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We believe that FANDSO should exist in unlimited editions. An unlimited edition reduces the market value of a work and brings it closer to its production cost. An unlimited edition facilitates a more direct aesthetic contact with the object because the hypocritical respect that presently separates the spectator from the object is reduced.

FANDSO’S concept of unlimited editions is utopian.

Today it costs less to produce a small edition of costly etchings than an unlimited edition of simple objects merely because the tools of mass production are prohibitively expensive. Nonetheless, the direction is indicated, and once these tools have become accessible, we should be prepared to use them.

By means of industrial design, mass produced objects have already been created in a way consistent with their mass produc-tion processes. For example, the first automobile was a horseless carriage. Later, the design was more closely integrated with the actual production process. The design then aimed to express and serve the function of the object. But such adherence to function distorted the aesthetic problem (which is why FANDSO wishes to develop along similar lines without becoming functional). Because the consumer’s attachment to an object increases proportionately with the functional efficiency of that object, and because indus-trial objects are intended to be profitable and salable, such objects always fulfill pre-existent public tastes. No unknown images are revealed.

The credo of functional aesthetics demands of a design the best possible expression of function. This leads to a kind of totalitarian image. If a Porsche is dented, its image is diminished because it is less than perfect. The design cannot be changed in any way; the consumer is unable to contribute anything to the object. He can only become increasingly involved in the activity of consuming.

The Bauhaus believed that sculpture and painting would eventu-ally disappear and that all aesthetic activity would be assimilated into functional objects. We disagree. We believe that all aesthetic activity will eventually be assimilated into quotidian activity, not into objects. Traditionally the value of an art object resided in its final form rather than in its creative process. We believe that the function of an artist is not to produce objects but to communicate the artistic process itself—to transform today’s consumers into creative individuals.

Liliana PorterJosé Guillermo CastilloLuis CamnitzerAcknowledgement: Willoughby Sharp (Production Advising)Joanne Wilson (Editing)

The NYGW published this statement in the brochure for their Towards Fandso exhibition, held October 6–31, 1967, at the Pratt Center for Contemporary Printmaking. The brochure also included the 1964 and 1966 manifestos.

“I believe that the open work is the way for modern art, that is to say, the way of fusion of life and art. . . .. . . from this point of view, future art will be a return to the period in which art was not an exterior function of society, rather a vital function!. . . Contemplation was finished because the aesthetic was dissolved into social life.”

Octavio Paz in a letter to Eduardo Costa, New Delhi, November 11, 1966

Text

The very act of writing about Printmaking seems anachronistic. And of course it is, except that in this case it can lead us to many other things. Any approach to the subject demands a reactionary point of departure. To think in terms of “printmaking” would seem to imply an acceptance of the idea that art can be divided into sub-groups. And in general those who do accept such a division also believe that the arts can be divided into a hierarchy of major and minor arts. . . . And Printmaking is considered a minor or second-rate art.

Historically the criteria for dividing the arts into major and minor seem to derive from the value of their respective contribu-tion in terms of images or systems of perception. With this reason-ing it is clear that none of the benchmarks of the great styles or isms (Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Cubism, Surrealism, etc.) were

fig. 84 Cover of the exhibition catalogue New York Graphic Workshop: Luis Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, Liliana Porter, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, 1969

New York Graphic Workshop: Luis Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, Liliana Porter

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achieved through Printmaking, but rather through Painting, Sculp-ture, or Architecture.

In this sense Printmaking was always a reproducer of images that were first developed in other media, and therefore a second-rate art. Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, and Picasso—all considered to have been brilliant printmakers—initially developed their imag-ery in their paintings and only later defined them in prints. Even German Expressionism, although perhaps most successfully mani-fested in the print, experienced a similar process.

In the early days, artistic printmaking and the printing industry were on the same level. Furthermore, before the advent of move-able type, the image was even more important than the text. Today, five hundred years later, the printing industry is one of the strongest in the power structure. Apart from radically having transformed all our relationships to our environment, at a merely technical level it prints with and on any material, at high speeds, and in unlimited quantities. In the meantime, artistic printmaking has remained virtually stagnant ever since the introduction of lithographic tech-niques some two hundred years ago.

