InPrint Editorial - Issue 3

Chagall wrote “it is not a thing, but a road”, he was talking about art. So what about art or artists that travel, or travelling art? The nomadic artist has become a staple of our art consciousness, what artist wouldn't want to include travel in their lexicon of ways to work? We have a sneaky suspicion that artists have always done it but now it's been institutionalised and scrutinised in infinitesimal detail, the residency has become a staple diet of artist practice. We’re not complaining though.
It's a strategy often born of necessity or desire as much as practice. It's an intentional destabilising strategy, we counter our human tendency to get stuck in a rut by another human impulse, the impulse to move. Sometimes it is just time to go…a place has been good to us and we have fond memories but it is the movement we crave as much as the destination; the road beckons and the journey is worth it even if it leads in a circle.
The immediacy of movement has a meditative effect, the nature of our experience, one thing passing after another is magnified but somehow it's soothing to encounter this in the changes of physical landscape, in the act of travel, even if it's just a walk to the end of the road. We are forced to abandon any illusion of being able to 'hold on', the point is to move.
Preoccupations of what we are going to do in 5 years time become preoccupations with where are we going to eat when we get hungry and sleep when we get tired. The best journeys have vague sketch maps that allow you to react, it's a lot like making art; you begin, you have an idea in mind and gradually the work takes on paths you couldn't have predicted, you are just about able to keep up, making the occasional decision sustaining the illusion you feel like it's your work, your road. In the end does it matter? You enjoy it for what it is, including the struggles, and like travelling have a strange amnesia about the crap bits when it's all over.
The experience of travel is as much about giving perspective to previous understandings as it is learning about another culture. Indeed, learning about another culture proves problemlematic when forced to consider the authenticity of the travel experience. But what is certainly gained, is a personal development that marks us permanently, and as artists this can influence the way we work or the work itself. It’s this kind of unique experience that can only be found on the move and perhaps it’s one of the most valuable lessons travel has to offer.
InPrint has been a Bristol based publication since 2005 but will soon find itself lying in the balance as we move our seperate ways. We don’t know how this development will shape InPrint in the long run, as only the road can determine that, but we hope it will lead to many exciting progressions on it’s way to a forever unfolding destination and we hope the goal posts get moved along the way.
The first development is the creation of a blog so that we can continue to publish in this initial phase; www.inprintonline.blogspot.com. No traveloguesque style posts though, we promise.


Sarah Tulloch and Julie McCalden