Workshop Printing with Chimeras

The workshopseries called “Druckend Denken” (Thinking with Printing) are a direct result of my PhD titled „Printing with Chimeras – from the release of expectations”. With the Figure of the “Chimera” (also: some- thing that slips away when grasped) it proposes a mindset in which we release printing presses from their repetitive functions. Printtechnlog- ogy is defined by control. Here instead we use printing techniques for the unique.

This approach is particularly effective in Material Printing. It involves a setting, for which we collect materials and run them through the presses with ink and paper.

Rather than aiming to produce specific imagery or motifs, our empha- sis lies in understanding printing as a research practice that facilitates communication with our peers and a communities. We focus on proces. It allows to engage in a critical discourse of how and for whom we work as artists.

Also we take into account, that printing is a performative practice where everything, from the artist‘s mood of, to the ink used and even to the weather, has an influence on what will emerge from the concealed spot between the press cylinders. The image forms while printing.

Through “Druckend denken” students aquire a fundamental under- standing of what Material Prinitng can do, how we can let go of control and observe sharply what the output is. Whether it will become an artwortk can be decided later.

While etching presses and lithography presses are well suited for printing with Chimeras, this mindset expands to all other printing tech- niques. In serach for the moment and the place where ink is tranfered and how it can be influenced.