Presentation

This publication is the result of more than a decade of research and teaching around print within the context of the print studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts and the Institute for Research in Art, Design and Society (i2ADS) at the University of Porto.

This is the first book in a series of editions that aims to establish a turning point in terms of the dissemination of technological research in the context of printmaking and photomechanical processes in connection with new Technologies. In view of the material presented, it establishes a configuration of a strategic experience developed together with several agents and collaborators, including UP students, Erasmus students, i2ADS professors, visiting professors, guest professors, artists, curators, scientists; who worked on several projects and beyond, giving visibility to the vocation of the workshop practice itself, which is to bring together people and institutions around a common theme, printmaking, and its expansive nature both in the artistic and social fields.

In this context, we emphasize that the Pure Print project was especially important to establish a national and international form of investigation with an impact on research methodologies in art and in technical and technological procedures. From the beginning, Pure Print demonstrated that the characteristics of collaborative work are fundamental to deepen investigations and are valued in a broad university context.

The history that began in the FBAUP workshops with the projects associated with Pure Print, and which were presented, disseminated, and organized in numerous events, publications, exhibitions, artistic works, and practices with technological innovations linked to artistic research, are responsible for the interdisciplinary connections and inter-institutional relationships that brought together people and institutions from Universities in Europe and the Global South.

Observing the processes and all the activities over the years, we have elements and results that prove the vocation of the PP as a kind of research network, in this context, this first book also launches the proposal for the constitution of a research group that we call, not by chance, Pure Print Archeology, to guarantee the process memory of the construction of this entire process in a space of references in FBAUP.

With this we hope to expand the artistic investigation around the notion of technological archeology that we initially defined as an investigation of procedures that implies the use of historical elements that establish a function of uses and customs in a cultural and artistic network and that when recontextualized can build new relationships with materials, techniques and technologies in the ways and meanings of producing images.

Graciela Machado, Paula Almozara
(editors)