EXPANDED EDITION 00

The Expanded Edition 00 represents the foundation of the XEROXED platform. It is an ongoing, expanded edition that is released in volumes. In this edition, the (re)published content draws from the XEROXED family archive of underground ephemera. Each volume explores a thematic selection of archival material, which is recontextualized through the printed garment, transforming it into an embodied pamphlet.

Date

Ongoing

VOLUMES

Contributors

XEROXED was born in my family archive. The first experiments in the reconfiguration of archival material through textiles started in a room in the south of Italy, where piles of dusty objects are stacked at every angle: flyers, fanzines, booklets, posters, vinyl records, and publications linked to the Italian and international countercultural scene.

The archive was first started in 1975 by Mauro Mascia, my father, and has been growing ever since, covering the period from the late 1960s to today. Together with a consistent amount of ephemeral material, the collection also includes more structured countercultural magazines, such as Frigidaire, Frizzer, Tempi Supplementari, Cannibale, Virus, Fikafutura, Neural, Il mucchio Selvaggio, which were issued by registered publishing houses, but still ideologically positioned outside the dominant media cultural production.

Since first entering that room in 2018, I was fascinated by the grainy, xeroxed aesthetic and chaotic layouts of the materials. This fascination led me to experiment with reworking the materials, distorting and recomposing them through gestural choreographies on the scanner bed. Later on, these explorations moved onto fabric, driven by the urge to three-dimensionalize the material and recontextualize it through a new public medium.

Lacking professional equipment, I would feed fabrics through domestic printers using paper supports, creating a series of garments constructed from A4-sized fabric sheets—an early seed of what would become XEROXED in 2022. XEROXED relationship to printed paper is embedded in its name, evoking the aesthetic of photocopies and mimeographs, with their grainy and imperfect textures.

*Geek trousers*, domestic print on fabric, 2021.

Since 2018, I have spent countless hours cleaning out the layers of dust from publications and sorting through piles of paper treasures, trying to catalogue them into an organised system. My sister, who now actively contributes to XEROXED's editorial research, was involved in this collaborative process. Many conversations with our father directed the workflow, helping us frame the materials through his heartfelt memories of his underground, politically charged youth.

Given the ephemeral nature of these materials, we started arranging them according mostly to visual rather than bibliographical criteria. As of today, the room is still thriving in chaos, and each time it feels like entering it for the first time.

That is the reason why Edition 00 keeps proliferating: through each volume we discover the archival material through new lenses, bringing back to life maps of meaning sleeping in the archive. We approach the collection as a generative site: instead of being left intact and untouched, the material is brought out of shelves, folders, and boxes to be reworked, recirculated and recontextualized, providing input for the creation of contemporary perspectives on it.

We choose the printed garment as our primary publishing medium with the goal of circulating the content in the public sphere. Through the act of reading-wearing, the garment is transformed into a wearable page, a walking tazebao that spreads underground culture. It is the space for the recontextualization of forgotten typefaces, logos, and layouts.

In Expanded Edition 00, there are different volumes, each defined by a specific fanzinography. We coined this term to delineate a set of references that avoids a traditional cataloguing system. The fanzinography is attached to the XEROXED garments to allow the reader-wearer to get to know the materials consulted and employed for the development of the volume. In each volume we curate a selection of archival materials that are then translated onto the textiles with a diverse range of printing techniques. We work carefully by mixing analogue processes in order to not lose the material quality and tactility of the mimeographed contents, aiming to keep alive their grainy, inky visual power.

Alia Mascia, XEROXED Founder & Creative Director

Antea Mascia, XEROXED Editorial Team