NEXT QUESTION

Tuesday 2 June 2020
Wednesday 3 June 2020
Sunday 7 June 2020
    
Each session, 2h

4pm             Rotterdam        Clara Balaguer
10am            New York         Kristian Henson
7am             Portland         Dante Carlos
10pm            Manila           Czar Kristoff

Subotal labor for interview 6h x 4 = 24h
Subtotal labor for introductory text 4h x 1 = 4h
Subtotal labor extra meetings 2h x 4 = 8h
Subtotal labor for administration 2h x 4 = 8h
Subtotal labor shipping (approx., no shipment yet) 3h x 1 = 3h
Subtotal emotional labor UNQUANTIFIABLE 
______________________________________

TOTAL LABOR 47h 

A collective conversation and collaborative writing exercise amongst friends and collaborators from Hardworking Goodlooking. For a research project/publication/exhibition about independent publishing in Asia, organized by The Book Society / mediabus, a bookshop and publishing house in Seoul. 

HWGL were asked to fill in a couple of forms: an intake interview and then a written interview submitted via a shared digital form on REDACTED BIG TECH SURVEY PLATFORM. 

A long conversation was had amongst the four members of HWGL. About how and if they could participate, taking into account schedules, time difference, headspace, and energy levels for unremunerated work in pandemic times. Despite our collective exhaustion and survey fatigue, we could not forget a sincere wish to support regional labors/scenes. Elaine W Ho spoke highly of Lim, said they were absolutely to be trusted. Recommendations of respected colleagues, we cannot ignore this input. 

We acknowledge a deep, perhaps immature desire to be counted, credited, to exist in a canonical list somewhere, to be recognized. It is almost shameful, this longing for respect, as if we have not yet reached the detached enlightenment of "successful" people. We also register, tiredly and once again, the flow of migrating home in reverse, in accordance with the disappointing politics of cultural cringe. To exist abroad, by the much-appreciated support of those in richer/more subsidized/ex-colonizer geographies, before we exist at home, even though the work we (used to) do is so seated in home. The decolonial welcomed last where it should be first. And yet the undeniable situation: institutional participation and financing for large-scale North/Center projects and collaborations with Western/Central publishing houses, with no budget left aside as recompense for the labor of research subjects, without whom these projects cannot exist. It is our collective work that makes the archive possible. We forge what knowledge is being managed. 

We spend quite some time answering interviews, especially if written. Each word is carefully wrought. Even though weighted with such care, these words are often distasteful to the author later, when they disagree with their past selves. And then they must deal with the pain of being in print, the shame of not being able to retract what is inked. The risk of this pain should be subsidized. You don't get to rest on solid words and unchanging meanings anymore, not in these days of hypercyclic thought fashions. Tides move so quickly, you are never on the "correct" side of cultural production for long. You must keep moving to be relevant. We must become hunt-and-gatherers of modes of resistance. 

How to write in a way less taxing? How to write together, and talk about what we do without it being extractive? It has to be a game. What is written is perhaps not as important as how it is written. It is in the how that the what becomes apparent, meaningful.

We understand, spinally so, the precarity of this field (decolonial design? what is the fashionable word now?), which is why we participate. And how to do so in a way that levies us as little as possible? Even provides in repetitive labor the opportunity for leisure, humor, curiosity, inquiry, refreshment. 

We shall answer brief interview questions as a collective writing exercise. Each one writes one word, passes it off to the next person in the predetermined order. Repeat until the interview questions are answered satisfactorily. Next question.

Who is the we, they will ask, as they do. The we here now is we four, though rarely are we ever in a room all together. The we that we represent is not only we four, however. None of this would have been possible if we were but four.

REDACTED Chat Log
hey all, here is the REDACTED
the group one at least
Clara 3:53 PM

heyyy
is it here or there
Kristian • 3:57 PM

Hi there
Czar • 4:14 PM

hey can u join the call?
dunnno how to invite u 
Clara 4:15 PM

Hi I thought chat lungs
I cant do call atm
Sorry
Czar • 4:15 PM

oh ok we still waiting for dante
but maybe we can start?
hang on i'll text dante
he is typing back now 
he says he cant see us on the chat hold on i will send him a link
Made a pad for today
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/HWGLInterview
can you join the chat even though you don't talk?
just in the beginning, no need video, just to explain a bit the premise for the day
Clara 4:23 PM

Hi yes :-)
Czar • 4:23 PM

oaks we will wait for u
😉
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/HWGLInterview
Clara 4:23 PM

Got it
Am in the pad now
Sorry for making you wait
Hi there, I see someone is typing on the pad. I am confused loll.

