Terminator was the first live project of the newly re-launced Camberwell Press. Working in partnership with Camberwell Space and curator Juan Bolivar, the former Press designers, Ross Bennett, Oliver Chapman and Louis Carter, produced a lo-fi risograph publication with a fold out cover and poster. The design rationale for the publication attempted to echo some of Bolivar's concerns; notions of contemporary collaboration, the relationships that practitioners have with technology and materials, as well as the incessant march of technology and the heightened possibility of a cybernetic future.

"Desire is irrelevant I am a machine" - quote from Terminator 3: Rise of Machines.

The 'Terminator' is a fictional cyborg first portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1984 movie by the same name, and it is this term Bolivar uses as a metaphor for this exhibition to describe the conditions surrounding contemporary art production. Like this cyborg, artists no longer seek to honour the natural world; instead their aim is to develop argumental strategies in a world transformed by technology. As the organic skin of oil on canvas is gradually supplanted by new materials; aluminium, vinyl, polymers and glass, notions like 'being true to nature' or 'looking to nature' for inspiration appear old fashioned. Although the sublime and its associations with landscape still permeate contemporary painting, literature and cinema, the post-modern cybernetic artist of today is nature itself.

Bolivar and the other artists involved have produced pieces of work in relation to this idea. Being artists in the 21st Century,  we involve a lot of machinery in our day to day tasks but also, as creatives, in our art work - at what point does that art become machine made, and lose it’s hu-man-urfacturedness?

Hand finishing in the reprographics department at London College of Communication.

The strategy towards the design of the publication reverted back to a more tactile and human based production method. Using basic programing to set the type with rich text formatting, and having a generic image size to print, we then took the elements and along with, scalpels, scissors, glue and lightboxes, went to work of laying up in the most honest, human, and instantaneous way we could.

In-house print managing using our Risograph allowed us another opportunity to play a human part in the process. Printing anomalies were embraced, acted upon and welcomed into every aspect and page of the printing process. The publication has a ‘glitch-core’ sensibility, celebrating the fallability of reproductive technology and the impossibility of endless human reproduction.

Terminator took place in the Camberwell Space from 27 September to 26 November 2010.