Access and Alternative Possibilities in Lithographic Mark Making
Capstone MA Project @CCS by Anna Eigner
Many Updates will be posted !
Planographic printing on ceramic surfaces is the core of this work. It is an attempt to provide access to a simplified lithographic practice in order to broaden existences in mark making and creation.
The project is packaged in a PDF manual. As a publication it is an information carrier, like limestone or the aluminum plate in lithography, or in our case a ceramic surface. This thread continues when reading something digital or physical, printed on a laser or inkjet. It can be downloaded to a phone or printed at home, at work, or at a local library. The associated body of process work does exist as an installation, with ceramic surface artifacts, print examples and experiments, and a collection of materials. For reference, there is also a DIY video co-created with the filmmaker Maya Zylman. It attempts to demystify a small part of lithographic practice for the audience and the layman to actively participate in, as well as the chosen means of distribution in order to ensure wide accessibility....
....Doing, existing in and around spaces, and DIY-actions are inherently political. Participation, sharing knowledge and creations in a non-hierarchical way is the goal. Hence, this practice exists in exactly these forms: PDF, print, instructional video, and future workshops (save the date: July 2025 / Berlin). Doing and creating is the embodied experience of creativity, and experiencing creativity and community has a mental being benefit: it is social capital. It does not matter if they are digital or in the real world (Chidgey, 2014, p. 105). They are Donna Haraway's string figures. These strings and knots create culture through our interaction and participation. When these collaborations happen, we weave and inform them into creative artifacts (Jefferies, 2011, pp. 233-234). And they begin to embody creativity, risking and provoking, good and productive. Crafting, making something with our hands, is our most elemental pleasure. Doing, enhances our mundane existence and strips away the superficial (Jefferies, 2011, p. 237). Lithographic printmaking has been expanded onto a new surface to communally share and create lithography anywhere and everywhere. And that is the goal of this project.
Bibliography
Aizier, É. (2017). Kitchen Litho—Handbook of Simple and Non-Toxic Lithography (4th ed.). Atelier Kitchen Print.
Chidgey, R. (2014). Developing Communities of Resistance? Maker Pedagogies, Do-It-Yourself Feminism,and DIY Citizenship. In M. Ratto & M. Boler (Eds.), DIY citizenship: Critical making and social media (pp. 101–114). The MIT Press.
Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
Jefferies, J. (2011). Loving Attention: An Outburst of Craft in Contemporary Art. In M. E. Buszek (Ed.), Extra-ordinary: Craft and contemporary art (pp. 222–240). Duke university press.