Celebrating the last days at PrintRoom with Alan Smart, Publisher in Residence in April, sharing some of our Archive stories and finds
27 April 2023
20:00 – 22:00 at PrintRoom
Calling all anarchists, royalty-rejectionists, and everyone else seeking an alternative to the capitalist deluge of King’s Day! Schlep your second-hand wares and revolutionary aspirations to PrintRoom, and join us for an evening programme celebrating resistance from past and present.
Artist and musician Ian F Svenonius will present his fourth and latest book AGAINST THE WRITTEN WORD. Deemed ‘the book to end all books’, this publication is the first of its kind to take a principled stance against literacy, which it describes as a ruling class conspiracy that renders workers as participants in their own oppression. Ian’s talk will include an encounter session with testimonials by former readers and a musical accompaniment from ESCAPE-ISM — the beneath-the-underground sensation that has been described as ‘an act of musical vandalism’.
New Babylon Times: Publishing in the Contested City is an exhibition by publisher-in-residence, Alan Smart. The exhibition, which evolved over the course of the residency, maps a chronology of counter-culture manifestos – including excerpts from Dadaist texts, the Situationist International, and Provo publications. This gathering of material retraces the evolution, dissonances, and interconnections between these movements, each articulating – through happenings, spatial interventions, and reimaginings of the urban sphere – a radical desire for new social and spatial paradigms.
During the month of April, a series of research excavations and communal discussions will be undertaken in institutional and more independent archives and collections, harvesting both textual material and questions, stories, and shared contemporary perspectives on the historical corpus. Some of these gleanings will be reproduced and made available in our mail-out project, Holiday in the Archive, which will also draw on PrintRoom’s visit to the Interference Archive (NY, USA) and the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam, NL). If you would like to receive a copy of Holiday in the Archive in the post, please send us a mail at: info@printroom.org
In dialogue with Alan Smart, Mariana Lanari, Heide Hinrichs & Elizabeth Haines
19:00 – 21:00
Shelf Life of the Library reflects on what kind of artistic, activist and more broadly research strategies can be adopted in order to re-evaluate, and potentially expand the dominant narratives that frame how we understand past, present and future. We invite you to join Alan Smart, Mariana Lanari, Heide Hinrichs and Elizabeth Haines in exploring – provocatively, playfully, curiously – legacies of resistance and critical social action, and the contemporary negotiation of these histories in printed matter.
A selection of books, zines and posters from Alan Smart’s collection
In the spirit of archival interventions, artist-researcher Mariana Lanari will reflect on her conceptual and spatial re-mediation of library infrastructures. Mariana’s practice explores processes of translation, both in regards to linguistics and broader cultural implications. Her research and artistic projects examine the negotiating role of libraries within the wider context of heritage preservation, as well as the mediation of the library itself in the surrounding social environment.
View into Mariana Lanari’s project, ‘Catching Up in the Archive’, at De Appel, 2022
Heide Hinirchs and Elizabeth Haines will present the publication Shelf Documents: Art Library as Practice. The publication developed from the collaborative project second shelf, initiated in 2018 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The project sought to enable the integration of books by artists from marginal positions in the academy’s library. In this spirit, Shelf Documents departs from the question: ‘How can art libraries be generative resources and sites of action for all who identify as queer, as women, as Black, as Indigenous, as people of colour? What does it mean to consider the art library as a collective practice that spans multiple scales?
Alan Smart’s project, New Babylon Times: Publishing in the Contested City, physically inhabits PrintRoom’s presentation space as a cartographic display of posters, reminiscent of a picket line. Both visually and conceptually, the display also evokes an urban landscape – a site that sees the mundane choreography of life collide with restless ideals and revolutionary desire. The presentation draws on Alan’s critical interest in the intersection of political and social movements with architecture, design and urbanism. Alan Smart joins PrintRoom this month as publisher-in-residence, and during his residency he will facilitate collective encounters with archival sites, including the International Institute of Social History.
