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Adjusted Margin: Xerography, Art, and Activism in the Late Twentieth Century
How xerography became a creative medium and political tool, arming artists and activists on the margins with an accessible means of making their messages public.
This is the story of how the xerographic copier, or “Xerox machine,” became a creative medium for artists and activists during the last few decades of the twentieth century. Paper jams, mangled pages, and even fires made early versions of this clunky office machine a source of fear, rage, dread, and disappointment. But eventually, xerography democratized print culture by making it convenient and affordable for renegade publishers, zinesters, artists, punks, anarchists, queers, feminists, street activists, and others to publish their work and to get their messages out on the street. The xerographic copier adjusted the lived and imagined margins of society, Eichhorn argues, by supporting artistic and political expression and mobilizing subcultural movements.
Eichhorn describes early efforts to use xerography to create art and the occasional scapegoating of urban copy shops and xerographic technologies following political panics, using the post-9/11 raid on a Toronto copy shop as her central example. She examines New York's downtown art and punk scenes of the 1970s to 1990s, arguing that xerography—including photocopied posters, mail art, and zines—changed what cities looked like and how we experienced them. And she looks at how a generation of activists and artists deployed the copy machine in AIDS and queer activism while simultaneously introducing the copy machine's gritty, DIY aesthetics into international art markets.
Xerographic copy machines are now defunct. Office copiers are digital, and activists rely on social media more than photocopied posters. And yet, Eichhorn argues, even though we now live in a post-xerographic era, the grassroots aesthetics and political legacy of xerography persists.
This is the story of how the xerographic copier, or “Xerox machine,” became a creative medium for artists and activists during the last few decades of the twentieth century. Paper jams, mangled pages, and even fires made early versions of this clunky office machine a source of fear, rage, dread, and disappointment. But eventually, xerography democratized print culture by making it convenient and affordable for renegade publishers, zinesters, artists, punks, anarchists, queers, feminists, street activists, and others to publish their work and to get their messages out on the street. The xerographic copier adjusted the lived and imagined margins of society, Eichhorn argues, by supporting artistic and political expression and mobilizing subcultural movements.
Eichhorn describes early efforts to use xerography to create art and the occasional scapegoating of urban copy shops and xerographic technologies following political panics, using the post-9/11 raid on a Toronto copy shop as her central example. She examines New York's downtown art and punk scenes of the 1970s to 1990s, arguing that xerography—including photocopied posters, mail art, and zines—changed what cities looked like and how we experienced them. And she looks at how a generation of activists and artists deployed the copy machine in AIDS and queer activism while simultaneously introducing the copy machine's gritty, DIY aesthetics into international art markets.
Xerographic copy machines are now defunct. Office copiers are digital, and activists rely on social media more than photocopied posters. And yet, Eichhorn argues, even though we now live in a post-xerographic era, the grassroots aesthetics and political legacy of xerography persists.
216 pages, Hardcover
Published February 19, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 21, 2016
Unlike the subject of my previous review (Gitelman's Paper Knowledge), Kate Eichhorn clearly cares about her topic: the xerox and copy-shop culture of the 80s and 90s, mostly in New York City. This is a loving treatment of a period of history in which a lot happened; her history of xerox culture covers punk and the NYC art scene of the late 70s and early 80s, the the AIDS epidemic and subsequent activism, and even 9/11. Xerox/copy-shop culture is on the margins of print culture, animated by marginal people, exists on the margins of copyright law, but was at the centre of so much of the late 20th-century's cultural momentum. Highly recommended reading for media studies, or indeed anyone who remembers the 80s.
January 1, 2025
I had to read this for grad school and I'm so glad I picked this one out of a list of 20 others. It was genuinely so interesting, especially as someone who was born at the end of the xerographic era of copy machines but still has memories of the impact it had left. And the book had me actually laughing out loud at parts, I don't think it was meant to be particularly humorous but it truly was at times.
Also had me "boooo-ing" or raging at so many people/organizations, for example; the Xerox advertising department, a random blogger in 2011, the NYPD, the FDA, the Canadian public, and the Canadian government.
Also had me "boooo-ing" or raging at so many people/organizations, for example; the Xerox advertising department, a random blogger in 2011, the NYPD, the FDA, the Canadian public, and the Canadian government.
May 20, 2016
Was very, very into this.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews