210 canal st, rm 310, new york, ny
3 / aja bond: shelf-stable: a journal of mutual provisioning
june 13th
12-2.30pm collective assemblage and mapping at gmtc
2.45-5pm publication distribution walk in the city
outlines for a dispersed commons
note: participants are encouraged to attend the full program, which unfolds over the course of the afternoon.
initiated by bond, shelf-stable: a journal of mutual provisioning is a participatory publishing project exploring food preparedness, distributed infrastructure, and collective resilience through the form of an open-edition journal attached to shelf-stable food. drawing from the visual language of emergency manuals, grassroots organizing, and ecstatic public pedagogy, the publication combines practical strategies for food security with reflections on mutual aid, supply chain fragility, preservation, storage, and collective survival.
distributed through existing and widespread little free library networks, the project approaches these dispersed and socially familiar structures as an informal civic infrastructure through which food, knowledge, and resources might circulate together. cans function simultaneously as publication, food object, and public offering: a portable reserve of both nutrition and information.
over the course of the activation, participants will move through a series of collective activities including a presentation on the project’s conceptual background and research lineage, collaborative assembly of the journal objects, mapping and planning distribution routes through little free libraries, neighborhood walks in small groups, and the refinement of a shared digital platform through which the publication can continue to circulate, evolve, and remain publicly accessible over time.
shelf-stable proposes mutual provisioning as both a practical and imaginative exercise: a way of building capacity for continuity, care, and collective endurance amid increasing instability in contemporary food systems.
aja bond is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice brings together craft, social practice, publishing, and speculative research. working across sculpture, installation, pedagogy, and printed matter, bond explores how everyday materials and infrastructures like soap, fiber, salt, soil, food systems, archives, and informal distribution networks can function as carriers of memory, care, and future knowledge. informed by feminist and ecological thought, folk science, and vernacular technologies, their work treats craft not as nostalgia, but as an adaptive and living technology for collective survival.
through participatory projects that often invite use, circulation, or reuse, bond investigates preparedness, kinship, mutual aid, and maintenance as both aesthetic and political practices. their ongoing projects include artist libraries, participatory archives, and food preparedness publishing initiatives. they hold a BA in Studio Art and History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art and Social Practice from the University of Minnesota. their work has been exhibited internationally in museum, gallery, academic, and community contexts including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the Museum of Art and History, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, and KUNSTPUNK BERLIN.
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