Czar • 4:41 PM
hey there
we are waiting for u to come online
or actually u can just follow our conversation on the pad
but anyway we can start
this is just what we are talking about now
we were thinking you would come on with just audio but not speak, but maybe we can just do chat... so we will meet on line
Clara 4:43 PM

Clara was in a call with Kristian and Dante
Czar could not connect, as the internet in Laguna was not strong enough
43 mins

Chat Transcript While Waiting for Czar
[Kristian and Clara talking about BLM protests in NYC for a few min]
[Czar unable to connect via audio, only on the pad]
[Dante arrives]

Proud boys come down from the river and fuck shit up all the time
Weird
Complicated, AZN buddies part of proud boys, too intersectional for me
neo what
MRA
incels
group of men who didn't masturbate
no fap challenge
proud boys PUAs
gavin mc inness
vice
wtf 
neochauvinism
protest

[Clara explains the body public/published body, third extended meditation on the spineless publication, third in a series of extended metaphors/similes on the morphology of the book's body]

spine carries information to other parts of the body
experience action
conversation will be involuntary responding to another person's words instead of our own words
balance between a controlled and uncontrolled situation
the spine is a cataloguing thing, if there is no info on the spine it comes on, it's an anti library
not anti maybe but
sequencing
non sequencing
hierarchy it's the idea of flattened hierarchy
once it's shuffled back together the sequence can exist in an infinite iteration
are you thinking about waste

poop
gigo - garbage in garbage out
heard it from a student of chris lee's the other day in a crit
the quality of the input determines that of the output
but in a way that's exactly the opposite of what we do in HWGL
we refuse to acknowledge extramodernism as garbage 
metabolize the garbage
alchemize it
poop is gold


[parating nasa ilalim ng lupa ang ginto
gold lies always beneath the dirt
collaboration with ABC Dinamo, damn we still need to send some writing for that]
poop
[was it eva weinmayer who mentioned compost? or femke snelting?]
book as unit of knowledge [meme?] everything that's contained within that container
the body
what if you plugged up your butthole
jejejejejeejejejejejej
it's what a book is, plugged up
no way for information to be revived and processed and refreshed
older books that still contain racist eugenic ideas
if there was a system in place that allowed the format of the book to evolve and change as we know more things
[the margins... marginlalia, not a typo]
would be in a world with less fucked up shit from the past
REVISION
when you plug urself up you poison urself
is there a way, does that happen in some books
closed argument and system that deteriorates
to drown urself out, ur own garbage that u wrote [and now disagree with,
the only way is to correct is to publish more, push yourself way down in the feed, the search hits]

revisit
if we have time

only way to take back garbage u wrote is to write new stuff
it could have been correct within a past self or different amount of knowledge or feelings
book as time capsule
shouldn't invalidate it, it's looking at a yearbook
perfection isn't the point and particularly with that book
get it out there because no one is talking about it 
we were observing something

poop is a timecapsule of lunch
jajajajajajaajajaj
archaeological value to shit
in roman ruins of [pompeii archaeologists studied preserved poop in the latrines to understand what the inhabitants were eating, mostly bread and garum and veggies]
revisiting this thing that horrifies you
you have seen ur own poop
stuff u thought was relevant or that had some sort of weight
book is that residue
of all of those thoughts
turned concrete into this thing
that we don't necessarily... i don't wanna look at this
I feel uncomfortable psychological emotions attaching to this object


Interview
To be posted on REDACTED PLATFORM as per editor's instructions


First, please introduce the members of HWGL. I wonder what kind of background you have, and what motives you met to organize HWGL.


As far as I know you met in the Philippines for the first time and now all of them are working away from all over the world. How does this diaspora situation affect your work? Also, I am curious about the process of your practice in this situation. 

ALPHABETICAL ORDER: Clara, Czar, Dante, Kristian

We realign without a center, in order, dwell separately but together. We coalesced by sentiment and conviction, to return metaphorically what is lost from sight. Home exists to us in multitudes, never think that flowing, belonging under migratory waters can ever be damaged.

