This lecture presents three distinct but imbricating frameworks through which Kaiya Waerea explores power, pleasure, and possibility within print publishing practice.
Kaiya Waerea’s ongoing research project “Unfurling Whakapapa Takatāpui” triangulates between Māoritanga (Māori world-view), whakapapa takatāpui (Indigenous queer/trans lineages), and publishing. Working with the epistemological form of the koru, the bud of a fern yet to unravel, in relation to Stuart Hall’s concept of “roots and routes” within diaspora consciousness, the dual motion of rooting down and forging routes outward asks what it means to consider print publishing a diasporic medium.
Kaiya Waerea also presents the work of their press Sticky Fingers Publishing through the principle of intra-dependance. Here, we borrow the prefix “intra,” which means inside, from the Barbadian term “intra-action,” to center the way our material conditions are co-contingent and mutually affective within the publishing process.
Finally, the lecture discusses Access Questions for Self-Publishing, a resource for thinking about what accessibility means within self- and independent publishing. It provides a framework of questions that aim to deconstruct normative narratives around publishing and analyze the barriers disabled people experience in trying to access knowledge production and distribution.
Through looking at these frameworks, the lecture addresses what meaningful reciprocity can look like across a range of spatial and temporal contexts.
Event language: English with close-captions.
Kaiya Waerea (he/they) is a writer, designer, and publisher from Aotearoa, now living in London, UK. His research is concerned with crip feminist methodologies and Indigenous queer/trans print publishing histories. Kaiya’s writing has been featured in How to Sleep Faster (Arcadia Missa), Counter Signals 5: Systems and their Discontents (Other Forms), Errant Journal: Learning from Ancestors, and others. Kaiya also co-runs Sticky Fingers Publishing, an intra-dependant feminist press based in South East London, United Kingdom.
Sticky Fingers Publishing is an intra-dependant feminist press based in South East London, United Kingdom, run by Kaiya Waerea and Sophie Paul. Sticky Fingers Publishing began publishing together almost six years ago out of a shared concern for what knowledge feels like. Since then, it has become a site for experimental non-fiction exploring queer subjectivity, the erotics of knowledge production, and the materiality of language.
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The lecture series is accessible through a sliding-scale price structure:
- Solidarity: CHF 290
- Standard: CHF 150
- Student: CHF 70
- Reduced Student: CHF 35
For students with limited finances—particularly those self-identifying as marginalized, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, chronically ill, or disabled—we offer the Reduced Student price. We trust your honesty and do not require proof of self-identification for enrollment.
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This event is part of the Pressing Issues: Printing Futures, Publishing Resistance paid online series of lectures, tutorials, and roundtable conversations discussing the politics of translating, archiving, and publishing.
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