Print Politics

AAA/CASCA Roundtable Toronto 2023

While multimodal anthropology tends to focus on digital, visual, and sonic registers, print is a site of dynamic and politically urgent work.

How can attention to collaborative work in print expand conversations about the transformational potential of multimodal and public anthropologies?

What alternative print traditions and practices can anthropologists draw on to rethink the scope, scale, and reach of their research?

Print Politics Zine

We thought it only fitting to compile our first collection of resources about making, publishing, collaborating, and teaching print into a print format!

PRINT POLITICS includes:

A condensed and edited transcript from our June conversation with Marc Fischer and Anne Pasek about the power of print.
Teaching print and design resources from Debra Vidali, Nick Kawa, Stephanie Sadre-Orafai, and Jordan Tate, including guided exercises, assignment prompts, design briefs, and why they work.
First-hand reflections and designed spreads about making, publishing, collaborating, and teaching with print from Marina Peterson, Kathryn A. Mariner, Craig Campbell, Nick Kawa, and Stephanie Sadre-Orafai, forerunning and documenting their 2023 AAA/CASCA roundtable Collective Politics and Print Practices between Design and Anthropology.
A Non-Exhaustive Resource List that includes fairs and fests, how-tos, libraries, organizations, publishers and distributors, recent exhibitions, other resources, DIY Methods zines, and Half Letter Booklets we love.

Download or scroll through a scanned version of the print zine here, or access the print file with full color images and OCR text here. Photographic documentation of the zine is below with alt text provided for screen readers.

We distributed nearly 200 copies of the zine at the AAA/CASCA meetings.

PrintPoliticsZineScan_FINAL.pdf

Purple zine with mint green lettering on a dark green rotary mat

An 8.5x11" folded zine with purple cover open to the first page that features two figures in monochrome purple ink with the title that reads THE POWER OF PRINT on a dark green rotary mat

first spread of zine with light pink paper and dark purple ink, three columns of text per page with large simplified graphics and hand letter on a dark green rotary mat

second spread of zine with 2 columns of text on the left page and a 4 column table on the right page

spread with single columns of text and images of books and a house plant

fourth spread of zine with image of another publication and large headline that reads Collective politics and print practices between design and anthropology

fifth spread, hand drawn and made foldable zine within a zine titled GRACKLE with four drawings of a small bird

sixth spread with images on the left of a person sewing a zine and a smaller picture beneath of hands holding a zine, large title reads fertile ground

seventh spread with images of zine installation and 3 zines

two columns of text with a large title that reads AGIT KINO with an archival image featuring a large group of people posed looking directly at the camera

narrow image of stacks of printed pages on the left page with three columns of resources on the right side

last page of the zine with two columns of text and a purple inside back cover with colophon

back cover of the zine on a dark green rotary mat

Online Event Recording

In this online conversation for multimodal anthropologists about the power of print, Marc Fisher (Temporary Services, Public Collectors, Half Letter Press) discusses meal-based artist residency programs and his approach to publishing as a way to spend time with others; Anne Pasek (Trent University) discusses DIY Methods, the “mostly screen-free, zine-full, remote-participation conference on experimental methods for research and research exchange” now in its second year; and moderators Stephanie Sadre-Orafai (University of Cincinnati) and Craig Campbell (University of Texas, Austin) draw on their own experiences blending anthropological inquiry with artistic print practices to guide the discussion.

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Marc Fischer is a Chicago-based artist and a member of Temporary Services, a group that has produced over 100 publications and organized and participated in dozens of exhibitions, projects, and events. Fischer and Brett Bloom of Temporary Services also run the publishing imprint Half Letter Press. Anne Pasek is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersections of climate communication, the environmental humanities, and science and technology studies. She studies how carbon becomes communicable in different communities and media forms, to different political and material effects. Craig Campbell is fascinated with how making things, curating exhibitions, and organizing workshops can become social devices that complicate and enhance thought. His work is committed to experimenting with and theorizing modes of description and evocation of and through ordinary life. Stephanie Sadre-Orafai pursues interdisciplinary and collaborative projects that blend research and creative practice, resulting in public-facing video, curatorial, and experimental print design work.

This event was co-sponsored with the Department of Anthropology and the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.

AAA/CASCA Roundtable Toronto 2023

Thursday, November 16, 2023
2:00–3:45pm, 712 MTCC
Craig Campbell, Marina Peterson, Nicholas Kawa, Kathryn Mariner, and Stephanie Sadre-Orafai

ABSTRACT. How can attention to publication design and collaborative work in print expand conversations about the transformational potential of multimodal and public anthropologies? This session draws inspiration from the zine 'What Problems Can Artist Publishers Solve?' There, seventeen independent publishers reflect on the differences in tempo, scale, audience, urgency, autonomy, process, distribution, and form that separate them from their for-profit industrial counterparts and how their unique 'knowledge, skills, and resources' (1) can address pressing socio-political, economic, and ecological problems. Contributors encourage readers to approach publishing as 'less noun, more verb' (22), publications as 'artifact[s] of a loving, process-driven ethos' (18), and for individuals and small groups to embody the role of 'author-editor-artist-designer-printer-publisher' (4) simultaneously to 'create unprofessional, yet plausible economies, alliances and systems of support and friendship' (22). As anthropologists with similar multi-hyphenate roles, relationships, and collaborative self-publishing print practices, we ask: (1) How can taking the intellectual contributions of print layout, design, composition, and craft seriously affect not only the shape and scope of our work, but also how we work with others? (2) Amidst ongoing crises both in the world and within scholarly communication itself, how can alternative print traditions provide insights for change? Focusing on questions of labor, value, and infrastructure, panelists will describe their experiences creating, editing, designing, and self-publishing zines, artist books, and chapbooks, emphasizing how their print practice informs their broader work and enables new kinds of collective politics. As panelists discuss editorial collectives and interdisciplinary collaborations; the crisis of peer review and promise of peer critique; credits and costs of collaboration; and how to cultivate audiences, networks, and other means of distribution and future collaboration, they will invite audience participants to contribute their thoughts through interactive bookmarks.

Reference
Temporary Services & PrintRoom, editors. 2018. 'What Problems Can Artist Publishers Solve?' Chicago & Roterdam, Temporary Services & PrintRoom.

Call for Pitches! (Closed)

Do you teach with zines? Do you have a print practice? We are seeking pitches for our first curated collection of resources for making, publishing, collaborating, and teaching print! We will review pitches on a rolling basis until Monday, October 23, 2023. Pitches selected will be developed in conversation with the collective and published in our inaugural zine in November, to be distributed at the AAA–CASCA meeting and posted online. Pitches could include:

Syllabi or assignment prompts that incorporate print processes with commentary about why it works
Annotated maps or guides of artists’ book fairs, zine swaps, bookstores, and/or publishers
Profiles or interviews with publishers or collectives doing interesting things with print
Reviews of print events, exhibitions, conferences, or other happenings

Questions? Contact us at CoMMPCT@gmail.com.

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