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Empty Newspaper

Hynek Alt
Wednesday, May 25, 2022, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Speaker

In this talk I want to present some of the ideas behind my ongoing interest in offset printing as a way of producing material objects for an exhibition. I will be looking at previous projects where i attempted to explore emancipatory role of industrial printing in society. In the talk I will try to expand on the politics of printing as a way disseminating images and as a connective infrastructural tool. I will be presenting the current project Empty Newspaper. Its pilot version I have currently presented within Tomorrow Never Knows exhibition in Galerie Roudnice in Czech Republic. With declining volumes of printed periodicals (newspapers, magazines) societies are losing an important piece of a uniting physical infrastructure. What is a newspaper when the content moves elsewhere? I am in process of developing a new project focused on materiality and, metaphorically speaking, transparency of the newspaper as a medium. While the eventual end of the printed newspaper is set, I want to use this brief period of inevitable future and current availability to research the state of newspaper printing facilities, focusing mainly on country-wide dailies but also exploring various local periodical publications. The politics and frictions that emerge through the essentially empty medium are equally interesting to me, however unobvious or surprising these may be. Initially, I want to research large and smaller facilities where newspapers are printed in Hungary. I plan to observe the printing technology, make photographic and video documentation, understand the logistics and economics of the process. I am interested in the physical experience of holding a newspaper with two hands, reading one newspaper in a group, rolling a newspaper to kill a fly, etc. Partially from the documentation of printing facilities, partially from other sources, I want to create new imagery, new content for a proposed new newspaper. As a final stage of my residency, I will work on an exhibition proposal.