Copy Shop of All Species

Copy Shop of All Species

Course description:

A community always consists of humans and nature. The “Copy Shop of all Species” course welcomes new life in spring with creative interactions and encounters of humans and more-than-human actors.

In this lecture and workshop series, participants explore how to build new sustainable relationships between humans via design methods and artistic practice with the medium of fanzines.

At the beginning of the lecture series – fanzines, its heritage and culture are introduced to the group, where in the workshop series, participants are heading onto an initial noticing walk to map out different species around the university, log their encounters into field notes, capture various species via drawings and create a graphic symbol for each encounter.

In following assignments these species are determined and reflected on in regard to their current state, interplay and entanglements with humans.

Throughout the following workshop series, participants translate their encounters in the print shop and explore together within the medium of fanzines and letters.

A letter always consists of a front and back, two sides, multiple perspectives of humans and nature. As a group the participants critically reflect on the use of materials related to their designated species and emphasise and translate the species’ perception of the human world.

The course is envisioned as an open print studio where the participants have the opportunity to invite and collaborate with others to participate in the fanzine and letter making.

Using species-specific materials to craft a fanzine and its letters creates conversations and materialisations around the species and identifies human and more-than-human connections in the local ecosystem.

Techniques used in the experimentation and production are DIY printing presses, hand-stamping tools, risograph machines and laser printers.

These techniques and additional tools create a dynamic and participatory work environment where participants engage in a shared creative experience that merges artistic experimentation with ecological storytelling.

After the course participants are encouraged to distribute copies of their fanzines and its letters to drive the dialogue in Icelandic society forward. With doing so, new relations are formed between artists, scientists and the community advocating for a vivid dialogue with the natural world and its species.

Schedule : 

Lectures & Workshops:

6. – 29. May

Tuesdays & Thursdays – 17:30 – 21:00

Public Presentation 

Friday – 30. May – Time and location TBD

Course background:

Christoph Matt and associates are running the artistic and social design research project based on a recurring participatory publication called HAFNAR.Z!NE, made from submissions by community members of the hafnar.haus, Iceland’s largest creative community and co-working space.

Each issue follows a societal theme that has been voted on by the vibrant community and their needs. Contributions are collected analog or digital and take the form of text, image, or anything that may be transmitted via QR code. Each issue is completely different, carefully curated and sustainably produced so that design elements, layout, materials, and distribution via social interventions are linked to the zine’s theme. Accompanying artifacts also offer micro representations of each theme.

The diverse zines are a meaningful and joyful contribution acting as ecological and social tools to draw together collaboration via creativity, design, community building while building the bridge between the creative community, the city of Reykjavik and its public.

Course themes:

Art and ecology, art and science, publication design, participatory design, placemaking, community building

Course reflections:

A) How do you conceptualize, co-create content, layout, print, and publish a zine with very limited resources?

B) How do you gather and compress the creative potential of various species into a limited format?

C) How do you enable active participation, empowerment, and ownership via artistic experimentation?

Course learnings:

Fanzine publication conceptualisation – Fanzine publication planning – Fanzine publication layouting – Fanzine publication printing – Fanzine publication producing

Modules:

Lecture series :  Zine history and culture – Content creation and creative writing – Editing and layout production

Workshop series: Noticing walk and documentation – Visual experiments and prototyping –
Printing and production

Teacher:

Christoph Stefan Matt (AUT-ISL) is an eco-social designer, currently living between Vienna and Reykjavik and founder of Studio Matt, an award-winning nomadic bureau for environmentally and socially conscious design. Christoph works as an interdisciplinary mediator with expertise in design, sustainability, visual arts and posthumanism, as design researcher he focuses on the relationship between nature and humans through design methodology and artistic practice.

 

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