Printmaking remained isolated and enclosed in its own kitchen. Variations only emerged extremely late, and thus silkscreen, in spite

fig. 85 A page from the exhibition catalogue New York Graphic Workshop: Luis Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, Liliana Porter, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, 1969, with text by Luis Camnitzer

of its long existence, was only accepted a few decades ago. Print-ing cuts and folds, overcoming the prejudice that impressions must be made with ink, is still considered revolutionary and avant-garde. Wallpaper is becoming unfashionable, but Printmaking still has not begun to address the “environment” format. We live bombarded by printed cans, boxes, bottles, and a vast array of other printed containers, but Printmaking has only just recently begun to peek timidly into the problem of three-dimensionality and continues thinking in terms of paper, ink, and a printing press. Many years ago a perforated card ensured the repetition of patterns in the cloth-ing industry. Today that same card puts satellites into orbit, while the print continues to be limited to the direct relationship between printing plate and paper.

A machine can use an electrostatic charge to print a page of a book on a person’s face, without touching the face or distorting the text. Printmaking, meanwhile, is still concerned with paper tears during printing.

How is it possible that a form of expression can remain so iso-lated and untouched by the radical changes swirling around it? . . . How can it be that not only it doesn’t attempt to join the dynamic process that surrounds it, but that it doesn’t even try to assimilate the contributions that are so clearly being flaunted in its presence?

One possible reason is the eminently technical approach that Printmaking presupposes. The printmaker’s artisanal frame of ref-erence allows him to think in terms of a quantitative accumulation of sub-techniques, without concerning himself with the essential concepts that could transcend that frame of reference and thus lead to a qualitative revision of the entire process.

Basically Printmaking considers itself to be an accumulation of the following techniques: woodcut, intaglio, the lithograph, silk-screen, as well as the various hybrid versions that have evolved from them, excluding monotypes. It also assumes that the pro-cess involves leaving an impression in ink on paper that is identical each and every time that the same sequence of technical steps is repeated. However, what actually defines all these techniques is a more general idea: the type and form of the image-producing sur-face used to create an edition of impressions.

If, instead of working within the notions of these techniques, we work with this more general idea of an “image-producing sur-face,” we can approach a redefinition of Printmaking. We will also be able to affirm our freedom to use any material, leaving the con-fines of more or less traditional materials, and freeing ourselves from the inherent traditional prejudice that a print must be two-dimensional.

Traditionally the “image-producing surface” uses ink to make impressions. If we consider “ink” as a particular and accidental form of the idea of a “vehicle,” then we free the idea of Printmaking even more. Under the category “vehicle” we may include dry pigments, ceramic pigments, flocking, Electro-static pigments, electrolyte pig-ments, photosensitive pigments, light itself, and any type of energy that can help to define a particular image on a “surface.”

Also traditionally, the impression is made on paper. If we define “paper” as a particular and accidental form of the idea of an “image-receptor,” then we arrive at a relatively free way of conceiv-ing Printmaking, at least at the technical level. The new concept of what constitutes a print would then be: the result of a surface

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that produces identical images on a receptor under repeatable “technical conditions.” With this redefinition we get out of the pigeonholes in which Printmaking has been confined for the last six centuries. Suddenly we have at our disposal things like: screws, photography, music on a record, television, computers, the shadow cast by a horse out in a field, cinema, the auto industry, tracks in the sand, Coca-Cola bottles, a glance in the mirror.

We are transported to a realm of almost absolute freedom, with one limitation: the production of editions; and one responsibil-ity: to develop images. The conceptual essence of Printmaking, its only ideological constant, seems then to be the ability to produce editions.

The history of the print is a history of vague solutions to an ambiguously posed problem: the graphic problem. This problem was most clearly posed in the early days of the print, although in all probability unconsciously. The production of editions was an eco-nomic rather than aesthetic element, but, due to a certain lack of sophistication, the solutions (that is to say, the prints that we know of from this time) were aesthetically related to the problem.

The process of refinement that took place in Painting, from Giotto to the School of Paris, located the problems of creation within the canvas. The canvas or work of art was the solution in and of itself. Today a work of art, to the extent that such a thing still exists, has become the expression of a previous and more profound creational problem. Hence the “well painted” canvas and the notions of “métier” and “quality” are in crisis, they are mere unpleasant memories of an obsolete and alien culture.

