En egen trykkpresse

Ane Thon Knutsen

A Printing Press of One’s Own (En egen trykkpresse) is a practical examination of the relationship between art and technique, hand and spirit, thought and printing ink. The project came out of an interest in the printed medium in a digital age. Book printing has been the dominant technology for setting and mass reproducing of the printed word from when Gutenberg popularized the technique in the 1450s, and until well into the 20th century. Thon Knutsen set out to search for a professional position which allowed her to combine an artistic approach to typography and graphic form with her technical insight and historical knowledge of book printing. She found Virginia Woolf. The canonised modernist author and the feminist icon worked in parallel with both her writing as artistic practice and as typesetter and printer in her own private printing press. Through in-depth close reading of Woolf's authorship, seen through the first-hand experience as typesetter and printer, Thon Knutsen has found new ways to read Woolf, and a direction for her own artistic and research-based practice. Thon Knutsen has recreated the short story that Woolf printed in her debut, The Mark on the Wall, in its whole, but with a new aesthetic appearance. She has done this with a method that Thon Knutsen claims must have been used by Woolf; the thought and the writing must have been influenced by the experience of setting and printing as a pendulum between the spirit that writes and the hand that sets.

Denne timelapsen dokumenterer med ett bilde hvert 30. sekund de 3 månedene det tok å sette og trykke Virginia Woolfs The Mark on the Wall(1917). I denne adapsjonen nærleser jeg novellen, ord for ord, og oversetter den fra boken (Two Stories) til et eget rom (Fra døren i eget trykkeri til overlyssalen på Kunstnernes Hus). Novellen kan leses i kronologisk rekkefølge, trykk for trykk, på døren midt i bildet. Hele timelapsen tar 2 t 18 min.

Novellen er et produkt av en forfatter dypt involvert i bokens tilblivelse. Den er kjent for å ha mange koblinger til boken som objekt, og drar paralleller mellom veggen og boksiden. Woolf visker ut grensene mellom subjekt og objekt, fantasi og virkelighet. Med en egen trykkpresse fikk hun makt over publiseringen av eget arbeid og alle forutsetningene for manifestasjon av tanker i fysisk format.

TRYKKING AV THE MARK ON THE WALL

Timelapse på 2 t 18 min

Lydbok – refleksjoner og spørsmål gjort langsmed trykkeprosessen.

Lest av Ane Thon Knutsen. (ca 30 minutter.)

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