PUBLISH!, DT•LAB, & the Start of Summer

There’s not much to report this week. Except to say things are brewing. Things are ready to be shaken up a bit. I guess we’re just getting ready for summer.

We had a full weekend, with two events to take part in on Saturday: noon to 5pm at Richie Valens Park in Pacoima during the 9th Annual Celebrating Words Festival, organized by Tía Chucha Centro Cultural, then 7pm to 9pm at The Virgil in East Hollywood for the latest edition of Dirty Laundry Lit.

For both events, we were asked to implement our PUBLISH! project.

At first, we were thinking of bringing our trusty (or not so trusty) typewriters and follow what we’ve been doing at the last three implementations of PUBLISH! — prompt, 3 minutes of writing, book making, and launch of You Can Too.

But we decided to mix it up a bit.

We settled on broadsides. We printed out 11×17 broadsides, blank except for embellishments, Writ Large Press imprint, and our hashtag, #YouCanToo. We then asked the public to write to the prompts and allow us to take photos and publish them to our Instagram account.

The writers were given a choice to either take the broadsides home or hang them in our tent.

For the afternoon event, the prompt was: How do you celebrate?

For the Dirty Laundry Lit event that night, to fit the theme of “Bondage,” we created the prompt: What keeps you there?

It was a full day, first time we’ve doubled up in events like that in…ever? A long time? But not only did we get through it, we had a blast. The broadsides/Instagram publishing worked out the way we imagined it would. It gives us momentum going into the beginning of the summer and a fresh new schedule of events.

The next thing up is ENTER>text, an experimental literary event at Human Resources in Chinatown. It’s on May 30th. We are creating a PUBLISH! installation specifically for this show and we are calling it POLITICIAN 2008/2014. It will explore the role the mechanisms of publishing plays in both reporting an idea and distorting it.

Other than that, we are still trying to figure out how/where/when to pop up our DT•LAB again. We’ve actually had a couple of super exciting meetings about it, but can’t really discuss it until we are more sure of what comes of it. But I did manage to finally write Sarah of Pop-Hop back about DT•LAB in Highland Park. HP•LAB!

And also PUBLISH!: Phase 2 – Out on the Streets. Coming soon to a street near you…

More news coming! Follow us on Instagram! And stuff!

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