Brent Biennial 2025: AIR Ritual – Print, Refusal, & the Radical Imagination

About the event

Print has always leaked beyond control: smuggled, handmade, passed from hand to hand. This panel brings together R. T. Samuel (The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF), Sold Out Publishing, and The Mollusc Dimension (The Weird & Wonderful Surviveries of Squid Horse) to explore how radical print cultures reshape collective imagination.

From small presses to speculative fiction, they’ll discuss how publishing can act as a form of refusal, breaking with the mainstream and opening up new, unruly worlds on paper and beyond.

Chaired by Arsalan Isa.

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This event will take place in the Garden Room, University of Westminster Harrow Campus.

The event is part of Print Gully Zine Fair, which is taking place in The Forum at University of Westminster Harrow Campus, between 10am – 6pm on 24 October. Sign up for tickets here!

About the panellists

Bakhtawer Haider (Sold Out Publishing)
Creative Director, Art Director, Publisher.
Bakhtawer’s work is rooted in decolonial theory and the expansion of visual cultures within branding. She co-founded Plan B and Sold Out Publishing while studying her MA at the Royal College of Art, and co-authored Not a Reference Yet.

Betty Brunfaut
Creative Director, Publisher.
Betty’s practice revolves around collaboration, inclusive pedagogy, and environmental issues. She co-founded Plan B and Sold Out Publishing while studying her MA at the Royal College of Art, and co-authored Not a Reference Yet.

R T Samuel
R T Samuel is an editor, researcher and independent cultural producer working between London and New Delhi. He commissioned and co-edited ‘The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF‘, which was helmed by a viral fundraiser that made it the 2nd most successful Indian publishing campaign in Kickstarter history. The book involved working with close to 30 authors, translators and artists for close to two years, and features stories from more than six different languages and diverse mediums. A lapsed investigative and culture journalist, he has an MSc in Anthropology and Professional Practice from UCL and is always happy to talk about 80s SFF, public radio, futures thinking, liberation theology and Indian hip-hop.

The Mollusc Dimension
The Mollusc Dimension (he/him) is a neurodivergent, multidisciplinary artist whose colourful graphic memoir “The Weird & Wonderful Surviveries of Squid Horse” explores mental health, grief and growth from the perspective of a British-Chinese, trans-masculine, non binary creative. It was shortlisted by The Selfies Book Awards for non-fiction and the audio-described version is being edited. TMD has made over 20 zines and received 2 project grants from Arts Council England. TMD’s art / poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Aghh! Zine, Covert, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Page Gallery, Present Tense Zine, Queer Out Here and others. His music video “Asians Have Feelings Too” received “The Favourite” award from Trans Pride Brighton Film Festival in 2022 and screened in the UK, Hong Kong, Austria and the US. He’s performed live original songs in London, Brighton and Bristol and composed music for short DIY films and animations.

Arsalan Isa
Arsalan Isa is a writer and artist working at the intersections of publishing, performance, zine- making, and comics. In 2022, he introduced the term “Dissociative Realism” to describe an approach to exploring art objects and assemblage. Through mixed media, he delves into the making of agency, mapping biopolitics, pop culture, and the collective unconscious. His publications include zines on air travel, Victorian literature, plant nurseries, hands, lobsters, cling film, circumcision clinics, demo discs, mixtapes, migrant barges, wrestling, and ballet.

Print Gully is a frenetic zine fair where nothing goes as planned. It takes the energy of international shopping plazas and the utility of makeshift printing and turns them into what Homi Bhabha calls a third space, where different publishing worlds crisscross and hybridise.

Brent Biennial 2025: AIR Ritual

Each breath is a new possibility of life. Inhalation and exhalation as cycles of existence. Air is also the catalytic substance of ignition; it represents the power of utterance; declaration, song, whistles, chants, spells, of mobilising ideas and knowledge, people and animals. The intangible, invisible force that creates changes in culture, education, legal systems, religion and ideologies.

AIR Ritual forms part of the programme for Brent Biennial 2025. Titled “Bones, stones, and calling the four elements”, it seeks to invoke a communal spirit of gathering and imagining. Between June to October 2025 four ‘rituals’, WATER (22 June), EARTH (24 July – 1 August) FIRE (26 September – 12 October) and AIR (17 -24 October) will unfold at four Brent sites – a public reservoir, a park, an old medical facility and a university campus. Located in the north and south of the borough — Harrow, Wembley and Kilburn — the ‘rituals’ will feature artists presenting workshops, talks, performance and exhibition.