Bubka Pingpong
Isabel Waidner, Bubka, 2010

Printing has always been integral to my work: I grew up in a print shop and was always looking for ways to use the material and equipment it provided, like recycling material or using the remaining paper stock. With 8fold I wanted to establish a platform that I could use in my own work and for publishing and collaborating with others. It uses the same idea of carving a space from what is already available or leftover.


The idea with 8fold is to have a portable framework that can feed in and out of other projects or contexts but doesn’t need to rely on them, using the versatility of publishing from books and posters to digital files depending on the content and available resources. And, on a personal level, it allows me to work across the spectrum of making and producing while generally it can bring together different disciplines.


It’s important to have spaces that require you to look beyond yourself, not necessarily by collaborating directly, but by relating to others, and to be social
and generous with your work and ideas. It’s this understanding of circulation I’m interested in and, over time, 8fold might propose something like a ‘collective voice’ through the relationships it makes.


There is also a seriousness to publishing that always attracted me—the fact that it demands a specific form while also being quite a fluid medium that can exist easily in different contexts. It moves and is handed around; there’s a lot of freedom as to where and how it exists.


I see 8fold as a way to be non-mechanical or deliberately non-localised. I will take 8fold with me (quite literally) and it will generate other projects or unfold from them. At the moment I’m developing a publication with London-based The Hex, from an artists’ colony held in Sweden this summer as well as a display prototype to be launched at a tattoo parlour in Berlin this autumn.

8fold’s first imprint Bubka by Isabel Waidner is available from 8fold.org