Post-Print: The Moment of Compression as Event

Abstract

‘Post-Print’ is a practice-led research project that seeks to situate the emergence of the printmaking tradition (and the notion of the print as ‘reproduction’) as a pivotal event that once re-shaped a past era’s perception of reality, just as the ‘digital multiple’ template today has come to function as the de facto contemporary reproduction of ‘being’. For this paper, I will draw on Slavoj Žižek’s philosophical reading of the notion of ‘Event’ as a framework for my central thesis. I want to expand on how the moment of compression for a technology for looking (i.e., the introduction of the printing press and the digital device) may be considered a veritable Event. In the process, I will unsurprisingly rely on Walter Benjamin’s observations in his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ to inspire my discussion of the print as reproduction and the image as Event. This progression of creative discourse—the transition from the ‘print’ to the ‘post’ as the means of infinite reproduction—is the central focus of my project, as this shift of mediums contextualises my own mediations of the avalanche of images that characterise the present Event. Rather than mere diversions, I consider historical thinking and anachronism to be the practical methodologies of my work. For me, these retroactive interventions are themselves closely informed by the philosophical strategies of fragmentation and reframing separately proposed by Benjamin and Žižek. Hence, I discuss how these philosophical ideas have shaped the critical processes and curatorial choices within my practice.