The presentation draws on Alan’s critical interest in the intersection of political and social movements with architecture, design and urbanism. Alan Smart joins PrintRoom this month as publisher-in-residence, and during his residency he will facilitate collective encounters with archival sites, including the International Institute of Social History.
Alan Smart joins PrintRoom in April as publisher-in-residence, and will develop the project New Babylon Times: Publishing in the Contested City, exploring publishing-as-practice through the lens of historicity.
Alan is an architect, researcher, publisher, and co-founder of the research and design platform OtherForms. In his practice, he examines the intersection of political and social movements with architecture, design and urbanism. He brings with him a selection from his collection of activist publications and documents, which will form part of an evolving exhibition in PrintRoom throughout the month.
Alan Smart Other Forms at the New York Art Book Fair
New Babylon Times: Publishing in the Contested City maps out a chronology of counter-culture manifestos – including excerpts from dada, the New Situationists, and PROVO. This gathering of material retraces the evolution, dissonances, and influences between these movements, each articulating – through happening, spatial interventions, and reimaginings of the urban sphere – a radical desire for a new social paradigm.
During the month, Alan will both facilitate and participate in collective excavations in institutional and community collections, harvesting an abundance of questions, stories, and archival reproductions along the way. Some of these gleanings can also be glimpsed in our mail-out project, Holiday in the Archive, drawing on PrintRoom’s visit to the Interference Archive (NY, USA) and the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam, NL).If you would like to receive a copy of Holiday in the Archive in the post, please send us a mail at: info@printroom.org
On the occasion of Art Central Rotterdam, we presentBoek Klup #2, featuring artists Natalia Papaeva and Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva.
Inspired by Natalia’s encounter with linguistic slippages in her mother tongue, Saturday’s event presents a series of spontaneous performances in and around PrintRoom. These playful sequences emerge from questions such as: how to bridge communication when faced with linguistic limitations? How can we embrace misunderstandings and physical gestures as part of the process of understanding one another? These experimental, semi-improvised interventions reflect a gesture of thinking-in-progess — a re-imagining of language as a meandering medium, resisting all expectations of efficiency or precision.
The collaborative process draws on the artists’ shared interest in the crucial role of language in shaping collective identity and personal memory. On Sunday, Natalia and Masha will engage in a conversation, examining the complexity of language in relation to identity, intergenerational relations, and reclaiming heritage.
Natalia Papaeva, photo by Jana Romanova
Masha’s new publication Colonial Banalitywill also be on show in a group exhibition at Baanhof from 17 March – 9 April. More information can be found on Art Central Rotterdam’s website. It will also be available for sale in PrintRoom. Proceeds from the sale of the publication will be donated to humanitarian aid support in Ukraine.
Through ethnographic recollections and illustrations, Colonial Banality critically scrutinises the impact of colonial mechanisms on ethnic minority communities throughout Russia’s history. As the child of a Tartar-Bashkir mother and a Russian father, Masha’s family history intimately reflects the everyday powerplays of nationalist politics. Her illustrations recount the collision of childhood naivety and the realisation of colonial violence. In the words of Ukrainian director Oleksiy Radynski: “Russian culture deserves a much harsher punishment than a boycott. It deserves deconstruction. To deconstruct Russian-speaking culture is to question the existing pantheon…’ Colonial Banality is Masha’s deconstruction of the imperialist culture and intolerance that surrounded her childhood.
Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva, drawings for Colonial Banality
About the artists
Born and raised in a mountainous region in the west of Buryatia, visual and performance artist Natalia Papaeva has been living and working in the Netherlands since 2013. Buryat-Mongolian oral tradition is central to her practice, helping her create poignant artworks that address such themes as loss and mourning, land and climate, language, racism, and identity. Drawing from her own memories and experiences, she creates performances, in which she combines singing, the spoken word, and storytelling.
Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva is a visual artist and illustrator, based in Rotterdam since 2009. She grew up in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan – a region that became occupied by the Russian Empire in the 16th Century. She describes her practice as a crossover of fine art and illustration, working as both an editorial illustrator for international publishing houses and as an independent artist for galleries and museums. Since 2019 she teaches illustration at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, NL.
Join us on Museumnacht 010 for the launch of Boek Klup with artists Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva, Alaa Abu Asad & Ulufer Çelik!
+ Book Launch: Colonial Banality by Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva
+ Draw, translate, play with Alaa Abu Asad & Ulufer Çelik
+ Make your own recycled riso-print notebook
+ Polyglot karaoké
Boek Klup is a collaborative project that explores language and translation through the practice of independent publishing. For our first event, Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva will launch her new book, Colonial Banality, and Alaa Abu Asad & Ulufer Çelik invite you join in their translation-memory game, based on their publication I love it when translation can be found to agree with our weird desires.
Throughout the evening, you are invited to share your first, second and perhaps even third language through drawing, play and song. At our bookbinding station you can make a Nootboek to collect your (mis)translations and memories. Join our polyglot karaoké — sing your favourite lyrics in your mother tongue and dance the night away!
19:15 – 20:00: Introduction and artist talks
20:00 onwards: Bookbinding station
20:00 – 21:00: Drawing session
21:00 – 22:00: Memory game: translate and play
22:00 – 00:00: Polyglot karaoké and music
Proceeds from sales will be donated to the earthquake recovery efforts in Turkey and Syria, and humanitarian support for Ukraine. Donations can be given throughout the entire night — please give generously!
Artist, researcher and photographer Alaa Abu Asad develops alternative trajectories in which (re)presentation, translation, looking, reading and understanding can intersect. His work takes form in writing, image making and interactive installations, in which he visualises his research and methodology of exploring the boundaries of languages.
Ulufer Çelik is a Turkish artist, who lives and works in Rotterdam. Her artistic practice explores the potentialities of narrative and myth-making, that is expressed through moving image, poetry, memory and sound. She is a part of Eat-House Food Collective, and a member of Putsebocht 3 and W1555 Artist Community that are located in Rotterdam South.
Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva is a visual artist and illustrator, currently based in Rotterdam, NL, born in Ufa, RU. She describes her practice as a crossover of fine art and illustration. During her career, she has worked both as an editorial, commercial illustrator for publishing houses around the world, and as an independent artist for galleries and museums. Since 2019 she teaches illustration at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, NL.
+ What Bungalows Can Tell by Mira Asriningtyas, Paoletta Holst, and Brigita Murti
+Rural Life in Hamar, Ethiopia: Ecological and cultural challenges written by Bazo Morfa, illustrated by Gele Hailu
Sowing Stories in Archival Absence marks the start of PrintRoom’s 2023 public event series, featuring presentations by Wapke Feenstra, Gele Hailu, Indra Gleizde, Mira Asriningtyas and Paoletta Holst.
Rural Life in Hamar, Ethiopia: Ecological and cultural challenges is written by Bazo Morfa and published by The Rural School of Economics. The Rural School of Economic is a collaborative international infrastructure initiated by artist collective Myvillages for learning new perspectives on the rural context as an environment of cultural production. One of the co-founders, Wapke Feenstra, met Hamar illustrator Gele Hailu. Now based in Rotterdam, Gele is one out of only four Hamars living outside of Ethiopia. He told about his childhood friend Bazo – a good writer eager to tell the world about the struggles Hamar are facing due to climate and socio-political changes. This is how the illustrated publication, Rural Life in Hamar, Ethiopia: Ecological and Cultural Challenges, printed by Lumbung Press at documenta 15 came to be.
The book relays an autobiographical account of Bazo’s experience of a drought caused by climate change, struggles for adaptation, strict local customs and women’s rights. All through a local perspective as the older brother of a family that recently lost most of their livestock.