The School of Paris tried ineffectively to solve the future of its own art by using partial analysis and purisms in an attempt to arrive at the core of creative problems. But, conditioned by their cultural burden, the artists applied mechanistic criteria of the nine-teenth century and took them to their logical extremes in the belief that they were creating a contemporary culture. They battled the past with instruments of the past, that is, still rooted in the past. None of that, however, negates the fact that their analytical period was helpful in raising awareness of the kind of contemporary syn-thesis that needs to be achieved. The sophistication of Painting had a grave impact on Printmaking. There was a rapid evolution from an initially particular and authentic Printmaking imagery to the reproduction of one generated by Painting. Printmaking’s techni-cal sophistication developed as a result of the need to reproduce more faithfully the sophistication of Painting. Innovations such as “soft ground” were developed to imitate red chalk drawings, and perfectionisms such as the prints that came out of the collabora-tion between Villon and the School of Paris artists came from that same attitude. Printmakers’ servile obsession to act as reproducers and transmitters of other arts caused them to lose sight of the pos-sibility of using the act of editioning as an aesthetic factor.

The most recent aesthetic period in which Printmaking could recover was Informalism. During that time the image practically reflected the instant at which the creator declared the free encoun-ter between materials, techniques, and his own energy as an end in itself. It was at this stage that rupture of materials was accepted as the defining factor of their individuality, and when the result-ing image was most highly respected. It was the clearest opportu-nity for the artist to become immersed in the technical process, to

ignore any strict sequences imposed by preconceived results, and from this point on to reclaim an open attitude for a broad revalua-tion of his activity.

Printmaking, as the most technified, and the one most heav-ily burdened by its own technification, thus seemed the most suitable medium for encouraging a rebellion and clearing the way for Informalism. Once again, however, it was Painting and Sculp-ture that showed the way, and Printmaking joined in later and in a derivative way. Printmaking was somewhat refreshed by Informal-ism and it was able to assimilate some new techniques, but the variations turned out to be quantitative and its image imitative. The other arts followed Informalism to its logical conclusion; they used what happened in the development of imagery to develop Pop art. Printmaking has only recently begun to understand and assimilate those already made and now dead images. Printmak-ing continues to function at the level of the pictorial result rather than at the level of the graphic problem, moving ever further away from the creative necessities of today. The most outstanding prints of Rembrandt, Goya, or Picasso are basically images proposed on canvas and translated by graphic technique. Generally they even imitate drawing, and their value, apart from the success of the pictorial image, lies in the exact subordination of graphic tech-niques to drawing. The appreciation of a Rembrandt print happens within the printed sheet itself, and even if one acknowledges the existence of other identical printed images as forming part of an edition, these do not influence each other. The appreciation is also pictorial or “original.” From the moment the print is conceived to its reception by the viewer, the criterion regarding the design is always that of uniqueness. The creative concern remains limited to the appearance of this print-result. However, if the force of the image created by the print were to be based in what this image-unity implicitly contains, that is, the existence of infinite co-images, then the problem of editionality would also have to be taken into account.

The possibility of seeing in one screw the existence of millions of identical screws is a feature that has nothing to do with tech-nique or with an expressive medium. It is part of the problem of the development of images that is typical of mass production, and therefore also of Printmaking. A Volkswagen is aesthetically absurd if seen as a single unit. Its particular shape could perhaps be justi-fied by rationales concerning its function. But its true formal impact is based on the multiple existence of the image-unit.

Suddenly we are in the field of production in series with a print-maker’s attitude. In this new context, a traditional print comes to occupy a position equivalent to that of the Model T Ford in the field of industrial design. The Model T is nothing more than a horse-drawn carriage with a motor in the place of horses. Over time, an awareness of the production process caused that derivative image to be abandoned in favor of images that were coherent with the process. A Rembrandt print therefore continues to be an excellent drawing but can never be considered as an excellent example of serial production.

In this new context, the character the print needs to assume is more defined. The work needs to represent a reality that only exists and makes sense from the moment that it is created. It should not be an illustrative representation of a pre-existing reality.

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If reasoning at the level of the problem is right, then a great many traditional elements no longer make sense. Whether a work of art be large, small, mono or polychrome, pleasant or unpleasant, harmoni-ous, unbalanced, or any other characteristic belonging to traditional values, becomes a not very relevant sub-product to the solution or expression of the problem, which is the image. These values are only important to the extent that they emphasize or negate the image as representative of the problem. The image can also express the problem without resolving it, leaving the solution to the ob- server, or excluding the possibility of a solution as another problem.

