We propose this conference to have a therapeutic function focusing on listening to each other’s voices. We want to share and engage international participants from all backgrounds, and connect people through presentations and films, workshops and exhibitions, challenges, round-table discussion groups and networking. Events will start early in June 2022 and continue throughout the summer until the conference in September.
Themes
Listening to each other's voices
Post-pandemic Voice
Over this last year, we have spent a lot of time ‘on mute’, quietly listening, disconnected from the comforting presence of others. What have we learnt from the pandemic through shared experiences and paradigm shifts which we cannot ever unlearn? How has spending so much time online impacted our thoughts, methods, processes over this last year? How have we researched, communicated, applied our practice to the extended world?
Touching and Touched
Have you experienced touch hunger, touch deprivation, isolation or segregation, in recent years? We would like to hear about the haptic qualities of printmaking. Tell us about the uneditioned print, new immersive or intimate spaces for sharing print, and digitally-enabled processes. Has mediated vision, touch and sound impacted our research? Has the nature of not being touched impacted personal narratives and approaches to the physical object or physical space?
Printability and Transmutability
There are many adjectives that, by the addition of the suffix -ability, are transformed into nouns. We encourage you to explore this transformation that expresses a capacity to do something beyond our current potential. We know that from failure, new knowledge and resilience emerges. We know that by making, testing, and refining, we can find further critical reflection and practice, leading to innovation and insights. We welcome your contributions to new research methods, practices and technologies. Please share new skills, recipes, lo-fi techniques, workaround methods, and DIY practices, your creative hacks and lateral leaps of faith!
The Printmakers’ Garden
Care, nourishment, sustainability for the planet, for each other - what have you found that has been nourishing and sustaining? Prints also nourish our souls and each other, through their position in the domestic and private realm. Tell us about your slow printmaking processes. Tell us about how education is like planting seeds for the future. Tell us about your personal genealogy of print, the prints which should be in your lineage and the heritage of your personal family tree. Tell us how you are approaching future scarcity, tackling climate insecurity. Show us prints that have therapeutic value, which give voice to the unspoken.
Breaking Boundaries
Throughout the pandemic, we have witnessed social, cultural, racial and environmental injustices and violence. Establishing fair representation and respect is crucial for establishing open communication, equitability and trust. Can the medium of print address these concerns by crossing boundaries, creating visual narratives and encouraging a culture of care and hope for the future? We invite you to explore how collaboration, digital conversations and print practice can contribute to our understanding and insights of historical and geographical impacts, cultural and social conditions, and the complex issues entangled within it.
Merging and Metamorphosis
While lockdown has forced us to become more adaptable and resourceful, it has also highlighted new opportunities through technological innovation and cross-disciplinary practice. Historically, printmaking has evolved through engagement with science and engineering, providing opportunities for makers to innovate and problem solve. We invite you to explore how cross-pollination, disciplinary overlap and merging fields have influenced and transformed your understanding of print. How have collaborative projects with scientists, engineers, historians, or other specialist fields enabled new approaches, tools or technologies to emerge in your practice or studio?