During the evening Indra Gleizde, the book’s editor, will give a short presentation and live reading, we will listen to Hamar music and Gele Hailu will provide commentary on his illustrations.
PrintRoom is also delighted to celebrate the book launch of What Bungalows Can Tell, a project by Mira Asriningtyas, Paoletta Holst, and Brigita Murti, published by Onomatopee.
What Bungalows Can Tell is the result of extensive artistic and architectural research on the village of Kaliurang (Yogyakarta region, Indonesia). The publication brings together different essays and a series of photographs that critically explore the spatial, transformative effects of globalisation and heritage formation on a local scale. It looks specifically at the colonial bungalows — what can they tell?— and the stories around them, questioning how they were used in the past, what their function is in the present and what they can represent in the future. What Bungalows Can Tell intends to take into account the colonial history of the village and, at the same time, bring to the fore the voices, stories and local wisdoms often eclipsed by more prominent forms of Western knowledge production.
We celebrate Winter Solstice with glühwein, miso snacks and our fresh Riso prints by Johan Kleinjan and Erika Herose, who will also make miso bookmarks and snacks for the occasion.Johan Kleinjan and Nicole Martens (NM) will spin records
We’ll donate the revenue to Zeilen van Vrijheid – for medical aid and energy for people in Ukrainia.
Journeys Across Archives features a series of artist presentations and performative readings, each recollecting subversive processes towards archiving, mapping, and re-envisioning existing ‘environments’ — as much in the literal as metaphorical sense.
+ Screening of Trees of Rotterdam (2022) by Alice Ladenburg and Ollie Palmer, launch of a special edition print
+ Book presentation of A Dutch Landscape (Rollo Press, 2022) by José Quintanar
+ Instructions to get lost: A triangular reading by To See the Inability to See
+ Storysharing by Ratu R Saraswati
More information:
Still from Trees of Rotterdam by Alice Ladenburg and Ollie Palmer
Trees of Rotterdam is a journey through the skies, streets and trees of Rotterdam, merging high-tech point-cloud scans with individual perspectives on what those trees mean to the city and its people. The film draws on Alice Ladenburg‘s publication Fourteen Trees of Rotterdam – a guide for city exploration, published by PrintRoom and Peter Foolen Editions and presented last year. The guide focuses on 14 trees, including geographical, botanical and historical information, archival photographs, observational writing, ink drawings, scientific data and images created using laser scans. Through these multiple representations, the user is encouraged to consider the role that trees have within our cityscape, and how their own perspective can change the way they can experience and understand their environment.A special limited edition Fourteen Trees of Rotterdam Riso print will be launched on the occasion of the new film.
Pre-print / Pages of the Book: A Dutch Landscape by José Quintanar
José Quintanar’s A Dutch Landscape (Rollo Press, 2022) encompasses a five-year-long visual research. Quintanar attentively studied various landscapes throughout the Netherlands and translated them into rhythmic, deconstructed linear forms. Simultaneously, he mapped out the complex historical narratives embedded in these terrains through texts and photographs. The book itself is both a landscape — a gathered pile of material, a small mountain in an otherwise flat landscape — and an archive.
In the framework of the final event of Between Four Walls — a series of nomadic presentations, initiated by Notes on Hapticity Collective in collaboration with PrintRoom — artist Ratu R. Saraswati and the artistic research collective To See the Inability to See (Arefeh Riahi, Maartje Fliervoet and Martín La Roche Contreras) will present performative readings. These readings arise from their respective contributions to 16 10 20, a riso-printed anthology of performance scores, published by PrintRoom earlier this year.
Through an essayistic and performative process, To See the Inability to See weaves stories, thoughts and visual material together with books and objects from various archives. In a pragmatic way the collective tries to temporarily bring those together to allow them to narrate a new story. Some of the topics that its research is concerned with are exclusion, alienation and belonging.
