 | 50 Jaar Grafiek op de Bres This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Grafische Werkplaats Den Haag. In 1974, a group of artists squatted the building where the graphic workshop is still located. The Analog 74-24 festival celebrates this feat and looks to the future with an extensive program on activism and community. The exhibition 50 Jaar Grafiek op de Bres at the Grafische Werkplaats forms the heart of the festival. Several artists were invited to work in the Graphic Workshop to investigate the role graphic techniques and the workshop can play in their own work practice.This resulted in a wide range of inspiring, thought-provoking, and activating works.
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Domenique Himmelsbach-de VriesDomenique Himmelsbach-de Vries presents an inspiration installation with his ‘HimmelsbachIdeas Library’. He turned 120 ideas for social interventions, none of which he has yet realized, into (literal) blueprints. Be inspired to take counter-polarizing actions, invent political or cultural sabotage ‘pranks’, or create monuments to unknown histories and possible futures. Or buy an idea and implement it or get Himmelsbach to realise it. |  |
 | De Feministische Handwerk PartijThe Feminist Crafts Party (Margreet Sweerts and Emmeline de Mooij) are spreading ideas as well, but in the form of textile ‘patches’: pieces of fabric you can use to repair holes in clothes.The patches are printed with stimulating feminist quotes. Those serve as conversation material during a workshop where you repair your broken or stained clothes with these patches. The workshop takes place in public spaces. By both speaking them out loud and wearing them, these quotes are embodied by you. In the exhibition, you will see the quotes screen-printed together in one image; the graphic design by Elisabeth Klement connects the individual statements as in a plant-like underground network. You can also see them integrated into patched garments as individual patches. Spread across these repaired garments, they thus become part of a larger whole; a ‘body of thoughts’. We are tired of the highest aspiration being a heroic manifestation in the outside world! The FHP is developing an unspectacular ongoing counter-narrative through various performative actions and workshops. |
Shani Leseman en GC HeemskerkShani Leseman and GC Heemskerk also focus on improving their immediate environment. With their work, they make us aware of the undervalued city pigeon and its ‘string foot’ condition. The works (including monoprints) are a tribute to these birds and make you reflect on their unique attributes, such as their ability to perceive magnetic fields.The proceeds of the artworks will go to the Stichting Stadsduivenhulp (City Pigeon Aid Foundation). |  |
 | ZelootZeloot (aka Eline van Dam) explicitly turns to activist imagery by making a series of multi-purposeposters that underline the urgency of change. The expressive and raw aesthetics of the woodcut are perfectly suited for activist posters. The limitations of the technique forced the artist to be creative and to simplify forms and messages in such a way that the posters get to the core of the matter and above all: incite action! |
Matt PlezierMatt Plezier also explores activist imagery, but from a very different angle.For his installation ‘Ghost Image’, he appropriates newspaper photographs, strips them of their context, and uses montage to deconstruct and grasp a recent past, suggesting a hauntingly adjourned non-origin. He combines the technique of cyanotype with the banner, the traditional medium of choice for dissident messages. The installation addresses the spectre that haunts today’s world. |  |
 | Marcos KuehMarcos Kueh is concerned with the idea of resistance through resilience. As the son of a bonsai enthusiast, he thinks that activism could be quite similar to cultivating bonsai trees. With patience, understanding, hope and care, an ideal is shaped slowly over time. The Grafische Werkplaats has grown in a similar manner over the past 50 years.Through the slow craft of many layers of silkscreen printing, he made a series of bonsai trees to reflect on the power of durability. |
