Parallel Cases

In the summer of 2012, collaborators Audrey Snyder and Joe Riley travelled atop abandoned railroads throughout California and Oregon (USA) on a pair of railbikes. Using a small letterpress, some ink, type, and paper they recorded their journey and exploration of two concurrent histories: the demise of railroad infrastructure and the cultural and technological shifts in commercial printing. Riley and Snyder took on the modalities of itinerant printers who once traveled the country by freight train, working as journeymen for newspapers as well as labor organizers and Wobblies. 

Parallel Cases recalls this history to the surface of post-industrial enclosure. The project is a movement with no fixed location but instead, represents “deterritorialisation” of abandoned railroad corridors. It is a mobile and nomadic illustration of past and present possibiltities for reconfiguring technology and reorienting toward low-tech, alternative modes of travel, and political education. In doing so, the project sits at the conjuncture of printmaking, sculpture, historical narrative, and collaborative form. The work exhibited in New York and is documented in a book — written, printed, and bound by the artists.