Technique also becomes, relatively speaking, an accessory at this level. An image with a Printmaking problem can be painted, although this would make as much sense as hand embroidering a computer pattern. From a serial production standpoint, painting is a Kafkaesque production instrument. It is a like having a perfect sketch for a big mass-production that accomplishes its production cycle in the sketch itself, without ever reaching the intended mass-production.

The printmaker is not just responsible for the design of the object to be produced. He is also responsible for designing the production

fig. 86 A page from the exhibition catalogue New York Graphic Workshop: Luis Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, Liliana Porter, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, 1969, with text by Luis Camnitzer

and the inter-relationship between the object and production. The industrial designer, a relatively new specialized profession, came much closer to the root of these problems than the printmaker, though bearing the hindrance of Functionalism.

Functionalism, which began as a formal-economic attitude in reaction to a period of falsely aesthetic design, ended up in fact as an aesthetic doctrine and a way of seeing.

Thus considered, Functionalism eliminated pictorial proposals and those based on oneness, and reaffirmed issues concerning production. Functionalism therefore often arrived at solutions that comply with the problem of Printmaking.

Comparing a bank note with a roulette chip, the first is the result of traditional printmaking while the second is a work of industrial design. Both have value thanks to anecdotally stated conventions. But the bank note describes these conventions pictorially. It is a printed picture. In contrast the roulette chip’s design proclaims the existence of its co-images, which provides support and aesthetic coherence to those conventions.

But Functionalism becomes an obstacle the moment we enter a more pure realm of creation. A creator is a specialist in perceiv-ing environmental changes the moment that they take place with the mission of creating perceptual systems that help the con-sumer to assimilate those changes. When they function correctly, his images therefore are new and disconcerting to the consumer, since they do not refer to the consumer’s outdated environmental memories.

The functionalist industrial designer mixes an ideal of produc-tion with one of consumption. The ideal of consumption consists of functionality and means of attracting the consumer to facilitate acquisition.

Design, then, comes conditioned by a preexistent public taste; in it there is no revelation of images, but it rather tends to confirm the images that the public wants to consume. In isolated cases indus-trial design arrives at new images, but their sale is conditioned either by a perceptive elite or by an exceptional functionality. In this case functionality forces consumers to consume and binds them to the product through a sense of ownership. When the sense of ownership is due to functional or financial reasons, the consumer’s freedom of detachment is curtailed. In Functionalism, furthermore, the image is adapted to, identifies with, and represents the func-tion. The problem is “function” and the solution is to express it as well as possible within the parameters of the consumer’s taste.

The result is usually a completely finished product without any possibilities of evolution. The image is rigid, aspiring to perfection and therefore tends to be totalitarian. If a Parker pen gets scratched, it is aesthetically ruined. The consumer is not able to contribute anything to an industrially designed product that arrives in perfect condition. His creativity is reduced to choosing it and to relate it to other products. The consumer sinks ever deeper in his activity of consuming.

The technical limitations inherent in traditional Printmaking put pressure on at least some printmakers who attempted to break limitations or explore possibly new solutions. Many of them return to being painters and sculptors who, with an image already devel-oped in those media, try to translate it into graphic media.

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Lucio Fontana (Argentina-Italy) systematized the rip in paper in order to translate the effect of some of his canvases. López Anaya (Argentina), Angelo Savelli (Italy), and Omar Rayo (Colombia), reintroduced “gauffrage” [embossing], the inkless impression or molding of paper. This technique already had been used in Japa-nese Printmaking two centuries earlier, but only as an ornamen-tal feature. Now the technique appears at the same level as the impression with ink, opening up a new avenue. Rolf Nesch (Nor-way), Michael Ponce de León (USA), and Antonio Berni (Argentina), though printing with ink also mold their paper, this time to achieve a maximum three-dimensionality.

In 1964 Robert Rauschenberg made an object consisting of sev-eral superimposed sheets of Plexiglas, with lithographs printed on them. That same year Joe Tilson (England), using offset, made a key that was kept in an envelope. Also in 1964 Liliana Porter was cutting and folding her prints. José Guillermo Castillo began to develop a system of interchangeable units and played with random composi-tions of his plates. Luis Camnitzer printed on plaster, plaster ban-dages, and acrylic emulsions instead of paper in order to create printed objects.

