WRITTEN RESPONSE
UNIT 4 – METHODS OF ITERATION
Through the exploration of screen printing, a couple of essential questions came to mind about both the art of it as a whole and the generated output. My first thought for this project was riso printing – but I decided I wanted to explore a more hands-on tool. Screen printing was the obvious choice here but it raised the question of why anyone screen prints when you can do risograph printing? Getting the same result but with a more controlled, streamlined, and efficient result. Is it the act of creating by hand? The increased control in the production of each layer?
But after attempting many iterations I began to question if perhaps it is the possibility of mistake, trial and error, and uniqueness of each print that keeps it in business today.
I also came to understand the flip side of screenprinting – the rigidity and predetermined outcome. There is an intense lack of room for adaptation in the project through process, locking you into the original idea from the moment you create a stencil – or at least for the iteration at hand. What does the output of screenprinting stand to gain from interrupting some of these processes? If the stencil is moved while being exposed to the UV light what can it create? If squeegeeing the ink over the screen is repeated and repeated? How can the rigidity of screenprinting be made unpredictable when altering the constraints?
Through the process itself and looking through the lens of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style a different thought process arose. Maybe the outline / rigid input leaves more room for undiscovered interpretation and understanding. Even though it may seem banal to be repeatedly screenprinting a fixed design, hoping for the slightest differential through minuscule alterations in the process, perhaps the end result is wonderful in its simplicity. Queneau states
“I have spent more than a year, off and on, on the English version of the Exercises, but I haven’t yet found any boredom attached to it. The more I go into each variation, the more I see in it. And the point about the original story having no point is one of the points of the book. So much knowledge and comment on life is put into this pointless story.” (Queneau, Raymond. Exercises in style, 1998).
I think there has been a struggle in this project to find a purpose for hacking screenprinting or to find either a backstory or end result to get a certain point across. I have thought through and woven some slight undertones concerning the male gaze and the representation of female helplessness in Roy Lichtenstein’s screenprinting works. But maybe leaving things open-ended and free to discover their own patterns and undertones is part of the process here. Approaching different angles of what it means to ‘hack’ screenprinting: is it a physical hack, a contextual hack, or a hack in the purpose of the tool itself? Through my iterations, I sought to engage with each of these contextualizations while holding back on definitive outcomes or expectations.
Citations
Raymond Queneau, ‘Exercises in Style’
London: John Calder [1947] 1998. pp. 9-16, 19-26
SCREENPRINTED
HANDWRITTEN STENCIL – relation to first iteration of Unit 4 week 2 – using a pen to draw the stencil (trial and error in finding one that comes through – or maybe one that doesn’t?)
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