SBC is pleased to present Cycle 3 of Loosely Assembled : J’ai Besoin d’a Of North 1986, presented by The Shanzhai Lyric.The Shanzhai Lyric is the poetic research and archival unit of Display Distribute centered around the experimental English of shanzhai t-shirts made in China and found across the globe. Often positioned as bootleg or counterfeit items, shanzhai materials use tactics such as copy-paste, humor and mutation to both revel in and reveal the hypocrisies of fashion and commodity hierarchies.

 

 

The Shanzhai Lyric imagines both the “illegible” and the “counterfeit” as tactics of sabotage, complicating the relentless force of branding. The bootleg and the original are commonly manufactured in the very same factory, using the same, but slightly altered blueprints. Shanzhai lyrics also gesture towards collectivity— an open-source language that embraces poetry, play and exaggerated mimicry as modes of resistance.Join us on Saturday from 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM for the launch of The Incomplete Poem, a custom display and reading apparatus built for J’ai Besoin d’a Of North 1986 that allows the Shanzhai Lyric archive to be collectively interpreted. Positioning the gallery as a site of publication, viewers will be invited into a guided reading of the Shanzhai Lyric archive using the apparatus, in a participatory performance led by the artists. This first iteration of the reading apparatus recasts these garments as living documents within an embodied archive, open to collective interpretation and engagement.The performance will also be available on our Instagram (@sbcgalerie) as a livestream during the event and later archived on the LOOSELY ASSEMBLED INDEX.Following the vernissage, SBC is pleased to host the participants of UdeM’s Publishing Sphere conference. Join us for a series of informal presentations by participants, followed by a reception for the conference.

 

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The reading apparatus for Shanzhai Lyric’s “The Incomplete Poem” was developed in collaboration with common room http://common-room.net. Development of the web-based project has been with the support of the Rhizome Microgrant program. SBC would like to thank UdeM’s Publishing Sphere conference for their support of the performances and reception for Cycle 3 : J’ai Besoin d’a Of North 1986.

 

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LOOSELY ASSEMBLED is an assemblage of practices, possibilities and histories within the context of publishing. LOOSELY ASSEMBLED is a research site, a recursive library and a series of public presentations. Throughout 2019, LOOSELY ASSEMBLED will continuously grow as a cumulative, ongoing project - reflecting and responding at each intersection. Within an expanded framework of publishing, and with momentum against the canonization or veneration of the form, we will work toward identifying, building and strengthening the communal responsibilities that we must take into account while publishing, in continuity.