Event — cactuspress.nl

CACTUS PRESS 仙人掌印務部

cactuspressnl@gmail.com
Instagram：@howlingcactus_

A publishing collective formed by three women living between the Netherlands and the Chinese speaking world.

Cactus Press develops a hybrid practice that connects print media, sound, moving image,exhibition-making, and participatory performance. We are drawn to gestures of resistance that grow out of dryness and silence. For us, publishing is an attempt to speak again across different soils—a process of interpenetration and exchange that turns each book into a living hypertext. Each publication becomes a node that links to other forms and contexts, generating new relations that keep the practice open, porous, and alive.

CONTACT

WHAT IS HAPPENING

Uncoming Book Fair

Apr. 17-19 — London
— Outland Publishing Fair

Past Events

2026

Jan. 10-31 — Changsha
— Lailaihuihui
Exhibition：Please Dance Happily and Freely

Jan. 10-11 — Changsha
— Lailaihuihui
Dance Workshop

Jan. 31 — Rotterdam
— Dokhuis Zinefair

2025

Dec. 6 — The Hague
— Nowhere Zine Island

Dec. 6-8 — Bangkok
— Book Fair

Dec. 13 — Utrecht
— FOTODOK × Casco Book Fair

Dec. 18 — Utrecht
— Basecamp

Dec. 19-21 — Tokyo
— Tokyo Art Book Fair

Dec. 28 — Kunming
— Used Good Fair

2.Memories or Ashes

Memories, or ashes is a participatory performance that publishes an unbound, handwritten book in a dark space.

The book misplaced poems, displaced poems holds ten texts that come together for no apparent reasons, like friends, or voices of dissent from apparently unrelated cultural and political contexts. together, they loosely evoke memories of femme phobia, state censorship, slogans from the street, soft promises, dilemma, fear, and ultimately, resilience.

The audience is led into the dark space with a recorded voice, trembling, fragmented, short of breath. in the dark, they create organic reading circles with phone torches and read together. errors in writing, errors in reading, errors in expression and interpretation brings the book alive. slowly, spontaneous conversations emerge as the book ends, becoming a soundscape beyond the language of words to a language of voices. suddenly, the comfort of the darkness is ruptured by a performative surprise, reiterating the last question of the book: where do the burnt ones go? do they belong to memories, or ashes?

The performance reflects on publishing as an act of resistance against erasure.

Artist: Sarmistha Bose

2.Please Dance Happily and Freely
欢乐地跳吧

Please Dance Happily and Freely

Please Dance Happily and Freely presents artist Wang Xue Sophia’s long-term research on Meshrep—commonly known as Mai Dance—a form rooted in China’s square dancing culture.

Using “dancing with others” as a fieldwork method, the artist explores how this ritual-based dance has entered urban squares, residential communities, and everyday life, generating new forms of connection across migration, generations, and bodies.

Approaching square dancing as a form of social theatre, the exhibition examines how bodies are disciplined through collective performance while simultaneously producing subtle modes of resistance. Presented as a video installation, the work traces the circulation and reconfiguration of Mai Dance across different cities and embodied experiences.

Movement trajectories of the dancers are projected from the ceiling onto the floor, inviting viewers to physically follow, mimic, or cross these paths—transforming spectatorship into a shared, embodied experience that navigates the shifting boundary between discipline and freedom.

Artist:
Wang Xue Sophia

Curator:
Cactus Press

Venue:
LaiLai HuiHui
No. 16 Tanshi Road, Xihu Street
Yuelu District, Changsha, Hunan Province, China

Duration:
January 10 – Jan 31, 2026

Visual Design:
Jasper Caoyi

Project Coordination:
Qiao, Deby

Exhibition Execution:
Wang Xue Sophia, Deby, Qiao