02.05.2024, 11:00—17:00
Bebe Books - Materclass Queer Printing
In May, Off the Grid will host a masterclass by our current collective residents Bebe Books.
Bebe Books is an ongoing collective experiment that operates through shared agency in creative labour, care and friendship in the field of communication design and publishing. In their practice, Bebe Books uses their creative capacity and resources to design a context – be it a book, a gay bar, a temple, or a political campaign – where diverse marginalised experiences and voices can be represented.
During this masterclass, Bebe Books will welcome the participants into their speculative printing service Press Play, operating from the main exhibition space of Off the Grid, which will be inaugurated on the 25th of April and remain open until the 15th of May.
Press Play is an open platform exploring the potentiality of queer processes of printing. As a critical response to problematics of the print culture in the West, instrumentalised for the reproduction of normative power, the copy store brings attention to slow, anachronistic, hacked, low-tech print techniques. Press Play features various print techniques facilitated through distributed agency and collaborative labour. Furthermore, it expands the concept of publishing to include broader mediums such as rice cookers and cassette tape recorders, reflecting the etymological meaning of“publishing” as“to populate.”
Participants in the masterclass are encouraged to engage with Press Play’s facility in all possible ways. We will start with a soft introduction to Bebe Book’s practice, followed by a collective lunch, giving all participants time to get to know each other.
Each participant is invited to bring along something they would like to see materialised in print. The participants are free to bring any text, image, or sound they hold dear or find interesting, whether a love letters, a meme, or a song. Even the most banal prints, such as tax invoices and instruction manuals, could be emancipated through this queer process.
Throughout the afternoon, the group will collectively discover various printing techniques and tools Press Play has to offer – from the familiar ones, such as laser printer, riso printer, or silkscreen, to some surprising ones, including thermal printer, rice cooker, cassette player, and many more.
How to subscribe:
To ensure comfortable interaction and intimate scale, this masterclass is limited to 10 participants. You can subscribe by following this link.