Damien and I have sat in discussion on a number of occasions. Mostly accompanied by a cup of tea and a biscuit. In one hour we cover a lot of ground: we check in with each other, get things of our chest, chat about the world and then discuss the basics of how we want to work or what the next part of our work should look like.To those of us used to a capitalist model of the “meeting” this doesn’t look like working. The fact that we achieve more in that hour than we have in any meeting we’ve ever been a part of is quite telling.
I’m going to try and give you a quick summary of the stuff we learned at Rabbits Road:
Risograph’s are quite persnickety and have their idiosyncrasies.
It’s a super quick method of creating thousands of copies of something.
I view it like a weird hybrid between a photocopier and screen printing.
You have to view the print process a bit like screen printing in that depending on the number of colours you are printing with you will have to separate them out into different layers and copy each layer separately- like building up CYMK.
You create a “master” by copying your first layer (start with lightest colour first).
The master stays on the drum, if you cock up the master you’ll have to make another.
But once you’ve made that master, you can make loads of copies.
You’ll scan your next master if you’re doing another colour. This is where it’s like a photocopier, you place it on the scanning bed, close the lid and then choose “master make”, whether you’re doing a two colour or a single colour, then you’ll have options like line or photo, changing the contrast etc. You’ll press start and then it will make your master.
When you’ve done that for the next master you now have the fun of registering by eye. The misregistration is actually one of the features that people quite enjoy as it can add a different feel to your image/poster/publication.
When we decided to layout how we would work together and how we would attempt to achieve what we set out to investigate, the way that we had our coffee and a chat became the main focus.
Why is it womxn’s discussions get called “mother’s meetings” or any other number of apparent derogatory sexist phrases? When actually more is going on in those “meetings”? So we reclaimed it as an ethos and developed it as a coffee morning to host the womxn we wanted to talk with.
