La cyclostyle, discreta catalizadora de una era

Resumen

In La Taller-Erredakzioa we have recovered several old mechanical reproduction machines. These machines present obsolete technologies that we use in contemporary artistic and textual creations. In 2016 when we created Erredakzioa as a spin-off of La Taller and published the first issue of the illustrated magazine Minerva-El reportaje ilustrado-Errepotaje ilustratua, we were guided by the trail left by the illustrated magazines of the 19th century, the journalistic reports, and the idea that William Morris had of labor. At that time, we were not aware that we were following the ideas of Theodor W. Adorno, when the mimeograph/cyclostyle, his favorite reproduction machine for confronting mass culture, captivated us. Six years later, with the purchase of a Gestetner Rotary Cyclostyle number 6, Adorno’s words have hit home. Today, when even the traditional mass media seem to have become obsolete in the face of the omnipresent and omnipotent social networks, recovering past technologies, trades, ways, and working processes seems to free us, just a little, from the dictatorship of the speed of light. Donna Haraway (2016), in the Cyborg Manifesto, pointed out that technologies keep moments frozen in time. Refurbishing the machine and our research has taken us back to the first half of the twentieth century, when the capitalist explosion happened and people like Theodor W. Adorno wrote the principles that we are now recovering through the use of this machine.