Ratu R Saraswati: Route of Flowers
Artist Ratu R Saraswati (Saras) creates stories that emerge from everyday encounters that she believes are not coincidental. A mother of a dead meerkoet, a captivated Java kancil: she wishes to tell the stories of the beings of the city of Amsterdam, a city far away from her home in Java island.
We are delighted to launch Bebe’s 2023 Calendar by Cheng-Hsu Chung, accompanied by a nasty playlist curated by A.nushka. Mark your name in our special FINALE-copy and we’ll send you a dazzling surprise on your birthday.
Bebe Books, founded by Mert Sen and Ruud Van Moorleghem, creates queer spaces across many countries, by organizing and curating LGBTQ+-friendly events and supporting promising artists and collectives. In this spirit, we celebrate the Finale with more Insiders and Outsiders:
+ Tuyen Le and Noam Younrak Son will present their Toilet Zine.
+ Artist talk by YinYin Wong.
+ Pernilla Ellens will showcase her book, About series #12: The Ritual, published by Gloria Glitzer, accompanied by RISO printed posters and free stickers.
+ Amy Suo Wu will activate the Serenity Department Webshop!
+++ Make your own origami Penguin with the Bebe’s +++
For more information, see below:
Cheng-Hsu is a Taiwanese animation artist and director based in Berlin. Chung’s practice focuses on using bizarre images and character performances in animation to articulate the changing nature of emotion, erotic relationships, and the experiences queer bodies encounter in today’s queer culture. The Calendar is riso printed at PrintRoom during the Bebebooks Residency.
Tuyen Le and Noam Younrak Son’sThe Toilet Zine talks about how gender norms offer comfort to those who fit in the given stalls, but it is also time to start queering our predicaments on design and architecture – starting with the toilet!
YinYin Wong is a designer, artist, educator and publisher. Their practice revolves around dissemination, circulation, agency, and access to art through publishing, public interventions, and graphic design. Most recently, their practice investigates and dwells on juxtapositions between the art canon that they inherited from their education in The Netherlands and their experience of marginalization from a Southeast Asian diasporic perspective.
With a critical view, Pernilla Ellens’s practice places footnotes on our existing systems and gives space to the autonomous and the subversive. About series #12: The Ritual is an artwork in book form, made in one week with the Berlin artbook publishing house Gloria Glitzer in September last year. The Ritual is about submitting to sensuality in a primordial, pristine, perhaps pagan way. Pernilla is dedicated to freeing the body from myths of purity.
The Serenity Department is a collaborative intergenerational mending project between mother, Maria Ling Qing Huang, who lives in Sydney and Daughter, Amy Suo Wu, in Rotterdam. Their eponymous label makes bags and accessories with upcycled material. All proceeds of the label go to Maria’s retirement fund, so that she might come to know serenity in the near future.
10.00-17.00 – Archiving, editing and printing workshop with Rob van Leijsen
19.00-21.00 – Book presentations
The Error is Regretted with Anita Di Bianco and Anja Lutz & Building Human Relations Through Art with Seda Yıldız and Rob van Leijsen
You are warmly invited to meet the artists, authors and designers at PrintRoom! Scroll down to read more.
** Archiving, Editing and Printing Workshop If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to get far, go with a group. Creating contemporary narratives of collective effort, starting from the Škart archive with Rob van Leijsen 10.00-17.00
The content from the book Building Human Relations Through Art, about the Belgrade based collective Škart, will serve as a starting point for this workshop with graphic designer Rob van Leijsen.
The archive of Škart is filled with traces, indicators and signs of collective production. From coupons to choirs to street installations to poems, Škart’s artistic collaborations demand a significant effort from each participant, who are encouraged to speak out and contribute to the whole.
By extracting visual and written forms of collaboration from the Škart archive, we will set in motion a process to define our personal contemporary narratives of collective effort and production. Each participant’s contribution will take shape throughout defined stages of the editing process, propelled by an ongoing back and forth between individual contribution and collective consideration. Finally, we will decide on the desired printed outcome of the workshop together. All image making techniques are valid, as long as contributions can be reproduced.
