The Fold & Tulca
Leading cultural theorist of post colonialism Homi Bhabha wrote in ArtForum in 1992; “The globe shrinks for those who own it: for the displaced or the dispossessed, the migrant or the refugee no distance is more awesome than the few feet across borders or frontiers”
“City of Strangers” the theme for Tulca festival resonates with many ideas that circulate in The Fold publication and it connects in various ways with themes we have already explored through the previous Fold publications
The issue of artists publishing has been much discussed in terms of it as a readily accessable medium for engagment with the world through the widespread distribution of artworks and other forms of critical comment and analysis. It also offers an alternative strategy to the conventional art market and has the possiblity to explore ideas within ‘relational’ or socially engaged art practices. In the wider sphere the concept of free exchange has always been at the core of the work produced by Workoom Press publications and Workroomelsewhere* projects.
We believe that it is important for artists to produce work that is outside the boundaries of commodification that so much of an artist’s work is bound up in.
It has been our experience to date that artists respond positively and actively to this notion of free exchange. In The Fold we give artists an oppportunity to produce new work or previously unpublished work for a free publication. It is also a chance for artists to explore the medium of publication in relation to their own work.
The Fold
Issue 3 – Disappeared
“the brilliant Don Martin Decoud, weighted by the bars of San Tome silver, disappeared without a trace, swallowed up in the immense indifference of things.”
Excerpt – Nostromo by Joseph Conrad.
To disappear, to vanish without a trace is an idea rich with intriguing possibilities.When Alice disappeared through the looking glass she entered an alternate world where all was not as it seemed. To make something disappear with a puff of smoke is a classic trick in every magician’s repretoire. The natural world is disappearing through the relentless urbanisation of the rural.
To ‘disappear’ was newly defined in the twentieth century and has evolved into a transitive verb describing people considered threats to military states who are kidnapped, tortured and killed.
In “Disappeared”, the third issue of The Fold, artists have explored ideas concerning politics, borders, landscape, and more intimate and personal explorations relating to vanishing points in the Irish psyche.
The Fold is edited by Cora Cummins and Alison Pilkington,
The Fold is a Workroomelsewhere* project published by Workroom Press 2007.
