Waters in Venus ~ Flowers in Mars: Risograph Zine for Uncommon Utopias

#printing #design

Risograph-printed-zine workshop thinking utopia through decolonial, non-anthropocentric positionalities. Using creative exercises walks, readings, videos, visits and sketching participants delve into sensorial world-buildings, fostering futures beyond human-centered narratives.

Waters in Venus ~ Flowers in Mars invites participants to create a Risograph-printed zine conceiving utopia from a decolonial, non-anthropocentric perspective. Focusing on collective world-building through sensory experiences, the workshop uses printmaking and self-publishing to envision futures beyond human-centered narratives, emphasizing eco-centered perspectives while acknowledging personal perspectives.

Creative exercises—including walks, spatial awareness practices, group readings, videos, site visits, discussions, and sketching sessions—enable participants to access memories, emotions, and intuitions, fostering a sensory approach to utopia.
The process considers how relationships beyond the human can open pathways to alternative forms of existence rooted in care, mutual respect, and ecological consciousness.

Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s concept of “uncommon orientations” and ecofeminist thinkers like Donna Haraway and Sylvia Wynter, the workshop encourages critical views on capitalist and patriarchal systems, imagining utopias as transformative spaces rather than idealized destinations. By challenging extractivist and racist frameworks, participants are invited to envision futures founded on justice and interconnected ways of living, reimagining histories through memory and place. Risography, with its unique layering and color overlaps, enables participants to translate their visions into vibrant graphic expressions. Each participant will create an
A3 two-color spread with texts, images, collages, poems, or recipes. These individual works will come together in a collective publication, shaped by playful exercises, shared insights, and a collective imagination of new worlds. Waters in Venus ~
Flowers in Mars becomes a metaphor for life flourishing in unexpected realms, expanding utopia as a sensory, world-building journey.

Schedule

The five-day workshop will begin with outdoor activities, group discussions, and exercises in sensing and imagining the world through decolonial perspectives. The latter half will focus on introspective creation, delving in Risograph printing as a collective practice, culminating in the co-production of the zine. At the end of the workshop, we will host a closing event to share the participants’ creations and ideas. This event will invite and reinforce continuing collective processes of imagining and
building new worlds beyond the workshop through creativity, care, and sensory engagement.

Monday to Friday from 10:00 to 17:30 with one hour lunch break
 

Knowledge requirements
- Basics in design
- Interest in publication design
- Interest in risography and print

Equipment requirements
Not a must but we recommend bringing:
- laptop or device with design software
- sketchbook and sketching materials

Juliana Toro is a graphic designer, illustrator and risographer. M.A. in Visual Communication from the UdK. She runs Las Delicias Prints a printing practice where she delves into personal work exploring the risograph’s material possibilities and limitations, and organizes workshops and gatherings around print as a way of building bridges and collaborative projects. She leads the Risography Workshop in the Fachhochschule Potsdam and was guest Lecturer in Risography for Prof. Franziska Morlok’s Basics Class in January 2024.

https://julianatoro.com/
https://lasdeliciasprints.com/
https://www.instagram.com/na___toro/

Dr. Phil. Elizabeth Gallón Droste conducts ethnographic and artistic research through reading~writting, conversations, listening sessions, soundwalks, workshops, and installations. Her work focuses on the connections between bodies of water and landscape memories, focusing on affective ecologies, relational ontologies, and other possible imaginaries with territorivers as articulators of extensive live networks. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Freie Universität Berlin in 2024 with her research, “Voicing Rivers Atrato.” Since 2014, she has collaborated on interdisciplinary projects through affective relationalities and listening to the planetary,
addressing socio-environmental conflicts. Her last publications include her printed in risography book Útica – Under the Murmuring Waters (2024) and articles on river ecologies and sonic family archives.

https://elizabethgallondroste.net/
https://www.instagram.com/elizabethgallondroste/