The Classroom
On second floor of 950 S. Raymond Avenue
12–1 PM
Designing for Print: File Preparation, Image Quality, and Production Realities for Art Book Printing
This panel discussion and workshop demystifies print file preparation and shares best practices for creating production-ready art books, providing the audience with practical guidance on image quality, color management, and file setup. Panelists will also offer 30-minute interactive consulting sessions for interested participants. The program aims to help artists, designers, and publishers approach print projects with confidence. Panelists include Hemlock’s Prepress Lead Janel Elliott and Account Manager Carolyn Seng, Field Guide LA founder Andrea Hawken, and Echelon Color founder Tony Manzella. Presented by Hemlock Printers.
1–2 PM
Third World Duplication: Archiving Filipino Risograph Ephemera, with Rice Gallardo, Anna Marcelo, and Micah Rimando
Filipino Risograph Duplicate Archive (Kittybug Press, 2026) is a new zine composed of election flyers, religious brochures, receipts, and other everyday ephemera that function as important cultural artifacts of print culture in the Philippines. In this program, artists Anna Marcelo, Rice Gallardo, and Micah Rimando (who is the Tagalog editor for the zine), will explore the significance of the risograph in independent publishing across Filipino culture, politics, and religion. They will discuss why the risograph is invaluable to Manila print shops and the overarching importance of archiving print ephemera in the Third World. Presented by Kittybug Press.
2–3 PM
Distributed Bodies: Towards an Aesthetics of Amorphous Design, with Scarlett Meng
This program will engage the conceptual framework for PLATES, a serial publication that responds to questions in contemporary design practice and criticism. Produced collaboratively, PLATES reflects on how amorphous design practices challenge conventional notions of form, authorship, hierarchy, and materiality. Chief editor and creative director of PLATES, Scarlett Meng (RELATED DEPARTMENT), will examine how graphic design operates across both physical and virtual realms, where bodies become data, interfaces, and systems of representation. By situating PLATES within a broader network of exhibitions, workshops, and events, this program draws connections between editorial and curatorial practice, advancing the idea that publishing is a site for inquiry, collaboration, and critical discourse across different formats of circulation. Presented by Page Bureau / RELATED DEPARTMENT.
3–4 PM
Cholo: Comics, Sci-Fi, and San Francisco’s Mission District, with Matt Wobensmith
This slide show presentation and talk is centered on Cholo, the out-of-print anthology publication edited by Ed Silvera that encompasses previously published zines from the 1980s. Cholo is a result of the cross-pollination between the comix scene and cholo, street, and gang subcultures—anchored by Gary Arlington’s San Francisco Comic Book Company’s retail shop in the Mission District. The publication celebrates the neighborhood and its beloved landmarks, businesses, fashion, slang, graffiti, and car culture. It can be seen as an aesthetic precursor to the decades of prolific street art zines that followed, and is reminiscent of the aesthetics of Teen Angels, Love and Rockets, and the Mission School art movement. In this program, Wobensmith will elaborate on this iconic publication and its history, introduce similar works from the era, and discuss the connections between comix and street photography. Presented by Znz.
4–5 PM
Contemporary alternative Mexican comics are alive and pissed off, with Aranzazú Pérez and Rafael Rodríguez
Aranzazú Pérez and Rafael Rodríguez of Rico Jugos survey the last ten years of publishing alternative comics in Mexico: authors, independent presses, and the real challenges of editing, printing, and distribution. They discuss how publishing and distributing alternative material has become an act of cultural resistance against gentrification threatening to erase the independent spaces where this work happens. Presented by Ricos Jugos.
5–6 PM
Ground Rules, with Alejandro Cartagena and Lesley A. Martin
Photographer Alejandro Cartagena is joined by Printed Matter’s Executive Director Lesley A. Martin for a conversation about Ground Rules (Aperture, 2025), the first comprehensive, bilingual survey charting his prolific career. Celebrated for the self-published photobooks Carpoolers (2014) and A Small Guide to Homeownership (2020), Cartagena is known for his rigorous images that span the politics of the US-Mexico border, suburban sprawl, and the increasing wealth disparities in North America. Ground Rules deploys a diverse array of photographic formats, from documentary and collage to the appropriation of vernacular photographs and AI-generated imagery, all unified by Cartagena’s commitment to addressing Mexico’s most pressing social and environmental issues with humor and pathos. Presented by Aperture.
6–7 PM
Axes and Allegories, with Matthew Connors and Nicholas Muellner
What can an image do when the world it depicts is breaking apart? Photographer Matthew Connors and writer-photographer Nicholas Muellner approach this question from different ends in two new publications with MACK/SPBH Editions. In The Axe Will Survive the Master, Connors assembles twelve years of photographs made from North Korea to Hong Kong to Ukraine. In Love in a Time of Allegory, Muellner delivers a textual-visual essay that calls for abandoning realism in favor of allegory, fiction, and the radical act of closing one's eyes to see. Together, these two new titles and their authors will bring into dialogue documentary witness and speculative thought, then broaching questions of photography, meaning, and survival in an era of image saturation and political collapse. Presented by MACK/SPBH Editions.