ALT-SHIFT-PRINT

2022 Sydney University Library Piscator Press Printer-in-Residency.

I was awarded this residency for Semester 2 2020, just as COVID-19 forced us all into the first lock-down. So, like many other 2020 things, it was pushed into S2 2021. And now, it’s been pushed even further into Semester 1, 2022. Thanks COVID-19 Delta!

It’s a relatively new gig, with only two PIRs before me: both fabulous artists and amazing women, Wendy Murray and Barbara Campbell. My residency was formally announced at the 2020 conference of the Arts Librarians Society of Australia & NZ (ARLIS).

I’ve pitched my project, which I’ve called ALT-SHIFT-PRINT, as exploring my interest in vispo, or visual poetry, and how it builds an architecture of meaning on the page with letterforms (or sometimes, as in my case, with text-based processes). I’m hoping to explore USydney’s history of poetry and alternative publishing by students and staff, and to connect the ideas I find with contemporary campus culture (or what is left of it).

This is what I wrote pre-COVID: I’ll mix my research with observations of current library activity: flyers, graffiti, groups that meet, notes left on tables at closing time: these will be the fodder for typographic play that will manifest as a series of abstract vispo prints using the type collection of the Piscator Press (supplemented by type from the Penrith Museum of Printing, as there is an ongoing relationship for the two entities). The prints, forming shapes and patterns that riff on the things that I encounter, can be scanned and reworked as posters and zines and distributed through the library, forming a feedback loop with current library users.

I’m starting to think that I’ll shift my focus a bit (geddit?) to explore COVID culture, because it’s been so culture-changing in the time that I’ve been waiting to do the residency. It’s worth thinking about because once we’ve integrated this virus and moved on, just like with the Spanish Flu of the early 19th century, my work will be an archival souvenir. I have offered to work in the glassed-in lab in full HAZMAT and let people observe through the glass, but hopefully that won’t be necessary…