Also in 1964 Liliana Porter, Jose Guillermo Castillo, and Luis Camnitzer formed a group under the name of “New York Graphic Workshop.” That same year they issued their first manifesto, writ-ten by Camnitzer:

“The printing industry prints on bottles, boxes, electronic circuits, etc. Printmakers, however, continue making prints with the same elements that Dürer used.

Printing in editions, the act of creating an edition, is more impor-tant than the work carried out on a printing plate. This opens the way to molding, cutting, folding, and the use of space. The quality of the paper becomes irrelevant. ‘Paper’ is only one accidental example of a material existent before the printing process, like cloth, glass, or plastic. Furthermore, there are materials that are formed during the printing process, such as plaster, papier-mâché, or plastic emulsions.

From here we arrive at the idea of the ‘object,’ transcending tra-ditional ideas of painting and sculpture.

Printmaking offers us not only the possibility of the object but also of an edition of objects. Only Seghers and Piranesi were able to develop images with their prints. Printmakers situate themselves only in relation to the other arts and live enclosed in their artisanal kitchen. The moment has arrived for us to assume the responsibility of developing our own images, conditioned but not destroyed by our techniques.”

In 1965 the gallery “Multiples” was established in New York with the goal of selling objects produced in editions. It acted as an outlet for multiple works of painters and sculptors. Unfortunately the majority of the works tended to be only numbered repro-ductions of existing objects rather than examples of editionable objects.

In 1966 the group [NYGW] sent out an end-of-the-year card, an edible cookie molded with the text: “Greeting—1966—New York Graphic Workshop.” The cookie was sent with a second, photo-copied manifesto:

“Historically Printmaking has been a second rate art. The only valid uninterrupted factor in Printmaking has been the concept of edition and the possibility of unlimited distribution. To us, today, Printmaking is the creation of ‘Free-Assemblable-Nonfunctional-Disposable-Serial-Objects’ (F.A.N.D.S.O.). The qualities of these new serial images revolve around the fact of their multiple existence and their interchangeability. The mass production of FANDSOs will bring to everybody the opportunity to develop their own creativity, helping to remove the difference between artists and consumers. Towards total art.”

In 1968 the NYGW sent exhibitions by mail: three solo shows by Porter, Castillo, and Camnitzer, with works that were designed to disappear in the process of appreciation. The FANDSO was not opposed to the traditional print; rather, the FANDSO included it. What differentiated the FANDSO from traditional definitions was that it was a conceptual and not a technical definition. Technique became an accidental realization of a concept, coherent with cre-ation at the problem level as a primary criterion and the result as a secondary criterion.

In fact, for FANDSO to become an anachronistic word, its con-cept would have to lose validity, but the definition includes any technique that complies with the concept. It is a qualitative not a quantitative definition, potentially covering all current and future techniques that comply with the edition requirement that FANDSO established.

The notion of FANDSO called for a reorganization of the manner in which images that are produced in editions are classified. This new classification also has to refer strongly to the techniques of produc-ing functional objects. The recent centuries of technical industrial creativity, for economic reasons, left an immense untapped wealth that could be used to make non-functional objects. Technically, and with no intention of exhausting the category, we can therefore classify FANDSO as follows:

FANDSO by impression.

This category includes almost all of traditional Printmaking, begin-ning with woodcut, through industrial and silkscreen printing with vitrified pigments, all the way to electrostatic printing by Xerox, and beyond.

FANDSO by molding.

It began with a track in the mud; then came Sumerian clay tablets molded by small, incised stone rollers; then the “gauffrage” of Japa-nese printmaking; arriving at vacuum-molded plastics.

FANDSO by cutting.

Basically the idea of a die cut, from the earliest type of simple guil-lotine cut or a cut with scissors under predetermined conditions, to the elaborate cuts of the printing industry.

FANDSO by folding.

Including the folded pages of the earliest books, to the links in a chain, to the more complicated forms of packaging of the present period.

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FANDSO by casting.

Comprehending molded ceramics, bronzes created through the lost-wax method, casts in general, up to the production of objects by plastic injection molding.

FANDSO by light.

From the shadow of an object, the reflection in a mirror, a photo-graph, a hologram (a three-dimensional reconstruction of an object by means of the projection of a laser beam through the informa-tion embedded in a special negative), to the activity of a photo-electric cell.

