Materiality and Virtuality, Touch and Distance from the (Femi) Graphic Perspective

Abstract

The time of pandemic acted as a magnifying glass – directing one’s attention to features of printmaking practice that correspond with contemporary condition of humans and their needs in terms of communication, contact and relations. As two female printmakers practicing relief printing techniques and trying to push and expand the range of tools and recipes of our graphic kitchen, we exchange and discuss our personal narratives, experiences and experiments. The keywords that kept reappearing during these last two years were for us: materiality, touch, presence, constantly followed and supplemented by virtuality, distance and representation.  

The above notions resonate with Jennifer L. Roberts’ series of Mellon Lectures (2021) entitled Contact: Art and the Pull of Print – with  conceptual brackets that can be identified with two opposite or complementary concepts: contact and alienation. Using examples of our practices we refer to the idea of “new materiality”, exploring how different materials of a matrix, of paper or fabric “give life to different realities and actualise aspects of subjectivity, embodiment and human-world relations that are particular to their material qualities” (Coleman, Page, Palmer, 2019).  

However, the haptic quality of the process as a part of the artist’s experience is difficult to transfer and share with the audience in the situation of the virtual distribution of the image. How can we interpret and make most of the notion of touch in order to translate it into “tuché” (Lacanian “encounter with the real”), despite the mediation of the screen? Can we provocatively argue that virtual presentation can be seen as “porno-graphic” of the printmaking practice with the images being inevitably digitally edited and presented in such way that they look flawless, alienated from the real world? 

The paper also explores the narrative strands, entangled with the ambiguous experience of touch, explored through our printmaking practices.