sunny iyer

it's the 20th anniversary of the NY Art Book Fair! and the 50th anniversary of Printed Matter! this will be the 5th NYABF that I organize--my first was in 2019! and it's my 7th year working at the org 💓 applications close on Monday night. come one come all

I wrote an essay for my friend Sam’s cool skateboarding magazine, @plankskatemag , that tracks my relationship with bharatanatyam, which i’ve been practicing since i was 4. It’s a collection of moments that ultimately taught me about discipline… but mostly how to be unruly. i really enjoyed being a tweenage stoner, despite all the summer school. it took me a while (and a break in college) to contend with bharatanatyam’s role in the reproduction of diasporic bourgeois subjectivity and its exacerbating influence on caste, assimilation, devadasi history, and class allegiances. in the essay, i don’t try to balance these contradictions. i still dance today and love it, even though i don’t practice enough.

i love it when i close my eyes and it's a casino

i fell in love with zoey ten years ago in ohio, corsica, bay ocean, moss landing, tripunithura, the olympic penninsula, madison street now putnam avenue, garnet lake, hydra, amanoyasukawara, willow creek, the ganga, downtown, on stage, alvord desert, high east and north sierras. you are my home---the rock i cling to in a storm. i love growing older with you. for our decade anniversary, we spent two weeks in japan, one of which was on a motorcycle all over kyushu. everyday felt like a wedding. thank god for you zoey. happy birthday my eternal flame 🌹

On August 30 from 11am–6pm, Saffronia Downing will facilitate a workshop over the course of a day in the forest of Southwestern Massachusetts. Saffronia will demonstrate how to create “soil pastels” using clay salvaged from a nearby creekbed. Participants will learn techniques for processing raw clay to create site-specific writing/drawing tools using locally sourced materials. From the depositing of glacial till, to indigenous ceramic practices, to settler-colonial agriculture and logging, to industrial intervention and pollution; the composition of harvested clay and pigment affects and reflects shifts in geological and human activity across vast temporal scales. We will spend the second half of the day-long workshop exploring these overlapping histories and themes through writing and drawing exercises. Forest Study offers participants a chance to study and spend time off-grid together over the course of one single day. We can also continue to gather through the evening with the option of dinner and overnight tent camping after the workshop concludes. Participation is on a sliding scale, with no one turned away for lack of funds. Fees go towards facilitator honorarium and a communal lunch. Capacity is approximately 20 participants, first come first serve. 🪶 learn more and sign up at tinyurl.com/augustforeststudy

Rissa and I are excited to announce the next iteration of Forest Study, with Shiva Addanki, on Saturday, July 12 from 11am–6pm. I’m eternally grateful to be Shiva’s friend and to have seen so many different dimensions of his inspiring art practice—his zines via Shadow Comms, his music, his drawings, his paintings—all of which are undergirded by a deep commitment to research. Shiva’s work is both militant and playful… and I can’t wait to spend the day studying with him. I hope you’ll also join us! ▪️At the bleeding edge of the fourth Industrial revolution, we are experiencing history as a spiraling farce—the nightmare feedback loop of a previous generation of struggles that skews farther and farther to the right. What are the uses and abuses of studying the past at such an impasse? How do we confront so much fascist propaganda, and how do we find traction upon lost ground? Is there any place left for the cultivation of an artistic avant garde—aesthetics born out of militant sympathies and struggle—or is such a notion doomed and deluded? ▪️This one day workshop will experiment with some of the seeds sown by the original anti-colonial avant garde movement: the surrealists. Their now century-old confrontation with the logic of capitalist time might prove instructive to us, though in different ways than they had imagined or prescribed. We will read a selection of texts at the radical left margins of the surrealist tradition and then apply some insights to the most elemental expressive forms: drawing and poetry. In the midst of communal retreat, we might find new angles on how to both represent and confront our times. ▪️Sign up + more info about the cabin, forest study, and logistics here: tinyurl.com/july12foreststudy.

love you all peace out good job that was insane🌪️ thank u Sonel for seven years of our dream team—you taught me everything i know. thank u sgp for being my #1, words fail aka thank u for finishing my sentences, for being so good at what you do, for making me laugh til i cry. it’s surreal how much fun we have together. welcome Maia! lucky us 🪻 some highlights include: working with Mario Ayala on the stressball tire ticket edition plus a screenprint, a new lenticular diptych with Paul Pfeiffer, our very first reading room (on borders and migration), FKA CA53776V2.gallery, the Orange Radio and Dalé Zine pop up radio broadcast, No Canyon Hills on the roof, the 85+ first time exhibitors, and Apogee Graphics + Semiotext(e)’s final Classroom program remembering Gary Indiana in which I read his perfect 2012 essay “Fuck Israel.” what keeps me in this work year after year is a deep belief in the political urgency of independent publishing, distribution, and artists’ books. i also have few illusions about the constraints of our printed matter fairs in contrast to ones that are more diy, horizontal, affordable, and smaller scale. we depend on institutions like museums and universities that almost categorically repress activism against genocide and enact neoliberal policies that ultimately disenfranchise artists. sometimes it feels like everyday gets worse. travel to the us is increasingly restricted, wildfires blaze out of season, israel’s extermination campaign continues with impunity, and the west is as complacent and alienated as ever. i’m thinking a lot about this as we turn the corner towards summer, catch our breath, and start producing september’s ny art book fair.

