| Home | Union | Research Institute | Join | News | FAQ |
Every Day Work chronicles one full year (January 1 - December 31, 2011) of Impractical Labor as practiced by a dedicated group of ILSSA members. On every day worked, members saved remnants of their process in a dated envelope. In early January 2012, members sent their envelopes and/or a representative tool to the Hammes Gallery at Saint Mary's College. One envelope is posted on the gallery wall for each worked day. On the gallery floor, the saved remnants are grouped by month, with remnants from each day organized in rows. The exhibition is a visual chronology of every day worked by union members, wherever they may have been. Together with the tools, the show provides a glimpse into the nature of such work.
Upon the show's closing, Saint Mary's College students will be offered the remnants for their own creative reuse. In the next installment of this exhibition, members' envelopes will be chronologically collated and bound into a collection of books. The collection will be displayed and then distributed to all participating members.
Many thanks to ILSSA member Krista Hoefle (Local 574 Shop KH) for the opportunity to install the show, to Saint Mary's College for their support, and most especially to all participating ILSSA members, without whom this exhibition would not have been possible!
The ILSSA Co-Operators spoke happily with Eleanor Whitney of the New York Foundation for the Arts!
ILSSA Co-Operator Local 347 Shop FS will participate in the Printmaking Collaborations for Commmunity panel at the much-anticipated Ladies of Letterpress Conference in Asheville, NC. From the panel description: Printmakers can help community groups share their message while building relationships, practicing teamwork, and creating useful objects. There is as much power and meaning in the process of printmaking as there is in the product. Likewise, there is power in how and with whom you share the product. When these ideas are applied to communities who are trying to build cohesion or work on a particular issue together, both product and process can be valuable tools. If printmakers share their skills, techniques and equipment in accessible ways, many art-making and printmaking processes are group-friendly and can provide a valuable model for how a group can work well together towards a common goal. The panel is scheduled for 2:30pm, location TBD.
Hello Craft! speaks with Bridget about ILSSA, yoga, trucks, and more. Hello, hello!
Mark your calendar for the 3rd annual Festival to Plead for Skills!
Thanks to our generous host, Washington University, ILSSA Co-Operator Local 347 Shop FS will be in town for the Southern Graphics Council, publishing An Obsolete Technology Guide for the Citizens of St. Louis in collaboration with (ILSSA members!) All Along Press. Stop on by, say hello, and pick up your own copy!
ILSSA will be in full effect at the CBAA Conference at Indiana University. ILSSA Co-Operator Local 347 Shop FS will present about book arts/publishing as social practice, citing Temporary Services, ILSSA, and ILSSA member Book Bombs as examples. Happily, Co-Operator Local 917 Shop RC will be speaking on the same panel, presenting about the social distribution networks of 90s zine culture.
In preparation for an ILSSA exhibition at St. Mary's College, Notre Dame IN, January 2012: on every day of 2011 in which their labor is impractical, all ILSSA members are invited to save a remnant of their process. Remnants are to be placed in identified, dated envelopes, and stored in chronological order. In early January 2012, members will ship their boxes to the gallery. The culminating exhibition will display all remnants grouped together by day, uniting the labor efforts of impractical laborers wherever they may be, whatever they may be doing. New members are invited to begin saving their process at any time they join the Union during the year. After the exhibition, remnants will be used by St. Mary's sculpture students in a new project, and envelopes will be collated, bound into books, and shipped back to each participating member. Here's to the many days of work ahead in 2011!
ILSSA will be tabling at The Big Crafty this coming Sunday. Represented will be the ILSSA Research Institute as well as work by various contributing ILSSA members. Come out, say hello, & pick-up some handmade action for your loved ones!
The ILLSA Co-Operators will discuss technology & collaboration with our friends SCAP and Preacher's Biscuit Books on a panel entitled Unevenly distributed: high, low, and mixed technologies in three artists organizations. This is all happenin at the Mid-American Print Council (MAPC) New World/Old World Conference at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Hope to see you there!
The second annual Festival to Plead for Skills will transpire per usual on the seventh day of the seventh month of this year. Please join us in practice!
The ILSSA Co-Operators will talk about ILSSA *live* accompanied by our friends the overheard projector & a portable anachronistic sound system. 6 pm at Apex Art, 291 Church Street, NYC. Hope to see you there! If you miss it, you'll be able to listen to the podcast via Bad at Sports, who kindly organized this event.