You seem to frequently use research-based methods for publishing specific topics, places and objects. 

AGE (Juniority): Czar, Dante, Kristian, Clara

Non-place. Non-agenda. Non-sequitur. Non-professional. Tita. Gossip. Merienda. Feelings. Detour. Traffic. Hyperstition. These are priorities of course. Becoming & unbecoming is a discovery. Cleanliness ruins beauty. Spectacle can be a death. Order without compassion interrupts improvisation; simulacra as corpse smells delicious when transformed.


I know that you participated in the New York Art Book Fair in last year. There seems to be a growing demand for small-scale publishing worldwide. The emerging of some art book fairs in major cities in Asia is one of the phenomena that explains this trend. How do you see this situation?

AGE (Seniority): Clara, Kristian, Dante, Czar

Not going, participating, swimming from marketplace to reclaim a past, shopping pseudo-scientifically ordered art dimension. Independently, we navigate towards this common star that burns. Vestiges of unknowns that harbor ghosts, into the labyrinth library, becoming what colors cryptically sound like. Bookfairs: exhaustive, connect the tissue and missing limbs, walk towards hunger and grasp eagerly to your inner content.


Ulises Carrion describes book making as a new art in the article The New Art of Making Books. I wonder what value or meaning of book-making to you?

HEIGHT (Small to Tall): Clara, Kristian,* Dante,* Czar*

This is breathing deliberately, an unanswerable fable waiting to reveal what's true in Ulises' words. Victory cannot stop efforts whether they know everything. Continuous iteration, preparation, un-rehearsal, rebuilding. Bookmaking & authorship extends the future universe and being. Enough bloodletting to the pages, let risk reveal the truth.


You produce a very small number of books. I am curious about your thoughts on the number of productions and distribution.

DISTANCE FROM MANILA: Czar, Clara, Dante, Kristian

Kinship politics of quantity balance the glut under constellations of individual bits. Small figurines delight in caves, naked uncompromised arrangements. Becoming circulatory snacking creatures magnifies endlessly poetic flows and feral guttural bellows. Occupying spatial real-estate accumulations, body suppurates excess methodologies, pilgrimage to relics, unholy dimensions, po.


What tradition or legacy do you work on in your practices? Apparently, it seems to me that you take advantage of a punk zine or self-publishing culture, and it also seems to actively dedicate the Philippine vernacular culture. I wonder how these elements are used in your practice.

ACADEMIC ATTAINMENT (Seniority): Kristian, Czar,* Dante,* Clara
*Equal Status

Fetish, demolish existing muses of truth! Humbly slithering through crannies, illuminated thresholds of possible desire. Legacy becomes complicated when justice is a blindspot. Zines celebrate raw street-like mediums that promote paranormal visions, slowly mutating beneath the dirt. Vernacularity becomes school-yard encyclopedia archiving, reconstructing pastiche virginities made entirely of colonial bodies, temporary touristing, and raging heat.

What issues are you interested in recently?

NUMBER OF SIBLINGS: Czar,* Dante,* Kristian, Clara
*Same Number

Returning artifacts to their home, imperfect vessels, secretarial networks, choreography that defies control, mosquito bitten as ritual, chosen pseudonym webs, secret revolutions and death to all canons unknown and unjust.


Please introduce 1~2 your projects or books. It would be nice to introduce with the image. Many thanks!

DISTANCE FROM EQUATOR: Czar, Kristian, Dante, Clara

Censorship is not the result of citizens' complaints, but state annoyance perverting within democratic entitlements. Kulambo explores journalistic resistance Bulleting unheard reports of Residency sectioned executions. Re-enactment of sleeping meditations, listening to conflicts inside, to other echoes the struggle revives. By printing archived remnants, the solidarity with those unheard movements reminds us that silence doesn't, cannot. 

END

Observations The secretarial labor of connecting, communicating across platforms, keeping time, it's the same task list as the captain. Letting go of the need to be substantial, accepting the loss of control of the sentence, being comfortable with placing a single word, a word that isn't even a noun, a suffix even. Who wants to captain/secretary the meeting? The secretary, the captain, neither get to play much. In silence, this labor is tedious. Speaking, this labor is play. 

Frictionary
Survey fatigue: Condition of exhaustion suffered by the frequent subject/provider of information/gatekeeper/informant. 
Collective writing: Often a tedious process of much editorial negotiation