Some idea/things I want to make
Wrapping up the semester I've been exhausted, but inspired. Having a bit more time to read and think is opening up some directions of where I'd like to take the Matter vs. Spirit project. I've been wanting to write about this here, but as the ideas develop more complexity, the task of making a "good" post about them feels daunting. So to break the inertia, here's a short list of some of the initial zine/publication ideas for the micro-press I've had bouncing around in my head for a while.
Bad photos of the moon: My friends (mostly S) and I have a habit/practice of taking cell-phone photos of the moon and sending them to each other. As anyone who has tried taking a photo of the moon (and who hasn't?) knows, these often aren't great photos, the moon is a tiny blurry blob of light, and they don't represent what we actually see. But the acts of noticing and sharing and ritual are really important, powerful, and poetic to me.
On the Colophon: In a previous incarnation of this blog on substack I wrote a short essay about the colophon; the brief statements at the end of publications that provide details about the book's production, often focusing on the typeface(s) used to set it. I followed this essay up with a lengthier conversation with my friend JC, a fellow anarchist book designer. Both the essay and the interview need some serious editing, but together I think they embody a lot of what I'm trying to look at with my research and could make a pretty complete zine that would be fulfilling to design and typeset.
They didn't know we were seeds: A small zine compiling my photos of Palestine solidarity posters in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke that have been torn or defaced. The images might be graphically treated through aggressive dithering and accompanied by a short text/poem, perhaps from Fady Joudah.
Student type specimen/catalog: This year, several students in my introductory typography course produced some original and exciting display typeface designs. The quality was a marked improvement from last year (guess I'm becoming a better teacher!). I'd like to have these designs developed into minimally functioning fonts that Matter vs. Spirit could showcase and distribute. My colleague M gives a brief exercise in her class where her students invent new ecologically optimistic words. Perhaps these could be combined?
Selections from the Anarchist Library: The Anarchist Library is such a great resource. The goal of this project is definitely not to become another anarchist distro (not that there's anything wrong with that), but I'd love to publish some anarchist texts there that share sympathy with my thinking around publishing practices, for example this short text on Affinity by Alfredo Bonanno. I've finally started to dig into Kathy Ferguson's book and I'm deeply inspired.
More bad photos: A thick collection of the photos you might delete from your camera roll. The filler in image dumps. Tangentially inspired by Hito Steryl's In Defense of the Poor Image, but less about degradation and circulation and more about banality and affect.
Something on Tai Chi: I've been practicing Chen style Tai Chi (in a rather undisciplined way) for over 12 years. It's been such an important grounding practice for me, but one that only "clicked" when I restarted regularly after the pandemic. It's very hard to explain in words what Tai Chi does/means for me, but maybe there is an experimental zine-like way to do this.
The Matter vs. Spirit Reader: This is a far bigger endeavour than the other idea/things, inspired by Adam Pendelton's Black Dada Reader and the notational/archival work of Kameelah Janan Rasheed. The goal is to create a reader for the project through a collage-like approach, juxtaposing incomplete and diverse texts, reproduced in their material form (like direct photocopies). I've collected so many sources since starting this and I need a way to work through them.
Of course, these are just initial ideas and they all emerge out of my own personal interests. One of the main purposes of the research project is to collaborate with colleagues (students, faculty, research labs) at the university and provide informal/experimental publishing capacity. But at this point just getting these ideas down feels like a good start!