# Diskarte: a crappy printing manifesto ## Clara, Diskarte I first heard about diskarte, as a design concept, from Pamela Cajilig, who runs a local design thinking collective called Curiosity.ph. She describes it as a strategy taken from the Filipino attitude of making the best of what you have on hand to solve problems efficiently, cheaply, quickly and humorously. DIY is more of a back-to-the-roots movement, a critique of consumerist society wherein self-insufficiency is the norm. [Note Florian: But DIY is also about ignoring expected expertise/skill levels, i.e. doing things anyway even if one isn't skilled. Such as playing in a punk or noise band without 'knowing' how to sing or play an instrument. Or being a zine maker without knowing spelling, grammar, graphic design, printmaking, binding, distribution etc. In other words, a "fuck it, I'll do it anyway and don't give a shit about whether people think it's crap" attitude. It's anti-consumerist in the sense that it invites and permits everyone to be a producer, or rather, does away with the producer/consumer dichotomy. And, in the best case, with creative/inventive solutions and a different imagination coming out of that lack of skill.] Diskarte is a subconscious attitude that stems from the want or lack of resources — from knowing how to solve and accept insurmountable problems in the face of poverty. We tend to see diskarte attitude as something to be both proud and ashamed of, as these patchwork solutions arise when money (or another other desirable asset) is missing. Even though in the US there is a strong consciousness for recycling, it exists alongside this cavalier faith in the renewability, the false abundance of all resources. This is the contradiction of the most pedestrian form of Western eco-sensibility. In the Philippines, on the other hand, it starts at home with people saving and using all sorts of scraps and fragments to make diskarte. Then the local garbage men collect waste in wooden carts and sacks, roving the neighbourhood like the tool sharpener guys, the sellers of balut (incubated duck fetus-eggs) and taho (soybean curd with tapioca and syrup) and other mobile cottage industry microbusinesses. They buy or simply collect recyclable paper, bottles and plastic to resell to junk dealers, maybe even back to Coca-Cola factories. Larger scale garbage collectors, with proper trucks and stuff, outsource the service to junk shops or simply bring unsegregated trash to landfills, where hundreds of informal dwellers pick through the waste for monetary objects. Chamba, which is something like luck, also affects diskarte. Your efforts to make diskarte always require some element of luck, fatalistic and somewhat effortless auspiciousness. When you live so close to want and have so much faith in the supernatural, the idea of life becomes a set of bets you may win or lose—so you roll the dice and pray for favour as a natural component of action. The last particularity of diskarte involves the concept of resilient humour. A not-so-pretty guy can get a hot girl with the power of his diskarte — his humorous and engaging conversation. Same goes for site-specific design solutions. My recent favourite diskarte find is a bench made for a patch of sidewalk that had both an elevated and depressed area. So they built a bench with one set of legs shorter than the other so it could be positioned, presumably, to maximise the hours of shade and not be in the way of passers-by. Though, maybe they just liked the view better sitting in that direction. It’s a funny looking thing and you can’t help but crack a grin when you see it. If you see it, that is. Often, we take for granted these tiny moments of wry Filipino ingenuity. source: https://web.archive.org/web/20161115134609/http://unprojects.org.au/magazine/issues/issue-10-2/export-quality- extended-full-transcript-web-only/ ## Marc In part my comment to Florian to create a difference within the current state of zine culture maybe partly inspired by the 'niceness' of Risoprint and the 'coseyness' of the culture that comes with it, but I was thinking maybe more about the generality of the term zineculture that appears to have become the 'open space' where we are all welcomed and where differences do not really matter. Differences however do matter. At the same time, my dilemma lies in the fact that personally I am also a descendant of this culture, shaped by it and completely infected by it. (especially because it seems to be so close to Dutch/European 'neutrality' poltics. Creating an enemy of something I am also part of cannot free me of this infection, in fact it may just confirm it. (Something I became more aware of during the talk about the palestine flag action at WdKA.) So for me one of the questions that occupy my mind today is how do I alienate myself from this part of my own practice without romanticizing the alien or creating a polarized enemy. ## Florian > Hey, jerks. You fell for a crap paper again, I guess! How can you be so stupid as to spend your German marks for this. And what do you get? Every jerk and dumbass who hangs around at concerts can cough up what's in here. Just come up with a good sound bite, make it the name of your zine, roam your hometown, create a booze riot, write about what you all fucked up, how much booze you had and how 'nuts' this was. Then maybe a few record reviews, your own billboard charts, a few parodies of the Pope, [right-wing politician] Strauss and the FUCKING state. It will be the best of the best of all zines. If you manage to be 'distinctive,' all fanzine writers from North to South will like it, and that's really all you want. Fanzines serve only one purpose: that college wankers and high school droolers (hello boring old fart Hollow Skai!) no longer have to leave their discharge in rags of cloth etc., but can also put it on shiny white paper, drooling over the reactions of some monotonous, opinionated SEXPISTOLSCRASSANARCHYFANATICS & get some warm lustful vibes from it. Fanzine writers never fight lost battles against the world around them because they feel confident and strong. They have the attitude of partly important personalities, of people who are influential and can cause change.... And who are usually drunk." Kunst-Gruft [Art Tomb] no. 4, 1-2-1981 (no. 4, super luxury edition), quoted in Mutfak Reisse, "Über die Inhalte und Bedeutung der Literatur im genialen Dilletantismus", in: Wolfgang Müller (ed.), _Geniale Dilletanten_, Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1982 [translated from German by FC] The 2010s/2020s resurgence of zine culture and DIY printmaking can be deceptive, especially in the arts. Is a zine today really still what was understood as zines from the 1970s to the 1990s? I.e. a quickly and cheaply self-produced, low-end, low-value, unpretentious small periodical? Yes, if one focuses on political activist (particularly anarchist) zines and self-published pamphlets, booklets and books, particularly in the USA and anglo countries. But not if one looks at zines made in close vicinity to artist book fairs, indie comics and illustration/graphic design, and particularly publications made with Riso printers. , because silently did away with the crappiness of zine culture and DIY printmaking. It has become a fine art, or even a design culture, of making pretty things in print - reciprocally corresponding to crap DIY publishing having migrated online, to making visual memes, TikTok videos and similar viral content.