lightning speed, thank u 4 letting me be myself 🪽 ily bangkok hawker centres mt hood karaoke snowboards matching clothes hard work higher power new home same train old friends first poem. i think 2025 is gonna be all about seeing the sunset as a reflection

my last 48 hours in hong kong was a movie. put a curse on the enemy state with the villain hitters under the bridge, fresh soy milk treat, played with this beautiful jrai instrument in the exhibition at parasite, shared wine mochi and french fries at kary’s iconic loft with panoramic views of lamma, dai pai dong, tangyuan, sleep, long sweaty hike to a completely empty tear jerker beach far out in sai kung. i love u hong kong - big thanks to daniel and everyone at tai kwun for bringing me out here again ⭐️

spring bled into summer so fast this year, milestone after milestone after milestone. my second total solar eclipse under totality. rachel and i went to dakar for the african art book fair, where we saw these handmade bull horn chairs, drank a lot of juice, watched ethan catch a sea snail in the ocean, and visited a few incredible photo and film archives. ten years of wendy’s subway culminated in a really perfect night among friends and past+future collaborators—thinking about jjjjerome’s performance on the roof at sunset still makes my heart swell. 2024 is also the year of my first published writing in print: the foreword to our theresa hak kyung cha reader. I’ve been biking a lot, on my trusty terry and also on the back of zoey’s kawasaki. I had the privilege of helping realize the latest issue of the ny war crimes; here it is informally displayed at dual in the east village. I went to toronto, fire island, and the eastern sierra too (my favorite place in the world). A lot more coming soon this fall—new reading groups, writing projects, agitprop, forest study, art book fairs. feeling grateful to bear witness to so much, even the parts that hurt 🪐

POSTPONED TO LATE SEPTEMBER SEE TINYURL FOR NEW DATES AND DEETS‼️ announcing the second round of forest study 🦢 facilitated by Arthur K and Early Shinada @peggy.s.polly , co-organized by me and Rissa @agirlchilling , food by @tinygametinyreality . this longform workshop unfolds over the course of 3 nights and 3 days at an off-grid cabin in the forest of Southwestern Massachusetts. the inaugural iteration was last October—swipe for some pix. we narrowly escaped a harrowing NYC flood, drove through misty highways and valleys into the Taconic mountain range, where we collectively wrote a play, scored it with sounds from the forest and of our own making, and passed the days reading, writing, grilling, and playing late night games. I can’t wait to do this and more all over again—maybe with you?—while sharpening our tools for examining the crumbling world around us. this workshop will grapple with how we make art within a perpetual state of war, while thinking through our relationships to community and ownership, use and commons, privacy and distribution, center and periphery, counter-narrative, celebration, and mourning. there are ~8 spots available and you can read more about the workshop and sign up here: tinyurl.com/julyforeststudy. space is limited; all meals are provided and shared; camping or bunking + carpooling from the city. please share around with people you think may be interested 💚

On Thursday, June 6, we’re celebrating 10 years of Wendy’s Subway ⏳ Tickets are officially ⭐️running low⭐️ and I know many of you are planning to be there... so now’s the time to get a ticket! If you can’t make it, you can still donate 💸 The lowest tier (but plz pay more if you can) is $150, which is a steal for a gorgeous dinner, lots of mead, performances by our beloved Morgan and JJJJJerome, and after party DJ sets and projections by our all star friends n family. bit.ly/WSturns10 I joined Wendy’s 7 years ago, fresh out of school, searching for a place to keep my head spinning around: experimental literature, poetry, co-ops, group work, activism, translation, critical theory. At times, we were no more than four people, all volunteer and stretched thin, keeping the project afloat with love, sacrifice, and the help of our community. Rachel @langue_pendue has stewarded WS for the full decade, holding it down with tenacity—we adore you! I’m obsessed with you all! The evolution of Wendy’s Subway is an extraordinary feat. From being all volunteer run to paying ourselves equally, from hosting amorphous fellowships to hiring our first staff members, from letterpressed broadsides to perfect bound artists’ books already in their second editions... I’m so deeply grateful for what we do and how we do it. Wendy’s Subway is building something truly unique in a cultural era defined by scarcity, individualism, and risk. We are uncompromising in our beliefs... towards a world grounded in abolition, solidarity, interdisciplinary practice, collaboration, and alternative, anti-institutional modes of learning. If you’re reading this, it’s 99% likely you’ve been touched by Wendy’s Subway in some kind of special way. We have so much to be thankful for... and even more to celebrate! I hope to see you there 🩵