120 x 185mm, 72 pages, Risograph printed, Coil bound, 5th Edition of 250, 2024

Imperfect Archiving, Archiving as Practice: The Ethics of the Archive is a special 4th edition of our popular essay printed in conjunction with the opening of Imperfect Archiving/Archiving as Practice a reading room by GenderFail Archive Project at The Center for Book Arts. The exhibition is on view at Center for Book Arts Manhattan location from July 9th- September 18th 2021. This manifesto talks to core of GenderFail collecting and archiving practices that looks to the softness of the collected and archived book as a metaphor for the type of content that are housed within. The GenderFail Archive Project is a socially engaged reading room that looks at archiving as a social activity. The project stems from GenderFail’s desire to share the publications from their personal library and give a platform to other publishers that they cherish.

Visit the exhibition page here: https://centerforbookarts.org/genderfail-archive-project-exhibition

Along with the essay, this 4th edition features 10 curated GenderFail Archive Project reading lists from my Publishing Now class taught from 2021-2023. In Late 2020 I was offered a teaching position at SMFA, Tufts University to teach a course I designed called “Publishing Now.” For this course I wanted the students to read zines and publications being produced in real time, so I started to digitize my collection. Many of the readings for this course were scanned from my personal collection of over 2,000 zines, artist books and art books that make up the GenderFail archive. Since we were not able to meet in person (due to the pandemic) I spent hours scanning zines and artist books to be used as required readings for the course. Each of the reading lists will accompany a link and QR code to read and engage with each of the publications online.

Published by