Alt Går Bra: The Mimeograph, Voice To Speech

In a world flooded by overconsumption, with virtuality avidly replacing reality, the mimeograph stands as a sort of fork in the road, a choice in face of the so-perceived fate of technological evolution.

“Books have long lost all likeness to books, the real book can no longer be one,” proclaimed Theodor Adorno in Minima Moralia, concluding that the way out was to be led by a kind of superhero: the mimeograph. “If the invention of the printing press inaugurated the bourgeois era, the time is at hand for its repeal by the mimeograph, the only fitting, the unobtrusive [unauffällige] means of dissemination.” 

Ubiquitous throughout the 20th century, the mimeograph enabled countless poets, writers, and artists to print experimental works and publish radical literature. Closely associated with political activism and clandestine publishing, the mimeograph could be labeled as the machine of freedom of expression.

Over six years, Alt Går Bra has pioneered the theory and practice of mimeograph printing and publishing in the 21st century. An international conference convened by Alt Går Bra at the University of Westminster in 2019 sparked interest in this forgotten printing technology. The conference was a follow-up of Alt Går Bra’s 2016 The Mimeograph, a Tool for Radical Art and Political Contestation, the first scholarly anthology dedicated to the mimeograph.

Alt Går Bra’s takeover at KODE unravels the fascinating history of this printing technology in over 1,000 square meters of gallery space.

The takeover shows a retrospective of Alt Går Bra’s works together with new pieces produced in situ for an exhibition in the making. 

“The public has the opportunity to see the artists at work operating rare equipment from the last century. Handsome Gestetner mimeograph machines, streamlined by Raymond Loewy in his first industrial-design commission, tirelessly recite the dictates of inked stencils. Two-cylinder scanners spin originals to be read by an optical device and a synchronized sparking needle to simultaneously burn tiny dots on electro-stencils. A myriad of color-coded precision tools delicately plow through the wax layering yellowish stencils. Whirring through muffling walls, these analog and obsolete tools, rescued from barns and basements by Alt Går Bra over the years, resound in a mechanical performance of both color and rhythm.

Since April, laboring machines and artists have been producing, through a hand-in-hand alliance, large prints and installations defeating the A4 limitation mimeographs were born with. Works on paper and canvas build a futuristic mirador for a renewed outlook into technology,” as Zanna Gilbert from the Getty Research Institute put it, “Alt Går Bra carefully and critically considers the Janus-face of technology, asking when and why we opted for today’s overdeveloped technologies and what we might learn by looking back to look forward.”  

The works ineluctably reflect upon Ytringsfrihet—literally “freedom of uttering”—a core value of Norwegian identity. Delving into Jacques Rancière’s concept of utterance, the exhibition incites the specialized and general public to consider the paradoxes of Ytringsfrihet. Large prints produced in situ explore Rancière’s rearticulation of the famous Aristotelian distinction between phōnē (voice) and lógos (speech) in his book La Mésentente (Disagreement). Placing utterance at the core of Rancière’s political philosophy, the works question axiologies bestowing lógos to some, phōnē to others.

Parallel exhibitions at Alt Går Bra’s spaces in Paris and Bergen:
Alt Går Bra Lokale Paris, 11 rue des Petits Carreaux (2ème arrondissement)
Alt Går Bra Lokale Bergen, Strandgaten 208.