LETTERPRESS SHANTY Home of The Shantyquarian: May 2012

Friday, May 25, 2012

Letterpress Shanty @ Northern Spark!

The Letterpress Shanty is coming to Northern Spark! Stay out all night with us, from dusk 'til dawn, on Saturday, June 9th, 2012. Northern Spark is a city-wide, overnight arts festival inspired by the white night festivals, otherwise known as Nuit Blanche, originating in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

We'll be located, along with our fellow Art Shanties, on Main Street, in the area known as St. Anthony Main in Minneapolis, on the banks of the Mississippi river.

Back in January, during the 2012 Art Shanty Projects, we hand-printed a daily broadside paper, sourced form social networking platforms, and distributed copies on the ice of Medicine Lake. We're at it again on June 9th. We'll be printing a document pieced together from bits of text submitted by people from all over the world, including (we hope) you!

This time, we're engaging you in a collaborative writing exercise inspired by surrealist games such as exquisite corpse. Participants will contribute bits of text (phrases or entire sentences) without full knowledge of what other participants are contributing.

To contribute, follow prompts from @shantyquaria on Twitter, or fill out our online form. Submit early and submit often!

We'll take all of your entries and bring them together to create a unique collaborative text. We'll print this document on an old-fashioned letterpress, set in metal and wood type, and distribute copies to visitors to The Letterpress Shanty during Northern Spark. Last year, over ten-thousand people participated in Northern Spark. We won't produce anywhere near 10,000 copies, but we'll be operating the press all night.

Come visit us on June 9th to get a copy, or visit us online to check out the downloadable PDF.

Follow @shantyquarian on Twitter. Tag your tweets with #shantyQ to get published on an old-fashioned press, or use our online form.