Masters are made of wax, which means that each one has a relatively short utility span. To start printing a digital image, the machine first creates masters, stencils of your image, which wrap around the drums. Because the colors are determined by the drums you use, digital files must be in black and white. These factors meant that Riso was originally adopted by churches and public institutions to print one-color flyers at speed.Ī majority of the time put into Riso printing is in the preparation. Once it’s set up, it’s also quick, printing up to 185 pages per minute. Its soy inks are affordable (although come with an environmental cost), and its printing process doesn’t use heat, so it is much more affordable than the likes of laser or inkjet printing. The Risograph machine was launched as a copy machine by the Riso Kagaku corporation in Japan in 1986, although network printer models are more popular now. The Risograph machine encouraged him to think practically and produce small format books and individual prints. Nash can generally be recognized from his narratives centered around incidental, autobiographical anecdotes. Under the pseudonym Wanda Scott he has even branched into erotica.īritish artist James Nash had until recently been working from Amsterdam and has self-printed work at the LAB. He is generally acknowledged as exploring abstract and naïve styles. Recent activity includes his 2019 miniature “one staple comic” Micro Snicker.Īctive since the late 1980s, Wasco (real name Henk van der Spoel) has been self publishing most of his career and has built a steady Dutch fanbase in the process. Hocus Pocus Comix, which was more active earlier this decade, is the name of his publishing outfit. He is also head of the screen printing department at AGA. As well as comics he produces fine art and installations. Maarten Schuurman is another artist involved in AGA, and straddles the various artistic worlds that are present in the building. Her position as Amsterdam’s official City Illustrator for 2019 has meant that four major collage works, discussing issues such as the city’s sex work industry, have been published by the daily Het Parool newspaper. She often portrays strong female characters, and explores the realities of marginalized groups. Her style is excessive and violently funny her themes and topics are serious. Since moving to Holland from Canada in the early 2000s, she has worked at the cross-section between the country’s squatting movement and self publishing culture. Maia Matches has been guiding guests in Risograph printing since 2017. The volunteers at AGA look after particular machines or guide students seeking information on specific practices depending on their expertise. A side room has been repurposed into a space suitable for various experiments and now comes complete with a giddying miasma of hazardous chemicals. Under the workbenches are draws of archives, tests and works-in-progress. There are various screen printing machines to wind between, some of which are so old and industrial they seem authentically steampunk. Nearly everything is in one room, which boasts high ceilings and a wall which is almost entirely glass it’s an old gymnasium, basketball hoops and typically colorful floor lines are still visible. That philosophy is apparent in the fact that the space relies on public funding and volunteers to sustain itself. Compared to the co-working spaces currently embraced by people in the “creative industries”, AGA is a more egalitarian project designed to (re)distribute resources and knowledge. It predates the boom of shared workspaces currently being offered to “digital nomads” in the city by a good few decades. I wanted to explore the LAB exactly because of the intimate relationship some of the city’s prominent comics artists have had with it, as well as find out more about its Risograph printer, which here and elsewhere in the comics scene has become the machine of choice for producing work.ĪGA LAB, formerly the Amsterdams Grafisch Atelier, was founded in 1958 as an affordable option for artists to access technology and space to experiment. Amsterdam’s AGA LAB, an artistic workshop containing various printing equipment, has attracted a fair amount of the city’s prominent illustrators and cartoonists into its gravitational zone. While typically not prominent in European comics historicism and criticism, the Dutch scene has plenty of devoted, experimental and intriguing comics artists in its midsts. The apparatuses of the tests of these colors are conducted at one end of a communal kitchen, one of the many instances where the laboratory element of creative practices is clear. I will find out that this is part of an artistic research program developing vegan paints. You can approach AGA LAB through a courtyard, in which raised beds of various plants are being grown.
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