Yes, it is indeed overdue, but Members and Boosters may expect to find the first 2010 Quarterly in their mailbox, sometime between March and May. Yes, that is a large window, but due the amount of production of this Quarterly we must stagger the mailing. Thanks for your patience!
ILSSA Co-Operator Local 917 Shop RC will be presenting about ILSSA at the 2010 College Art Association Conference in Chicago. The panel is entitled Hypo-technology: Artists Remix the Anachronistic and the Obsolete with the Present; fellow presenters include Walter Kitundu, Robrecht Vanderbeeken, Robert Mertens, and Victoria Bradbury. You can find us from 2:30-5 pm on Thursday February 11th, at the cryptically named Gold Coast, Bronze Level, West Tower of the Hyatt Regency Chicago.
Recent work of ILSSA Co-Operator Local 347 Shop FS, aka our dear Bridget Elmer, is the subject of an exhibition at Florida State University's Strozier Library Special Collections. The show includes recent books, ILSSA publications, as well as student work from her Book Structures course at FSU. Check it out if you're in town!
|
| Art Work, the new publication from Temporary Services. |
ILSSA's essay Impractical Laborers: Unite! is published in the recent Temporary Services *free* newspaper Art Work. To quote the site, "Art Work is a newspaper that consists of writings and images from artists, activists, writers, critics, and others on the topic of working within depressed economies and how that impacts artistic process, compensation and artistic property. The newspaper is distributed for free at sites and from people throughout the United States and Puerto Rico." You may download a PDF of the paper from the Art Work site, or order a paper copy from the fine retail establishment Half Letter Press for the cost of postage.
 |
| The trusty Vandy at rest. |
ILSSA Co-Operator Local 917 Shop RC will be printing letterpress holiday cards on-demand for two days only. That's right, while-you-wait letterpress printing! December 5 & 6, from 10am-5pm, as part of the city-wide Artful Gifts Trail. Many other studios in the former American Fabrics factory will be open: AmFab Art & Design Center, 1069 Connecticut Ave, Bridgeport CT.
 |
| A sneak peak at the results of our members' skill practicing. |
The ILSSA Operators are hard at work producing the boxed sets to house the spoils of the first annual Festival to Plead for Skills. The Festival was a huge success; some mad skills are in evidence. Participating Impractical Laborers, expect your package to arrive before the end of 2009.
 |
| 16 July Update: See images of ILSSA Members observing the Festival! |
This summer, on the 7th day of the 7th month, ILSSA will celebrate its own version of The Festival to Plead for Skills. The festival is derived from the Chinese holiday of Qi Xi and the Japanese festival of Tanabata, in which celebrants wish for the betterment of their own craftsmanship. Instead of wishing, the ILSSA festival will be a holiday of practicing.
We hereby invite all ILSSA Members to observe this holiday by making 55 small objects as iterations of their practice. The 55 objects should be no larger than 2 inches in any dimension, and should be the natural result of practicing a skill: using a tool, trying a method, honing a technique. Conceive of this project as something you can complete entirely on July 7th. We imagine Impractical Laborers across the land, practicing together in observance of the holiday.
After the Festival, we ask that you mail your resulting 55 objects to ILSSA. We will then collate the objects into 55 custom-boxed sets which will house one object from each participant. Each participating ILSSA Member will receive a set as a commemorative archive of the holiday and a physical manifestation of our collective action.
 |
| Local 347 Shop FS workin' the ILSSA Table. |
ILSSA will be tabling at the Hybrid Book Conference in Philadelphia. See you there!
ILSSA Co-Operator Local 917 Shop RC speaks about ILSSA, DIY self-publishing, and the Letterpress Renaissance at the Center for Book Arts. She'll be in most excellent company: also on the panel is Vandercook-expert Paul Moxon and The (mighty) Arm's Daniel Morris, the latter of whom has since joined us as an ILSSA member!
ILSSA Co-Operator Local 347 Shop FS will be presenting at the Southeastern Women's Studies Assoication (SEWSA) 2009 Conference, Women & Environments, at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. The panel is entitled Women in the Book Arts: Community Building, the Environment, and an Attempt To Transcend and the five panelists will address their work as it relates to feminism, capitalism, the body, and the environment.