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

Ritu Ghiya (left), Lukas Eigler-Harding (right)

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 quick circulation of a charged collection of texts—in some cases raw, in-progress, or sketchy—to a small but deeply engaged audience. As the poet Karl Young wrote in his foreward to Assembling #12, such publications “can be read as chance-generated collages, and as spontaneous pieces of printed performance art.”

Karl Young

A total of eighty contributors far and wide sent 467 pages of work in just under two weeks, signaling a need to publish urgently, but less preciously, on non-corporate platforms.

nicole killian (left), Rey Carlson (right)

I used my stapler’s maximum capacity to determine the page count (126 sheets + cover bound with 5/8 inch staples). The goal of the edit was to be as inclusive as possible, at times asking contributors to compact their submissions in order to free up space for others. The order of the texts as they appear in the book was determined by chance by assigning a series of random integers from random.org to the alphabetical list of contributors.

American Artist

Urgency Reader
252 pages + cover
Risograph printed book with black ink on Domtar Earthchoice paper
Hand-bound with 5/8 inch staples and partial wrap-around cover adhered to back page
Edition: 110 copies

DOWNLOAD URGENCY READER
Low-res PDF (37MB)
High-res PDF (950MB)


Contributors and contents

1. nicole killian—A CIRCULATION ON DISTRIBUTION
2. Rey Carlson—PRAYER
3. Kenneth Reveiz—MOP, MOPE(<)
4. Joseph Imhauser—Mother Earth
5. Helen Taranowski—Security Switch
6. Lauren McCarthy—Reading List for Network Media, Fall 2019
7. LaTefy Dolley
8. Porpentine Charity Heartscape—THE MAXIMUM SOFTNESS CAPABLE OF BEING EXERTED BY ALL MACHINERY
9. Ant Lobo & Anna Barlow—THIS IS A BRICK.
10. Zach Deocadiz—The Internet Saved My Life
11. Chris Cote—Reminders
12. Juliana Castro—Instructions on winning someone’s love
13. Jerome Harris—Failed attempts at busting a nut as a result of faulty communication bewteen horny strangers via text message.
14. Will Kuria—Redacted from us to you. Now it’s just me and I am nothing.
15. Max Evans—I am rewriting my history as a gallery
16. Ritu Ghiya—devious and conniving
17. Lukas Eigler-Harding—To interface
18. Genevieve Flavelle—What’s queer in THE CLIMATE CRISIS?
19. Nikki Juen—EXCERPT FROM CYBORG MATR
20. Jason Lipeles—i mean this
21. Kirslyn Schell-Smith—Virtual Reality
22. Sal Randolph—Sharawadji Mix
23. Anna Stein—@windowspaints
24. Elaine Lopez—MyDataDownload
25. Rodrigo Moreira—AABC, 2019
26. Darian Razdar—NIGHTWALKERS
27. June T. Sanders—All fists in a dive on the southern tear, daughter of something, FORAGIRL, IDAHO GIRL (by Abigail J. Hansel)
28. Rachel Atakpa—a burning, GLITCH
29. Travess Smalley—1 Number colors burn randomly: 2 The first recorded use of jade green
30. Eliza Chen—Ears, Eyes, and Blood Boiling: Notes from Electronic Music Concerts
31. Daedalus Li—on intimate thoughts
32. emma rae norton—complication of the computer mouse
33. Lauren Traugott-Campbell—SQUISHY PLAY
34. nicolas baird—LITTLE CREATURE
35. nènè myriam konaté—koulikoro
36. Bobby Joe Smith III—(UN)COMMON GROUND
37. Luiza Dale—A trip into a void
38. Tiger Dingsun—Dearest Salve-maker
39. Mena Kamel—Have You Ever Seen a Whale
40. Elite Kedan—PITCHDECK
41. Kelsey Elder
42. Somnath Bhatt & Rin Kim—Dialogue between me and Rin Kim
43. Vuthy Lay—REFUGEE REPAIR: KHMERICANA,
44. Kitt Peacock—Walter Malici and the Dark Water
45. Leon Butler—Notes on Algorithmic Dysmorphia
46. Be Oakley & Noah LeBien—Failure as Future Making
47. Christopher Clary—FkN-JPGs-on-PAOM
48. Kelsey Dusenka—Untitled
49. Kelsey Sucena—Tofu, or some notes on the weight of bodies
50. Celia Shaheen
51. American Artist—COLORED TIME
52. Sara Kaaman—wave to print
53. Madeline Zappala—computer love notes
54. Sam M-h—the evening- by the factory and the strip club, in the small sports bar on it’s karaoke night, where old elementary school teachers hid from hometowns, men placed bets, metallic balloons crowded the back seat of a car outside
55. Cassandra Hradil—FLOWER FUTURES
56. Nic Wilson—Notes On Drawing as Masturbation and the Pursuit of Solitary Pleasure
57. Olive B. Godlee—several edits down
58. Marisa Fulper Estrada—THE SCARCITY OF QUEER SPACE
59. Emma Kemp & Matthew Altman—poem1, poem2
60. noa machover
61. Trevor Bashaw—notes on my project (un)be cum: a queer archive of the ecological self-in-relation
62. Zack Wilks—“QUEER ETIQUETTE”
63. Loizos Olympios—excerpt from Αντί- ( *a text that prints itself)
64. Ramon Tejada—FUKU

Edited by Paul Soulellis