Can You Feel It?: Effectuating Tactility and Print in the Contemporary

by Freek Lomme

What exactly is the tactile, in a world in which a rising technocracy exploits the designed environment we feel? Who authorizes and who writes, what tradition do we stand in and how can we touch base? After endlessly hearing that Onomatopee publications have a materiality and tactility not often experienced in recent years, Onomatopee director and curator Freek Lomme decided to create an exhibition and publication addressing the issue of tactility and print today, accommodated by the Frans Masereel Centre and Z33. Presenting artists in the practice of making and thinkers in the development of thought here and now, we connect to tactile characteristics, guided by a specific focus on graphic, printed matter. The lasting result is a palm-sized book jam-packed with information and ideas on the subject. Six contemporary artists and eight international academics and authors in the field of graphic design, materiality, theory, and art explore how, in the digital age, our daily interaction with physical materials is greatly altered and how this affects us as humans.

191 pages, Paperback

Published January 4, 2017

Reviews

[Tash · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a stunning read. Such interesting ruminations on tactile and print mediums. The publication is a reflection on the exhibition that the author put together and describes the discursive practices of the artists involved and includes essays and mini-essays on touch, print, and the medium/methodologies of the “embodied viewer”.

Lots of fun elements within this book - including creative interjections as “interviews with types of print machines (like Miss Screen print, or Mrs Risograph). Such an amazing space of learning. Such intense and engaging language.

Very thoroughly enjoyed this short book - would have very much liked it to be longer, an perhaps more in-depth discussions of each artist’s practice and their positionining in the current climate of tactile-response to artworks in institutions in current era.

But I highly recommend this read to anyone interested in contemporary art discourse about modes of viewing and the placement of the viewer in institutional settings.

[Daniella · Rating 4 out of 5]

first time to read a book about the values of tactility or specifically the status of printed matter in today’s technology-driven era. very insightful essays, and lots of things to learn beyond the senses. I just hoped that the artists’ different practices on object, or print should be more in-depth rather than the theoretical stuff, nevertheless, i really learned a lot. I especially enjoyed reading the short ‘interviews’ of different printing methods, as if they were speaking as humans.