THE FIRST / LAST NEWSPAPER

Dexter Sinister

• Port Authority
• At BLANK SL8 (at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 41st Street)

Opening Reception Tuesday, November 3 from 6-9 PM

Publishing imprint Dexter Sinister will transform BLANK SL8 (pronounced “Blank Slate”)—a “pop-up” hosting space facing the New York Times building and adjacent to the Port Authority terminal—into a fully-functioning press office, writing, editing, designing, and distributing a broadsheet newspaper across the city. During the three weeks of the biennial, Dexter Sinister will invite writers, artists, and designers including Steve Rushton, Jan Verwoert, Rob Giampietro, Dan Fox, Walead Beshty, Jason Fulford, Sarah Gephart, Tamara Shopsin, Mariana Castillo Deball, and others to collaborate with The First/Last Newspaper, reflecting on the unstable condition of contemporary news and related medias.

Taking the form of a broadsheet—the original, large-format, single sided newspapers first produced in Europe in the 17th century—the six newspapers produced during the project will be distributed both in folded form and as flat sheets for public reading in various locations around the city. Under the editorial supervision of Dexter Sinister and the Performa curatorial team, The First/Last Newspaper office’s site at BLANK SL8 will be transformed into a hub of ongoing activity, including a series of screenings, lectures, and meetings, often related to other material presented as part of the Performa 09 biennial.

The newspaper workshop will act as a transparent, cybernetic model of the production of information and knowledge, allowing passersby to physically encounter the production space.

Curated by Defne Ayas with support from Virginie Bobin. Commissioned by Performa in partnership with the Times Square Alliance and the Fashion Center BID

PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION
The First/Last Newspaper will release 6 issues during the biennial, printing 3000 copies of each and distributing a new issue every Wednesday and Saturday. The newspaper will be distributed at various venues throughout the whole city, including the Performa Hub (at 41 Cooper Square) and select Performa 09 consortium venues.

The First/Last Newspaper will also be displayed on 6 “street readers,” three-sided, 8-foot-high plywood structures that will be placed in public spaces such as the Port Authority Bus Terminal and The Cooper Union School of Art for public reading.

Other issues will be hand-distributed and dispersed throughout the city.

Newspaper office open to the public Nov 3-22 from 12-6 PM

FREE

ABOUT DEXTER SINISTER

Dexter Sinister is the compound name of David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey.
Dexter Sinister recently established a workshop in the basement at 38 Ludlow Street, on the Lower East Side in New York City. The workshop was originally intended to model a ‘Just-In-Time’ economy of print production, running counter to the contemporary assembly-line realities of large-scale publishing. This involves avoiding waste by working on-demand, utilizing local cheap machinery, considering alternate distribution strategies, and collapsing distinctions of editing, design, production and distribution into one efficient activity.

http://www.dextersinister.org/

[Cartoon by Quinton Oliver Jones. Courtesy Dale & Connie Gephart (administrators of the Quinton Oliver Jones database) and Emily and Sarah Gephart (custodians of the Quinton Oliver Jones archive).