Presentation and Workshop:
"Holding It Together: Three Readings of Form"

Johnny Chang

Salt Galata

October 5, 2024 14.00 – 18.00

Holdingittogether 01 Johnnychang İllüstrasyon: Johnny Chang
Illustration: Johnny Chang
Workshop II-III

Stockholm-based designer and artist Johnny Chang will give a presentation and workshop as part of the IASPIS Istanbul Exchange Program.

This free-admission program will be held in English. The workshop is limited to 20 participants. Priority will be given to art and design students, graphic designers, artists, and cultural workers interested in collective, improvisational, performance-based approaches to printed matters. Participants are encouraged to bring books to create a temporary library within the workshop. Please register via this form.

PROGRAM

14.00-15.00 Presentation

Chang will discuss the concept of form in relation to publishing through three elements: the vessel, the tool, and the medium. Drawing on a range of materials, from liner notes and pamphlets to workbooks, manuals, and cookbooks, the presentation will explore various perspectives on the poetics of form.

15.30-18.00 Workshop
Following the presentation, Chang will lead a workshop focused on collective binding through hands-on experiments with interdependent methods of holding things together. Participants will be divided into groups to explore different methods of physically binding stacks of paper, using their hands, bodies, and surroundings. Each participant is encouraged to bring books to form a temporary library, which will inspire the groups to improvise and create new, imaginary publications. At the end of the workshop, participants will be asked to photograph and document these collectively bound creations.

Johnny Chang is an interdisciplinary designer, artist, and researcher based in Stockholm, Sweden. Spanning graphic design, publishing, writing, and teaching, Chang’s work explores discursive processes of sense-making (and breaking)—or poetics—of visual and material languages in relation to social and historical conditions. His artistic research attends to questions around care, access, and tactics for gathering and centering knowledges that emerge from diaspora liminality, community histories, and social movement archives. Currently, he is an artist in residence at Grafikens Hus and an organizing member of Munnen, a community library and meeting space in Bagarmossen, Stockholm.

IASPIS is the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Program for Visual and Applied Arts. It is aimed at artists working in the fields of visual arts, photography, design, crafts, illustration, textile art, and architecture.

The IASPIS Istanbul Exchange Program is realized in collaboration with Salt and IASPIS and with support from the Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul and the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul.
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