These categories are neither absolute nor do they exhaust the pos-sibilities. Certain items are interchangeable between distinct cat-egories. “Gauffrage” and die cutting, for example, could both be considered impressions made without ink, etc.

In addition to technical categories, there are conceptual catego-ries of FANDSO, the consideration of which opens new perspectives on the approaches that could be taken from the viewpoint of tra-ditional Printmaking.

In a first attempt [to define conceptual categories], there are the following: FANDSO by slicing, FANDSO of interchangeable compo-nents, and FANDSO by chance.

FANDSO by slicing.

FANDSO by slicing comes into being through the consumption of the matrix or image-producing object, not by the action of the matrix upon another recipient material. In a certain sense it is an anti-impression. Whereas a printing matrix expands its field of influence toward the infinite in its reproductive potential, the slice-able matrix tends toward zero and toward its total annihilation.

The obvious case of FANDSO by slicing is the jelly roll and, to a certain extent, salami or any kind of sausage.

A case of orthodox Printmaking that normally would be classi-fied in the category FANDSO by impression but is at the same time a clear example of FANDSO by slicing: the hectograph. The hecto-graph functions by way of the accumulation of ink with a high den-sity of pigment on a gelatin surface. Each sheet of paper that is printed from the gelatin removes some of the pigment, until after about fifty copies the ink tends to disappear.

A very sophisticated producer of FANDSO by slicing, and in a cer-tain way derived from the hectograph, is the tube of striped tooth-paste. There is a small ink-filled ring at the mouth of the tube that marks the toothpaste as it is squeezed out, creating a cylinder with a striped surface.

Technically, any tube of toothpaste, oil paint, etc., produces FANDSOs by molding and cutting.

Salami, and sausages in general, are producers of FANDSO by slicing but, as we shall see further on, they also can fit in the cat-egory of FANDSO by chance.

FANDSO of interchangeable components.

The key example of this type of FANDSO is the alphabet. That is to say the possession of a certain number of elements that can be interchanged in an infinite number of ways, achieving a set or col-lection of meanings.

Whereas the FANDSO by chance accepts all variations, FANDSO of interchangeable components accepts only those that are within the established conditions of meaning. These conditions, estab-lished by the artist creator, can be within technique, form, condi-tions of color, etc.

The concept in this case implies that the image-unit is designed for placement equivalences, that is, that the interchange of places for the different elements always complies with the intention of the design.

José Guillermo Castillo of The New York Graphic Workshop explored the problem of 74 interchangeable yellow shapes. The shapes were different, like the letters of the alphabet. The varia-tions could be regulated by rules of quantity, direction, or accu-mulation. In this particular case the variations occurred on the plane, with yellow elements that had a particular type of curve that guaranteed a certain equivalence among the phrases that emerged.

Those solutions that lack any meaning within what becomes the chosen language, remain excluded. But in general, the design of the elements with the help of the rules, establish the possibility of only correct solutions, whatever they may be.

fig. 87 A page from the exhibition catalogue New York Graphic Workshop: Luis Camnitzer, José Guillermo Castillo, Liliana Porter, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, 1969, with text by Luis Camnitzer

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FANDSO by chance.

At this stage we can see that our redefinition of Printmaking still has its limitations. As with traditional Printmaking we continue to think in terms of the result, not the problem. Since the problem of creating editions is not just a technical problem but a creational one as well, it cannot limit itself to the production of a series of inert and isolated objects. The lack of a technical definition of the edition becomes clear upon considering the interrelationship of the images produced, when seen as opposed to a mere multiplication of originals. And if we then decide that “the edition” is an attitude and not only a mechanism, we find that when faced with an object we have more than one interpretive distance.

What is a mirror? Normally, it is a piece of glass with certain reflective qualities. If we make a number of identical mirrors, we can consider them as serial objects belonging to a more or less tra-ditional edition. But a mirror reflects images. In the particular case of successively reflecting identical images, we can consider that it produces serial images as in a traditional edition.

Let us say that we create an edition of mirrors. From one inter-pretive distance then, what we have is an edition of objects, from another distance, an edition of producers of objects. But in both cases, in order to define the problem, we have to use static images. If the static quality does not apply (for example, with different reflections in the mirror), we fall outside the traditional edition. Let us now decide to edit the problem of “reflection.” We can make an edition of mirrors that meet the requirement of reflecting, but it does not matter what they reflect. We are editioning a problem and not a solution. If we edition a skipping rope, we are not edititiong a fixed position of the rope but rather all its potential positions.

