Hyperlink Press Reading Room
OCTOBER 9 - DECEMBER 11, 2021
As part of the Review Retrospective exhibition at Abrons Art Center, my zine collective created Hyperlink Press Library, a public installation where attendees can access our 2018-2021 zine archive and our inspiration sources & texts available. The installation was inspired by the aesthetics of the early internet era and South Korea’s Manhwa Bang, a comic book shop/cafe where people can rent, read, and socialize. The installation was open to public appointment-based and sit and access bilingual reading lists that explore Glitchy Technology, Queer Family, Naming Diaspora, Solidarity & Translation, How to build Future, and Zine History. As a director of Hyperlink Press, I collaborated with an exhibition designer Weiyun Chen to culminate this public installation.
Through zine practice, Hyperlink Press seeks to distribute a love story of a marginalized community, LB City: Cyber Lesbian Utopia, and how we all can come together to support each other. The passing of love has nothing to do with blood or kin. It has everything to do with the community we nurture together to continue passing on these love stories. Hyperlink aims to archive, envision, and distribute these love stories to reimagine belonging.
Hyperlink Press sources its aesthetic inspiration from the software interfaces of the early 2000’s in South Korea that followed its own distinctive path of development. For millennials, the 2000’s stood as a time of excitement for a decentralized and equitable world, departing from traditional forms of community building. We are drawn to this era when anyone could be anything and accepted for the stories they shared. The internet represented a radical shift in how dialogue existed and propagated, providing a framework for understanding our collective marginalized histories beyond state-mandated narratives which often centered patriarchal, heteronormative, anti-communist, and imperialist paradigms.
