Work & Turn - Geoff Han

Located in the industrial neighborhood of Renens, the ECAL building used to be a knitting factory for Swiss Knitwear company IRIL of Switzerland. Having formerly employed over 1,200 workers, each of the four floors of the school is approximately as large as a football field. Today, 600 students and 200 employees pass through the school every day. With its vast production workshops and facilities, ECAL is well known for its impressive resources. Maintaining this infrastructure requires significant effort and the labor to operate the school is often overlooked.

This workshop will be centered around the topic of labor in the context of ECAL and will culminate in an reader-sized publication printed on the school’s manual offset printing machine. By the end of the workshop, we will produce a pocket-sized, manual offset-printed 96 page book translating the topic of work and labor at ECAL.

Select a topic related to labor and work in the context of ECAL and translate that topic through a photographic narrative. You will be encouraged not to use traditional portraits of workers, but to think of other ways to document traces of labor and work. You should consider how image editing, sequencing, visual treatment and offset production can work together to translate your visual essay. What are the visual possibilities inherent in the restriction of 2-color manual offset production?

12 teams of two students will each pick a specific topic related to labor at ECAL and make an 8-page photographic essay with captions printed either in red and black or in black only. One team of three students will be responsible for designing the cover of the book as well as editing, typesetting, preparing the book for production and managing the production process.