Paper short abstract:

In this performance lecture I investigate and showcase how a handheld printing technique can be utilized as an interesting way of exploring materialities within STS. Deploying the theatrical notion ‘Verfremdung’, this session unfolds how Empirical Prints might be considered dramatic fabrications.

Paper long abstract:

"My earphones came out like an erotic picture"

(Denver 2015, EP participant)

In this performance lecture I investigate and showcase how an entirely analogue and handheld printing concept entitled 'Empirical Prints' might be utilized as an interesting way of exploring materialities within a STS setting. Materiality is a central theme in STS and arguably the field stimulates a concern with ways of enacting (often mundane) artifacts and materials in surprising ways, rendering them present and nudging us to include them in our investigations and accounts.

'Empirical Prints' (2014-) is a collaborative endeavor developed as an investigative non-digital concept combining academic STS perspectives with artistic relief prints.

In order to 'think slowly' (Bennett 2010) about and invigorate our attention towards humdrum objects we wanted to investigate an uncommon way of collecting empirical materials and re-enact them in an aesthetically unusual manner. To create a shared process-space and eliminate a problematic distribution-latency a rudimentary, but fully mobile and operational printing press system for making Empirical Prints on-location has been devised.

In this session I intend to fabricate a print, utilizing the handheld printing press, while pondering how the printing process and the reenactment of objects might be contemplated through the notions 'dramatic fabrications', inscriptions and Verfremdung. I claim that the Empirical Press could be considered an ethnographic experiment in which litter is turned into objects of inquiry and the audience is invited to re-consider the 'naturality' of everyday items by making the natural seem exotic.