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.
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