Brother is a User’s Guide, an instruction manual—the one for the Brother digital knitting machine, designed to be easy to use. The original text of the manual has been replaced with excerpts from Forces of Production by David F. Noble (1984), a critical reflection on technological innovations in automation and industrial mechanization. These innovations primarily aim to increase investment returns by reducing cost variables such as workers and their training.
Comics as a medium have evolved alongside the growth of media industries and advancements in domestic mechanical reproduction technologies. However, its creators often remain attached to or nostalgic for the artisanal techniques of its golden age, when it was still a living craft—incunabula, photocopying, linocut, or risography. The latter method was chosen for this reproduction.
Brother was produced as part of a research project on tactility, initiated by Begum Erciyas, Robert Ochshorn, Lea Søvsø, and Ilan Manouach and presented during the group’s residency at PACT Zollverein / Choreographisches Zentrum in Essen.
Research:Echo Chamber Editorialization, Book design: Antoine Graff
Published by: La Cinquieme Couche (Belgium)
Size: 186 x 263 mm Pages: 20 Printing: Risograph, Duotone Binding: Paperback ISBN: 978-239008-110-4 Price: €15.00
