Reading in the Imposter Mode

Lauria Joan

Book Launch ⎢ Wed. June 10, 18 - 21 hr
Reading by Lauria Joan,
followed by a conversation on design & production with Ilona Samcewicz-Parham & Lauria Joan

einBuch.haus / Lindenstr. 91, 10969 Berlin 

Reading in the Imposter Mode is the memoir of a biblio-fraud. When the book becomes a mask, who is to say whether we have read it? Exploring the social dictation and morality around being well-read, Lauria Joan satirizes the performance of being an imposter and encourages her audience to instead become spitefully-read.

I sit down, wearing thick rimmed glasses and a cap pulled low over my brow. Slouching, my arms lift up to obscure my face with an open book. Two oval holes are cut into the recto and verso of the hardback; I blink through the pages at you.

Reading in the imposter mode is a practice of skimming, gleaning, flipping through, letting a book fall past you as you briefly glance at the cascade of tumbling pages, and then turning to confidently declare: it’s genius. It’s overrated. It simply can’t be described. You have to read it. Don’t bother. When a book is closed, it’s impossible to know who has read it. Reading is a private act, a secret little rendezvous between text and eyes. Books are the greatest accomplices to a Reading Imposter. They never snitch.

Pseudo Press

Pseudo Press is a publishing project and bookbindery based in Berlin, founded by Lauria Joan. With a focus on the archival, the ancient, and the apocryphal, Pseudo Press has been alliterating since 2020. Pseudo Press handcrafts and publishes books, zines, and stationery that explore the materiality and history of book-making and book-reading as something communal, precious, and strange.

pseudo.press