Founded in 2015 and based in occupied Munsee Lenape + Canarsie lands (otherwise known as Queens), GenderFail is a publishing and archiving platform founded and run by Be Oakley. According to Oakley, “GenderFail is not non-for-profit but profit-for-survival or profit-to-continue-our-work-without-other-means-of-capital, and most importantly it is to make money for others I publish, to create profit-for-labor.” GenderFail seeks to publish works that expand queer subjectivity by looking at queerness as an identity that challenges capitalist, racist, zionist, ableist, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, and anti-environmental ideologies.

For ICA LA’s Bookshelf Residency, GenderFail will feature 80+ projects published throughout the history of the project, such publications as Textdemic: A Retrospective on Jenny Holzer’s Laments (edited by A.L. Steiner); The Metaphysics of Self-Immolation by FT and Riley Hooker; An Incessant Unknowability: An Archive of Protest Inspired Typography and its Open Source Uses and many other titles from their inventory. 50+ publications, prints, stickers, and tote bags will be on sale for the entirety of the residency in person at ICALA.

The Bookshelf Residency serendipitously coincides with the 10th Anniversary of GenderFail. A special broadsheet newsprint publication will commemorate this milestone, printed by the Newspaper Club in the United Kingdom. This broadsheet includes an entire page spread showcasing all 134 editions produced by GenderFail, showing the impressive output of this 1-person run small press. This broadsheet provides statistical information about the 10-year history of the project, including that out of those 28,661 books produced by GenderFail, 19,149 were handmade and that these books were once 352,018 pieces of paper that were hand-collated by founder Be Oakley. The broadsheet also includes a spread dedicated to sharing information and GenderFail’s commitment to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. With this proudly on display as part of the GenderFail bookshelf residency and printed in the broadsheet is our 2023 print “SOMEONE I LOVE IS FIGHTING LIKE HELL FOR PALESTINE.”

Copies of the broadsheet can be purchased in person at the ICALA or purchased online at genderfailpress.info.

On December 5th, an Annex gallery exhibition, An Incessant Unknowability: An Archive of Protest Inspired Typography and its Open Source Uses, organized by Be Oakley, presents GenderFail’s protest-inspired, open-source fonts, notably the handmade-style alphabet type design STAR, inspired by Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries activist banners, featured in the Scientia Sexualis catalog.