We are now in the realm of the FANDSO by chance, and that brings us closer to one of the fundamental issues of creation today: creation at the level of problems rather than of outcomes, of ideas rather than of specific instances or static results.

One FANDSO by impression that is acceptable to traditional Print-making is an assembled jigsaw puzzle, a print with the possibility of being divided. A single piece of that puzzle would also be accept-able. What is definitely not acceptable to traditional Printmaking is a disassembled and chaotically piled jigsaw puzzle. From the point of view of FANDSO by chance, a jigsaw puzzle is a problem: pieces that can be assembled with infinite possibilities of judgment. Only one of these infinite possibilities coincides with the original image, which would be the acceptable one to traditional Printmaking. As far as FANDSO is concerned, all solutions for the jigsaw puzzle are valid, accidental in themselves and only representative of the “jig-saw puzzle problem,” the problem being the only constant element of the edition. Most sausages fall within the category of producers of FANDSOs by chance. The particular design of each slice changes according to the random distribution of the bits of fat and spices. However, the particular characteristics of “salami,” “mortadella,” etc., are such strong determinants of the image that each slice is definitive and representative of the entire problem.

Having said all this it must be affirmed that FANDSO is more of a goal and an attitude than a fact. It is an aesthetic but also an ethical proposal.

Aesthetically FANDSO has no definitive element in terms of the image it produces—it is imponderable and not absolutely definitive.

The elements that seem to comply best with the established con-text are those that define essence, the realization of “inclusive” images or situations, which we will discuss later. An initial assess-ment seems to indicate that aesthetic and literary elements that could distract from that essence are to be discarded.

But just as Jung’s archetypes are more complex than an advertis-ing image such as a logo, FANDSO’s arch-image need not be limited to the aesthetic of the logo. FANDSO’s image will appear through the production of FANDSOs and will be self-defining.

Economically FANDSO is utopian. It is currently cheaper and more feasible to make a limited, relatively expensive edition of “fine” prints than to produce an unlimited edition of a simple object. This is because the means of production are not generally available to artists on the necessary scale. But working in this direction means having the language ready for the moment when the means become available, without having to lose time in transitional peri-ods of the Model T Ford or “Social Realism” kind.

Thus rooted in the idea of FANDSO, much of what is written above becomes clear. We began by parting with traditional Print-making, attacking it, redefining it, taking its logical or implicit con-sequences to their ultimate extremes, and arriving at FANDSO.

Ironically once we arrive at FANDSO, all that is written loses meaning. Following a straight line we imperceptibly undergo a radical qualitative change.

Before there were images that, when made in Printmaking, were considered good even though, when seen in Painting, they would have been called obvious and derivative. With FANDSO this does not work anymore.

We are creating our own independent field, and though it origi-nated as a contemporary response to traditional Printmaking, it no longer needs to apologize for being a minor art.

The image produced by the FANDSO must be of the first order, at the same level as any unprecedented and revealing image produced in any other media, with the greater responsibility that comes from believing itself to be the only one produced by genuinely contem-porary means, capable of providing the keys to and helping the revolutions required by our current times.

A few pages back FANDSO seemed to embrace or include tra-ditional Printmaking. This was an inclusion for technical reasons. Now we can see that FANDSO reserves the right to use any tech-nical means that permit serial production without losing its own definition as a FANDSO.

With this frame of reference we can now attempt to better locate our function as artists.

Right now, our thought process is based more on words than on images; our imagination resembles a teletype machine more than a television. The causes of this condition at this time are less important than the fact that, from one generation to another, the transformation factor for words is slower than it is for systems of perception. Therefore, the rationalization of our perceptive process is held back since it is classed within word systems. Word systems function as instruments for communication, as one of many social lubricants, but not as an instrument of translation for our percep-tual position within the contemporary environment. In general, we inherit not only words but also phrases, metaphors, and common

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places in the same way that we inherit the rules of etiquette. Our generation discovers verbal solutions for the needs posed by one or two previous generations that are already dead.

