Today, printmaking in Russia is often articulated in economic terms, with its value being determined in the categories of uniqueness, materiality and relationship to museum art. Let’s take a look at the texts on the Internet that explain what prints and printmaking are:

In other words, a print is conceived of primarily as an object of possession, and the texts on its nature appeal to the idea of affordable uniqueness. Such definitions are largely based on the still prevalent concept of “high” and “low” in art and try to place printmaking between these two poles – even if this idea is not shared by either the author of the print or the print distributor. Sometimes, this craving for clarity and winning over an audience results in extreme simplifications:

The print often finds itself in a vague position that requires articulation and self-justification, which often comes down to a binary rhetoric: “not yet art, no longer just a picture”. This marginalised position of printmaking is also noted by texts that are not aimed at direct sales of prints. For example, in the description of the MA program “Illustration and Printed Graphic” at the HSE Art and Design School, we can see the following paragraph:

In such texts a print is crammed into an oversimplifying hierarchy of “art/non-art”, being presented as a relatively accessible material trace of an artist meant for someone's private gaze in the space of a living room, a kitchen or a bedroom.

However, there are practitioners who look at printmaking from a completely different angle – from the procedural side of it, and see printmaking as a performative practice. This allows to avoid defining printmaking as production of a material result symbolically presenting the “artist's flesh” to be sold and bought. For example, there is the British duo Henningham Family Press, who define their practice as performative printmaking.

Henningham Family Press is a duo of David and Ping Henningham. They work in England and create collaborations and events with musicians and other artists, bringing the process of printmaking to the public space and involving the audience to participate. Once they came to Moscow and held a performance dedicated to how Shakespeare’s love lyrics is perceived in different cultures. The performance took place at the British Council stand during the 2017 Non/Fiction Book Fair. What was the essence of this performance?

First, the duo held a workshop at the British Higher School of Art and Design, where students came up with glyphs that combine the shapes of letters denoting similar sounds in Russian and English: f/ф, m/м – and so on. Then the resulting glyphs were used to create words in response to the texts of Shakespeare’s love poetry. These words from the invented glyphs were printed on a silkscreen printing press in the stencil technique at the British Council stand. Some of the words were offered by visitors of the fair: “coral”, “spring”, “betrayal”, “dream”, “goodbye”, etc. Each word was a graphic sheet with symbols divided by color depending on whether the syllable is stressed or unstressed – after all, rhythm is very important for the poetry of Shakespeare. Then the sheets were combined into a long concertina to get rhythmically organized lines of a graphic poem, which, when translated into Russian, sounded like this:

The final collection of graphic poems was sent to a library in the UK, where an English version of the graphic poem was to be created later to be sent to Russia.

What is important about this project, and why is it meaningful for printed arts today?