Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts (ILSSA) is a union for reflective creative practice. I joined recently, and reflected on Impractical Labor that I'm doing right now.
ANEMONE is an artist initiative, a studio (both an organizational structure and a physical place) where I work on my own projects, projects in collaboration with Adam, and projects with other collaborators. The ANEMONE studio is currently one big room and four small rooms, big windows with lots of light. A risograph machine, shelves full of inks and stencil paper and paper to print on. Bindery equipment: booklet maker, a bunch of tools to staple and cut and fold. Two standing desks with computers, a big standing work table, other work tables. A sewing room. Boxes of booklets and zines, a packing and shipping station. A place to make lunch and tea. It’s a ten or fifteen minute walk from our apartment. I love it.
What do you consider your impractical labor?
Printmaking and publishing. Right now, I’m using a risograph machine to make zines, small books, pamphlets, maps, art prints and other printed matter. Both self publishing and publishing other people’s work. It’s impractical, to lay out and design and print and cut and fold and staple and trim it all ourselves. I love it, love figuring out which parts I can automate with machines over time, as we scale and learn more: oh, electric stapler, a folding machine, a booklet machine. I’ve been trying to document publicly and share the processes I’ve been learning as I go too.
I write and design sewing related things under All Well, with my collaborator Amy Bornman. We’ve been making really simple, super-hackable sewing patterns as foundations for a lot of learning and experimentation. What we make and how we make them is very impractical and over the top, super detailed and illustrated.
In general, I make as many things as I can, as far down towards the raw materials as possible or practical. These are mostly more personal and less widely available, but I consider a lot of the things I do in daily life impractical labor. Designing and making my own clothes, making household things, and things to eat and use. Weekly loaves of sourdough, pots of soup. Carving wooden spoons, fermenting pickles, making salve. Making shoes and sandals.
It also feels like a impractical labor in how I spend time coding our own websites, making software, making research and data analysis and useful tools. Right now I’m working on a free Mac desktop app called Spectrolite that makes it easier to make colorful risograph prints and zines. It does booklet/zine imposition and color separation and a bunch of other things that are otherwise really difficult and big barriers ($/time/skills) to making risograph stuff. And working on more resources and blog posts.
Why do you do it?
There’s some inner pull or sense of rightness, a deep seated pull to do certain things, in certain ways. A sense that I do this type of work. It doesn’t feel like an option to not do it, more just a given that I have been: I’ve been writing and publishing and sewing and making things since childhood.
I do it to be particular: to sew to get to wear clothes that fit my body, in fabrics that feel nice. To look at colors and inks and paper and words that I find beautiful and useful, to use materials and processes that feel good. But also practicality: much of what I need or want or imagine isn’t available, it needs to be created somehow.
The joy of collaboration. Of imagination, of making something new that’s also a synthesis of so many things.
To be of service: sharing what I’m finding, helping others as I’ve been helped, in a network. To gather up momentum and contribute my own small but personal part of a bigger movement towards abundance. I have a feeling of stewardship and responsibility to share resources as much as I can. This often takes the form of writing down process notes and sharing them in a blog or zine. Or organizing structures for community use, or making free or shared access tools I make for myself available for others too. Or teaching workshops or organizing “residencies” of peers, or gathering riso operators around the country to talk on zoom.
In terms of making software and coding, there’s a therapeutic aspect to it too. I worked at small tech startups for a long time, and in the years since I’ve been recovering some of the joy in designing and engineering technical things. Making Spectrolite really playful and intuitive and also making it in a non-hostile environment has been really good. The process of making, as a pleasure in itself, is important to me. Just as much as being able to share a resource with others. Making software tools can be an art practice too!
Labor ethics: to impractically labor, by disintermediating as far as I can towards the raw materials, seems like a way to cause less harm.
Seattle winters are very long and dark and rainy: feels like impractical laboring is the right way to spend a lot of that time.
What sustains you?
Beauty, awe and appreciation for the world we get to live in, its complexity and simplicity. I’m sustained by visions becoming real. Community, the spark of connection with other people who see the world in interesting ways.
The feeling in my hands as they labor: printing, pressing, cutting, sewing, trimming, folding, patting and smoothing and putting away.
Black tea, pickles, tomatoes and garlic, sourdough bread. Good food, good company. Spending time with my family and friends. Long conversations deep to the heart of things. Reading tons of books. Writing every day. Being outside. Riding my bike, taking walks, climbing in the mountains in the summers. Looking at plants and animals.
Seeing my work in bookstores and libraries, stuck to people’s fridges or walls.
Getting to go to the studio. I walk there and am happy each day: this is incredible, I had dreamed of someday having a life like this. Working in an environment that suits me: quiet, good light, fresh air and good smells, going at my own pace. Getting to use my art and engineering and math skills all together, getting to work on things that seem useful and beautiful to me.
Lots of financial planning and careful budgets and spreadsheets working towards this over the years.
What questions are you grappling with?
How can I be more like mycelium, lichen and mushrooms in how I work? What are the slow, spiral, fractal processes? How does my sensory world influence how I work and what I work on? Is disability/chronic illness a way to frame or explain some of my choices around impractical labor?
Making physical things in the climate/environmental crisis: how to think about ethics? How can I embrace the specific work I feel compelled to do?
How can I share access to the physical space and expensive machinery in the studio? (Esp. taking into account the shifting pandemic conditions, and limits of my own time and energy.) How do I share resources in general? How much of my time can I devote to that before it stalls out the rest of my work—what is the balance there?
How to finish? Is it a “should” or do I really want to? Is this a time to go fast or slow? Do I need to think less and just do it?
What are you working on right now?
Printmaking: A map of favorite places in Seattle, a zine of reading recommendations. Some zines in collaboration with friends: book and wine pairings, how to make electronic music. A reprint of a zine about bike rambles around town. My next studio process journal.
All Well: We’re in the editing stage of a book that comes out in 2023 from Abrams.
Spectrolite: A visual design pass to make the fonts and colors and buttons and layouts more fun and beautiful. Writing a bunch of how-to content around the physical aspects of publishing: how do you plan page count, how do you print on riso, considerations for picking ink and budgeting and assembly.
Modeling clay maquettes, and little architectural models, though I’m not sure where that’s going yet. Learning the technical skills with marbling fabric and paper. Designing a pair of leather mules. Sewing myself more pants. Sketchbook time.