This situation inserts a step between the average individual and his or her immediately present environment. The “prophetic” quality attributed to artists only means that, thanks to their spe-cialization, they can overcome the immobility of words and relate better to the dynamic process of images. Due to the simple fact of being rooted in their time, they are two generations ahead of their society from a perceptual point of view.

The role of the artist seems to be, then, to erase the step that separates individuals from their environment, to help them per-ceive environmental changes as they happen, and to enable them to create their own perceptual adjustments to those changes.

It is not possible to say, however, that artists throughout his-tory have consistently complied with this proposal. For now Art History as it is used by our society functions as a reactionary tool, as a brake on the creative process. The constant objective is to sell the products of a given perceptual system, from a particular period, as valuable objects. Implicit in this action are three premises that are both doubtful and dangerous: (1) that the products Art History sells really do represent, or are interchangeable with, the creative processes that produced them; (2) that the enjoyment and under-standing of those products are a pre-requisite for understanding our own products; (3) that the validity of our art objects depends on the scale of values attributed to the historical sequence that we understand as having preceded ours.

It is therefore in the best interests of Art History that we have slow perceptual evolutions and not radical revolutions. To say that Michelangelo is as foreign and unintelligible to us as Chinese paint-ing becomes a heresy, now that History is selling us both.

The Academy follows this path most faithfully, giving us symp-toms instead of causes, and elevating the copying of models to the level of an absolute and positive value. It is essentially a totalitarian system, the cultural consequence of a central power’s need to elim-inate friction in the social functioning of the governed masses.

This explains why the artist is considered a rebel, and generally is one, albeit at a very subjective level. Artists feel and resent the percep-tual disparity within their society and try to break the rules that create it. But the solutions they generally offer are new totalitarian objects, only suitable for passive consumption. Artists liberate themselves to the extent that they use creative processes to break and renew the system. But they are not liberating society; they are only providing it with new chains, assuring the permanence of this disparity.

Perceptual disparity is a consequence of the fact that the artist is a product of and for the elite. The social function of the artist has always in fact been closer to the protected court jester than to the social organizer. That the market more solidly supports the artist than the circus is no more than a cultural coincidence. But the fact that an auction of pieces of canvas with pigment can raise more money than would be necessary to cover the deficit of an under-developed country is an indicator that a very strange game, not particularly linked to aesthetic essences, is being played.

The artist has an urgent need to exit this level of the superstruc-ture and the luxury object in order to become part of the struc-ture. The ultimate end is to arrive at the point where the consumer

participates directly in the creative process with no need of the art-ist as an intermediary or of the accidental cadaver of the art object with respect to that process. In this sense the artist’s function is self destructive. To the extent that the artist functions successfully, his survival is cut short.

Luis Camnitzer

Liliana Porter [Artist Statement]

The mental distance that exists between the graphic representa-tion of a wrinkle and the real fact of a wrinkle itself.

The relationship between fiction and reality, superposed. Support-ing each other, and at the same time contradicting each other.

That redundancy creating the possibility of something else.

The wrinkle is only one possible example for this proposal. The same idea could be applied to:

shadow–shadow light–light stain–stain

The drawing of a shadow and a real shadow.

What I make added to what naturally occurs.

Something like this: pretending that I am myself.

The idea is to superpose reality upon the description of that same reality.

To enter into a creative process, participating in it and shortening the distance that need not exist between making art and being alive.

32 Interchangeable Units of José Guillermo Castillo [Artist Statement]

What is most important to me is to wake within the spectator a greater consciousness not of the work in and of itself but of his or her surroundings. Art should be a catalyst that allows people to appreciate nature. Art = Nature.

The “Units” are themselves interchangeable in two directions and their interior components are also themselves interchange- able, thus giving greater flexibility to how they may be used and permitting the spectator a greater participation in the creative process.

Luis Camnitzer [Artist Statement]

Traditionally art has been “exclusive” from an information point of view. In this context “exclusivity” means giving of a maximum amount of information in order to prepare the objects in question to be passively consumed. A landscape tries to provide information about the real thing (realism), about “landscapeness” (generaliza-tion and abstraction), or about a certain kind of analysis that is guided and concerns the restructuring of the landscape (impres-sionism, cubism, etc.). But all of these examples are limited to giv-ing information and go no further. The object “is” and the observer (or rather, the consumer) either consumes it or rejects it, without explicitly being involved in the creative process. The consumer is only permitted to consume the residue.