propositions press

SHoP, justseeds, ivaw: printing views and conversation this weekend

Two events this Saturday, December 3, one in Chicago, one in New York, both have to do with printing, with contributions from me.

In Chicago, South Side Projections will be screening Typeface, the Kartemquin documentary about the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. April Sheridan of CBPA put together a small show of letterpress work to go along with the film. I'll be bringing a couple of pieces to show. Plus, there will be a roundtable discussion after the film on the history and future of letterpress. Respondents include film director Justine Nagan, April Sheridan, Martha Chiplis of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Celene Aubrey of the Lillstreet Art Center, and me.

Event starts at 7 pm, but the venue, SHoP, will have activity going all afternoon, too.

5638 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, Illinois

Full details on the SHoP website.

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The New York event is the reception for the brand new War Is Trauma print portfolio from Justseeds and IVAW. I'm proud to say, not only did I contribute a print to this collection, but I helped Nicolas Lampert and Sgt. Aaron Hughes print the portfolio covers on my SP-15. We did it on Combat Paper, no less.

7 - 10pm
@ Booklyn, 37 Greenpoint Ave. 4th Floor,                                                                                    Brooklyn, New York

The show will be up from December 3, 2011 - January 8, 2012. Full details on the Justseeds blog.

The portfolio is a terrific collection of thirty-some prints by a combination of Justseeds artists,

Josh MacPhee (Brooklyn)
Mary Tremonte (Pittsburgh)
Kevin Caplicki (Brooklyn)
Chris Stain (Queens)
Thea Gahr (Portland, OR)
Bec Young (Pittsburgh)
Erik Ruin (Philadelphia)
Pete Yahnke (Albuquerque)
Alec Dunn (Portland, OR)
Colin Matthes (Milwaukee)
Nicolas Lampert (Milwaukee)
Jesse Purcell (Montreal)
Roger Peet (Portland, OR)
Molly Fair (Brooklyn),
Santiago Armengod (Mexico City)
Shaun Slifer (Pittsburg)
Dylan AT Miner (E. Lansing)

 IVAW artists,

Drew Cameron (Army Veteran, Vermont)
Joyce Wagner (Marine Veteran, Pittsburgh)
Aaron Hughes (IL Army National Guard Veteran, Chicago)
Jeremy Bergren (Marine Veteran, North Carolina)
Peter Sullivan (IL Army National Guard Veteran, Chicago)
Chris Arendt (MI Army National Guard Veteran, Michigan)
Malachi Muncy (TX Army National Guard Veteran, Texas)
Ash Kyrie (WI Army National Guard Veteran, Wisconsin)

and a handful of invited "allies" of those two organizations: 

Bay Area Civilian Soldier Alliance: Siri Margerin and Nave Fortin 
Michael Rakowitz (Chicago)
Marshall Weber (Booklyn Artists Alliance, Brooklyn, NY)
Harrell Fletcher and Transformazium with Brettiny Hucks
Gayla Jean Clemons
Deon Archie
Deshon LeGrand (Portland, OR / Braddock, PA)
Temporary Services (Chicago, Philadelphia, Copenhagen)

And me, as a late addition to the allies list. Nicolas called me up to see if I could make a 16x12 print in an edition of 130 less than three weeks before the deadline. Of course I had to say yes! 

home from the CT summit and occupy wall street

I am returned from NYC for about ten days already, but am still unpacking thoughts from the trip. The Creative Time Summit was more than a hoot. The Skirball Center atmosphere was charged; a daylong drenching rain could not douse the energy.

The presentations are archived and viewable here. My favorites: WochenKlausur, Urban Bush Women, Voina, and my old friend Theaster Gates.

Speaking of Theaster, the Creative Time exhibition that opened on the same weekend, Living As Form, included a display from the Dorchester Project. Among the items shown was an example of the hate mail Theaster has received. Racist hate mail is always shocking.

I was there to say something about the Wisconsin Uprising. Why me, out of the hundreds of thousands who participated in the events in Wisconsin? As I told people in NY, I think I am the only person Nato Thompson, chief curator at Creative Time, knew who lives in Madison. Here is the video of my eight minutes at the lectern.

Watch live streaming video from creativetime at livestream.com

 

The Occupy Wall Street camp-out was already going on by the time of the Summit. Nato made reference to OWS from the stage several times, encouraging conference attendees to go down to Liberty Plaza to see for themselves what was happening.

I made it down twice, on Thursday, my first evening in NY, and on Sunday, my last afternoon. In between was Saturday, the first day of mass arrests–some 80 people–and the widely seen instance of police terrorism in which one Tony Baloney, unprovoked, maced a couple of young women. This was a turning point for OWS, bringing media attention, galvanizing the activists, and presenting the suddenly serious question: what next?

On Sunday, when about 40 of us from the Summit went down to OWS as a group, Gerald Raunig hatched the idea of pulling together a quickly produced e-zine of some sort, with poetic and analytical texts about and relevant to OWS written in the moment, and in anticipation of the struggle yet to develop. I pledged a text, and here it is, on the EIPCP website.