⊹joy Inspired by Omnibus News #1 (1969), Assembling (1970–87), and other assembling publications, Urgency Reader is an experiment in publishing as a gesture of call and response: the ... -
TINY DIGEST #1 is a slow, distributed-by-hand QAW newsletter printed on a single sheet of cheap paper. It was designed to be assembled quickly, easily printed, and mailed out in an ordinary business envelope. An open call to the QAW community resulted in 23 contributions around the theme of space—queer space, taking up space, sacred space, porous space, safe space, outer space, spaced out, shared space, screen space, etc. -
resting reader is a book of texts and images assembled from source material found on the shelves of the Queer.Archive.Work library. All pages were scanned directly into the risograph, printed in an unlimited edition, and bound on the Horizon BQ-140 perfect binder. No computers were used except to set the type on the cover. The content was selected during the rise of the COVID-19 Omicron variant in December 2021, around the loose themes of rest, quiet, care, queer, sanctuary, reflection, collective, and generosity. This publication is also a reflective response to Urgency Reader 1 (2019) and Urgency Reader 2 (2020), ... -
QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK is an urgent act of publishing that’s radical, messy, and future-looking. It’s a signal sent out into muddy waters, the start of a speculative practice emerging from (and moving towards) the undercommons—a collective place for subversive artists and writers who reject normative narratives. THIS PUBLICATION IS A LOOSE ASSEMBLING OF QUEER METHODOLOGIES, WITH A PARTICULAR VIEW TOWARDS NETWORK CULTURE, FAILURE, AND REFUTATION. It’s an attempt to move far beyond the printed web. It’s an experiment in publishing as practice as resistance. -
QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK 2 (1923 INTERNET ARCHIVE EDITION) was installed in a special reading room at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on January 25, 2019. Printed as an edition of 100, the publication is a newsprint catalogue enclosing a set of annotated risograph prints, allowing lesser-known material from 1923 to intermingle in a loose assemblage. Artifacts include rare, historical LGBTQ content that has been digitized for the first time, and works by African American and Native American artists and writers. All items were originally published in 1923 and are in the public domain as of January 1, 2019. QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK 2 was ... -
ISSUE #3 (Urgentcraft) assembles 18 artists and writers who prioritize maintenance as a form of urgency. Upon receipt, this publication e x p a n d s in the hands of its reader, filling an enormous space with queer feeling. It shapes a landscape that speaks of visibility, of a commitment to pleasure, of kinship networks, of memory, of closely re-written histories, of engaged dialogue, of riptides, of affective space beyond the material, of a failed, imperfect read. Of communal care as a never-ending practice.
