Pioneer Works Press Announces Endless Garment by Shanzhai Lyric
February 9, 2026—Pioneer Works Press is pleased to announce the upcoming release of Endless Garment by Shanzhai Lyric, a debut poetry book by the New York-based “roving poetic research unit,” translating the unique language of counterfeits into a lyrical reflection of global fashion culture. Composed of words and phrases found on shanzhai T-shirts—Chinese-made counterfeits that imitate global brands peddled worldwide—Endless Garment stitches together bootlegged logos, fashion copy, and rogue slogans into one unfolding poem. The book’s release is accompanied by a major group exhibition at Pioneer Works, The Endless Garment: Atlantic Basin, which displays Shanzhai Lyric’s t-shirts and found poetry in dialogue with other contemporary artists exploring Asian fashion production. Presale for the book begins February 10, with the official launch March 8, 2026. Limited edition Endless Garment shirts will also be available for sale online on the PW Store website.
Endless Garment draws on a decade-long archival project by Ming Lin and Alex Tatarsky, who comprise Shanzhai Lyric, a unit dedicated to exploring radical logistics and linguistics through technological aberration and nonofficial cultures. The duo draw inspiration from the experimental English of shanzhai T-shirts, they examine how mimicry, hybridity, and permutation reveal the artifice of global hierarchies. Shanzhai, the Chinese word for counterfeit, literally translates as “mountain stronghold,” echoing the enduring presence of these garments while simultaneously juxtaposing the natural and the manufactured. From the hundreds of shanzhai T-shirts that the duo have accumulated, they have stitched together aphorisms, mistranslations, celebrating the collisions and lyricism of global clothing culture. The book emerges from an inquiry into circulation, reproduction, authorship, and the shifting semantics and meanings of originality in contemporary material and digital culture. From "CHANEL COCO CHRISTIAN DIOP" to "CHOP YOUR OWN / WOOD / AND IT W LL WARM YOU," these linguistic aberrations reveal unexpected beauty amid the chaos of the garment industry as it moves through bootleg economies.
“Our archive is an attempt to slow down the pace of fast fashion in order to study its patterns,” said Shanzhai Lyric. “We welcome the wisdom of errata as a reflection of contemporary conditions.”
“This is exactly the kind of book Pioneer Works Press exists to publish. It cracks you open and makes you rethink what poetry can be,” said Micaela Durand, Associate Director of Publishing at Pioneer Works. “Genuinely touching and confounding, Lin and Tatarksy’s book is an invitation to tune into transmissions from the bootleg unconscious...”
The launch will be heralded with a fashionably late Fashion Week show on March 8, 2026, in Pioneer Works’ Main Hall, with participants wearing the shirts that sourced the language of the poem in sequence while the performance is simultaneously read aloud live. This runway performance will take place during Pioneer Works Second Sundays, a free monthly open house featuring live music, experiments, and workshops that activate PW’s campus in partnership with artists-in-residence and community members in Red Hook.
A transnational group exhibition, The Endless Garment: Atlantic Basin, on view on Pioneer Work’s second and third floors through April 12, 2026, offers audiences a visual entry point into Shanzhai Lyric's project. The artists have transformed one of the artist-in-residency studios into a presentation space for their archive of research materials, segments of printed found poems, and hanging t-shirts and garments from their collection. Curated by Jeppe Ugelvig, and also featuring works by Serena Chang, Chang Yuchen, CFGNY, Huang Po-Chih, the show explores the ways in which Asian fashion production is represented, engaging with the artists' personal histories across various mediums such as wall-based collage, clothing repurposed into sculpture, photography, and more.
Praise for Endless Garment
"Endless Garment is not your mom's Found Poems, nor Bern Porter's, nor Paul Nougé's, nor is it the Concrete Poetry of Gomringer or the De Campos brothers. It refracts all of that—and much more from the quotational avant and neo-avant procedures of the twentieth century—while pointing at (Mallarméan) constellations of a future global language, a sabir-English transmogrified by anonymous agents of change, miming, mimicking, and critiquing the meme-centers from the periphery. Shanzai Lyric's situationist derive through the memeverse of underground economies, orchestrates a dispersal and détournement of affect, earnest and ironic, fleeting and iconic, parading through these pages to celebrate 'art as a way of survival."
– Matvei Yankelevich, Author of Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt
“Endless Garment is the balm we need for the idiot world. This poem refuses to behave, discovering that the way to go deep in a shallow world is to surf the extreme. Ming Lin and Alex Tatarsky have created a body of bootleg language that is liminal, dangerous, and totally contemporary.”
– Sarah Wang, Author of New Skin
"Endless Garment is a long poem in the tradition of poetry-is-everywhere-you-find-it. This text will renew your love for the repurposed, rekindle your joy for the unexpected."
– Robert Fitterman, Author of Rob's Word Shop
"Endless Garment rips one last attitude adjustment focus love song to the planet, slaps concrete wood, goes bongo with selfie."
– Tan Lin, author of HEATH (plagiarism/outsource)
About Shanzhai Lyric
Shanzhai Lyric (est. 2015) is a roving poetic research unit exploring radical logistics and linguistics through technological aberration and nonofficial cultures. Drawing inspiration from the experimental English of "shanzhai" (counterfeit) T-shirts made in China, they examine how mimicry, hybridity, and permutation reveal the artifice of global hierarchies. Incomplete Poem, their roving archive of poetry garments, circulates through poetry-lectures, publications, and installations. In 2020, they founded the fictional office of Canal Street Research Association to probe ideas of ownership and property through bootleg as method. Their work has been presented at MoMA PS1, Abrons Arts Center, Artists Space, Sculpture Center, Storefront for Art & Architecture, Stuart Hall Library, Times Museum, Amant, and others, with writings in The New Inquiry and ArtReview Asia.
About Pioneer Works Press
Pioneer Works Press is the publishing imprint of the arts and science organization Pioneer Works, dedicated to supporting experimental and pathbreaking work from leading artists and writers in contemporary culture.
About Pioneer Works
Pioneer Works (PW) is an artist and scientist-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit cultural center in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that fosters innovative thinking through the visual and performing arts, technology, music, and science. We support onsite production through our science, design, recording, and ceramics studios; media, virtual environment, and technology labs; darkroom; and garden. Multi-disciplinary programs, exhibitions, residencies, and performances are presented to the public, of which the majority are free.
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About the book
Endless Garment by Shanzhai Lyric
Published by Pioneer Works Press
5 x 7 inches, perfect-bound softcover, 147 pages
ISBN: 978-1-945711-24-4
Price: $22
Publication Date: March 8, 2026
Order Link
Distribution
North America: D.A.P. (Distributed Art Publishers)
UK/Europe: Public Knowledge
Launch
March 8, 2026
Second Sundays
Pioneer Works
159 Pioneer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Press Contacts:
Pioneer Works
Yume Murphy
Digital Marketing and Communications Manager
press@pioneerworks.org
Cultural Counsel
Allison Brainard, Associate Director
allison@culturalcounsel.com
Jane Drinkard, Account Executive
jane@culturalcounsel.com
Lara Xenia Mashayekh, Account Coordinator
lara@culturalcounsel.com