Obdurate Matter? Unfolding potential within materials, apparatuses, and procedures of printmaking through speculative practice

Based on my research project of the same title, this presentation traces the incorporation of scrim within my printmaking practice, applying the fabric as a tool for unfolding the unseen material potential held within recalcitrant print matter – within the tools, materials, apparatuses of the field, and their respective methods of application. Rather than understanding the fabric as a mere technical tool, as it is seen within the print discipline, here scrim is positioned as a means of opening out the field of printmaking, its printerly materialities and immaterialities.

Through textile-led acts of unfolding, this project explores how print matter and their relative procedural applications as manifest within the workshop, can come to shape print practices and their perception both within the print field and the wider contemporary arts. The project asks how experimental, and reflexive approaches to print practice can aid in an unfolding of printerly matter, and in turn, how such a material unfolding can open out the habits, conventions, and traditions of the print field. It positions printmaking as a discipline that is deeply 'enfolded' (Marks, 2014) – where its paraphernalia, and their prescribed purposes and methods of application, contribute to one's understanding of what printmaking is and what it does. As such, guided by new materialist approaches, this presentation highlights the material interweavings and interminglings of print practices. It seeks to open out these often unnoticed or hidden aspects of printmaking, to expose their potential more-than and highlight that else they might come to do.