The Guide has featured the London Word Festival, particularly drawing attention to the Keep Printing Show at STK, describing our creative process in detail:

Whilst travelling we noticed some interesting social commentary going on in the various approaches different nations have towards crossing the road. In Berlin and Leipzig people always wait for the illumination of the Green Man. Our friend was prevented from crossing the road by a 20 yr old anarchist who explained that it sets a bad example to children to cross on red (note that this is a correct example of anarchism). Nobody ever crosses on red. This was taken further in Norway, where those who obviously were considered outcasts by themselves and others were taking the Red Man as an opportunity to publically express their standing by waiting for the Green Man to go away before commencing their crossing. And of course in England we have a button whose function it is to illuminate the word WAIT, which most other peoples seem to overlook. It took me ages to realise that they probably communicate nothing to the traffic lights unless you’re in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps it merely replicates the British approach to law; a button we elect to push that tells us to do something we wouldn’t do if we hadn’t chosen to be told to do it, and then promptly ignore.

You know what buses are like, you wait ages for one and then two come at once

Ping*s Bus

You may have often heard us praising the gifts of John Ringhofer, the man behind Half-handed Cloud. Now you can hear him for yourselves! John is coming to do a print with us, and to celebrate that print, we’re putting on an event with him at the Foundry bringing together the pressing of prints that we do, and the pressing of vinyl records; one of John’s preferred formats…

We’ll be bringing back the live printing in a set that will include HhC songs never heard before and a ‘vinyl’ record 12 feet wide {rather than inches}.

Come and join in!

This video accompanies the release of ‘The 20th Century’, by Michael James Jones and the Henningham Family Press. We will be celebrating its release at the Foundry, 86 Great Eastern Street, from 7pm on 29th April 2008. You are welcome to come and have a drink and a look.

Last Tuesday at Rational Rec was a blast. Thank you to everyone who came and took part, you all really threw yourselves into the tasks and really made the evening work, what an amazing enthusiastic crowd!

We began the evening with a print run where we went from table to table like a screenprint serenade. Where there had been a blank sheet on the table, we left behind us a spread of pages for a book. These pages contained tasks that related to the music sets in the evening. Before the second Act we flipped the pages and printed the second side, working right to left and then out the fire exit. Before the third Act we slipped the pages away and started binding the book at speed. One of the last acts was cancelled and so Murray helped me carry in the table as far as it would go into the room and we carried on binding furiously. A volunteer sitting on a board served as a finishing press, but soon we got urged over to the middle of the dance floor to do the casing in. The event had got a bit carnivalesque by this point and some DJs were playing and people were dancing around us as we worked. We got it cased in and I looked up, for the first time in quite a few minutes, to see a crowd around us applauding. Matt Cresswell sat on the book as a nipping press until it was time to present it to Emily from Chelsea Library at the front. People continued leafing through the book, even though people were dancing right next to them until closing time.

It was wonderful to work more closely with Matt Shlomowitz and David Helbich and get an insight on how composers work. We love the way their work doesn’t take itself too seriously. Matt’s piece especially is one of my favourite things I’ve seen. A dancer and a musician, in this case Shila and Tomma the phd recorder player, come up with a series of actions and sounds that tell a story following Matt’s score. It is really simple, perfect and complex. Shila is an amazing dancer with an awe inspiring memory and the ingenious Tomma had a recorder about seven feet tall. When we first saw it in the room nobody could work out what it was for. I thought it was a telescope.

Our thanks to Ana and Renee and Murray who stepped in when things went haywire, and to Matt Russell and Cecilia for planning a fantastic event, and Emily with her video camera and special collection.

I’m pretty sure there will one day be sociological studies based entirely upon 25mm button badges. Academics will pore over blown up photographs from zines to find out what was happening at the turn of the century. You could say a thing just isn’t happening if it isn’t accompanied by a badge. So we are pleased to introduce our very own badges!

There is a ‘Ping*’ badge and a ‘David’ badge. If you see us about just ask for one FREE and proudly display it upon your lapel, bag, or cap.

We’ve caused a few raised eyebrows in the pub when people have asked us what we’re up to this year and one of the things we’ve said we are doing is “an evening of music, dance, and printing”. It does sound strange, but this clip from Matt Shlom might begin to explain things. We’ll tell you more later…

Okay we didn’t really hold a competition pitting the various corporate Christmas Cards we’ve recieved this year against one another. For a start we’re a young business and we don’t get many {most are actually just invoices from our suppliers within the Christmas period} but art & design collaborative Sparks deserve special attention this year for their ingenius business gift. You may not be familiar with the concept; businesses send each other Christmas cards which in some way reflect, nay, promote their individual approach to their respective industries. Clients and customers are given a timely reminder of their services on the back of the festivities. But this isn’t a cynical enterprise; countless friendships are formed across the shop counters and studios of London.

What Sparks have done is provide everything needed for a couple of like-minds to share ideas over a fairtrade hot chocolate spiked with a dash of whisky atop a die-cut felt coaster {drink responsibly; use coasters}. Inspirations listed include: the wise men & shepherds/coffee breaks/snowflakes/Joseph Beuys/ideas becoming flesh/cold weather. Seasonal genius. 

We arrived in Paris with an open mind, but when it came to art bookshops, all the clichés about people there began to occur! The art scene there appears to be really stale and people were very conservative and extremely rude. One example; the bookshop ‘books by artists - Florence Loewy’. It is normal, internationally, for book makers to approach shops, even unnannounced and ask if they’d like to see a selection of your work for their stock. Usually they say yes, and they come over, take a look through books, ask questions, and have a conversation. Even booksellers who decide they cannot sell this kind of book because of their remit take a keen personal interest and offer encouraging advice. The guy in this shop refused to stand up and come into the space so we had to squeeze into a space about two foot square. I put a book in front of him but he waited for me to open it for him like a toddler refusing to eat. When he was asked to hold one he turned about a page and a half before handing it back and saying he didn’t sell books like ours. From what was in the shop he clearly did sell our kind of books, what he meant was that we weren’t famous. We wouldn’t mind someone politely saying ‘no thank you’, but he decided to say yes and spend the next few minutes trying to humiliate us in little ways. Why go out of your way to be so rude?

These were the only reactions we have ever had like this. It is disappointing to see this city takes so little interest in anyone who isn’t already making megabucks, and therefore how is new work supposed to develop? This is probably why most of the work represented was by British, American, and German artists. Unfortunately there were also problems at the exhibition we’d been invited over to be in. When we found we didn’t like the direction things were taking we pulled our work out of the exhibition and we cancelled our presentation. Maybe we were incredibly unlucky, and you experienced things differently. If so please comment below or maybe you had a similar experience.