How do we move from representing the struggle to being present within it?
courtesy Mary Tremonte
Tremonte’s interest in collective action extends beyond representation, as she values most those instances that combine exhibited print work with a place for participatory printing. While participating in the MayWorks Festival exhibition at the Civic Space, she ran a small mobile printing station in conjunction with the May Day parade, where individuals could silkscreen banners and posters alongside Tremonte. The silkscreens included slogans, developed in dialogue with Windsorites, such as Solidarity Forever and Windsor is On Strike . Participatory printing enacts what her own prints address, and moves beyond representation toward a more direct presentation of these themes. Collective action and common efforts are no longer addressed on a rhetorical level, but become enacted through the participation of the public. This public was constituted and influenced by the related event, in this case May Day, and opening a print station in a public space certainly moves far beyond what is possible for many space- constrained print studios – another public. Tremonte is developing a ‘commoning’ process with the potential to make an otherwise esoteric activity accessible and inclusive. Inclusion is central to a reconstruction of the commons, and must consider the different groups and communities that constitute a public. Tremonte gives visibility to groups that are often under-represented; the LGBTQ community, for instance, is addressed through her Queer Scout Badges and Queering the Lodge prints. When she prints Solidarity is Forever at a MayWorks Festival, she is employing not an empty catch phrase but a call for respect, inclusion and empowerment. Tremonte is not only working within public space, but continually reclaiming the space for an expanded public, with no one left behind. Participatory printing might not
achieve this reclamation on its own, but it remains part of a larger project that seeks to break down barriers and actively engage others. Tremonte demystifies processes of art production — silkscreen printing allows those without skills in drawing or painting to produce complex works of art with fairly accessible materials. Printing in public space allows other publics to engage with the process and, at times, even disrupt the lines between artist and viewer, performer and audience. Printing has the potential to empower a public, further activating the spaces they occupy through the many forms of expression and communication that art can take. Under-represented groups can become visible and reclaim public spaces that may have once been alien to them. While this work must exist alongside other struggles and anti-privatisation campaigns for any true reconstruction of the commons to occur, it does serve to complement and contribute to a broader movement. The road to a true commons is long and rocky, but it certainly can begin with the kind of inclusive, collective effort shown here. c
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1 See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Commonwealth. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2011 for a significant discussion of this increased attention to the immaterial commons (or common , as they put it). 2 Interview with Mary Tremonte, 2 August 2013 3 Silvia Federici. Revolution at Point Zero: housework, reproduction and femininst struggle . Oakland: PM Press, 2012
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