The workshop takes place at our Riso space and is open to any type of image makers, researchers and writers who are comfortable with collaborative processes and printmaking – among others, Riso printing.
The Error is Regretted with Anita Di Bianco and designer Anja Lutz and Building Human Relations Through Artwith Seda Yıldız and designer Rob van Leijsen 19.00-21.00
The Error is Regretted is the 20-year anniversary publication of Anita Di Bianco’s project Corrections and Clarifications. Next to a new 96-page newspaper edition, that reflects the current news, the book contains text contributions by Anita Di Bianco, Anna Bromley, Francesco Gagliardi and Florian Wüst. Corrections and Clarifications is an ongoing newsprint project, an edited compilation of daily revisions, retractions, re-wordings, distinctions and apologies to print and online news from September 2001 to the present. An intermittent newspaper without headlines, a distillation of the predictive patterns and algorithmic amplifications of the last two decades, from fake news to the attention economy.
Building Human Relations Through Art captures traces of Škart’s practice from the 1990s to the present. Belgrade based collective Škart has been operating within and around existing hierarchies of the art world and everyday life, working with marginalized groups, NGOs, and anti-war movements. Škart‘s understanding of the artwork is fluid and relationship based. No matter the medium – poetry, embroidery, graphic design, choir, or radio broadcast – its artistic explorations are characterised by self-organisation. Its activities range from working at street level to participating in the Venice Biennale of Architecture. The book brings together conversations with Škart’s members, a collection of images, poems and drawings, as well as texts by Zdenka Badovinac, Branislav Dimitrijević and Milica Pekić.
We would like to thank Goethe-Institut Rotterdam for supporting the presentation Everyday Errors and Actions.
Biographies
Anita Di Bianco was educated at Columbia University and the SUNY-Purchase Center for Editions, earning a Masters in Fine Arts from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, with postgraduate study at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Born in New York City, Di Bianco has lived and worked in Germany since 2007, after an initial year-long residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Her video/film installations and works in print have been shown internationally at numerous venues since 2000. She has taught courses and seminars at various fine arts academies, most recently at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste from 2016 to 2019. http://www.anitadi.net/
Anja Lutz is a Berlin-based book designer specialising in contemporary art publications. She was the initiator and designer of the experimental publication platform shift! that has won numerous awards and was present at various festivals and exhibitions. Anja is also co-founder and art director of The Green Box, a publisher of artist books, where she is developing and designing books in close collaboration with the respective artists. Lutz has studied at LCP / University of the Arts in London and the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht. She has been a visiting professor at American University of Beirut, Hyperwerk in Basel and Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle. https://www.anjalutz.com/
Seda Yıldız (1989, Istanbul) is an independent curator and writer based in Hamburg and İstanbul. Her practice is inspired by thinking across disciplines including art, music, design, literature and activism. She is particularly interested in taking part in process-oriented, open and experimental projects that foster collaboration and exchange with a wider audience. Currently she is working on curatorial projects to be realised at the Kunstpavillon & Neue Galerie Innsbruck (2023) and Škuc Gallery Ljubljana (2023). https://yildizseda.com/
Rob van Leijsen (1983, Tilburg) is a multidisciplinary graphic designer and author based in Geneva, Switzerland. He runs his own design studio next to his teaching position at the visual communication department of HEAD – Genève. In 2012, he obtained a Master of Design Spaces and Communication at HEAD – Genève with his graduation project Art Handling in Oblivion, a catalogue that brings together five art collections that have been stolen during wartime (edition fink, 2014). His most recent book is the bilingual essay Copy, Tweak, Paste: Methods of Appropriation in Reenacted Artists’ Books (éditions clinamen, Geneva, 2020). http://www.robvanleijsen.nl/
