Open to all Paper Lab members and past participants, this program is free of charge and dedicated to those who wish to continue their practice in the lab state of mind.

Introduction

Life is written in traces. A gesture repeated, a thought returned to, a mark left behind—each small act accumulates, creating patterns that reveal how we exist in time.

30 Days on Paper is an experiment in giving form to these traces,

allowing them to unfold across thirty days of daily documentation.

This is not about producing a single artwork, nor about following a fixed method. It is about committing to rhythm, about observing how the act of doing—day after day—creates meaning. Repetition becomes a tool of discovery. By returning to the page each day, you allow time itself to shape the work. What emerges is not only a collection of fragments but a topography of presence: an archive of gestures, reflections, and material evidence of living.

The experiment is held within the framework of Paper Lab’s community. It takes place four times a year, once for every season, aligning itself with natural cycles of change and renewal. Each season opens a new field of exploration: a moment to pause, observe, and record. In this rhythm, the community is supported by Paper Lab with the platform, the sessions, and the guidance; participants contribute with their labor, curiosity, and DNA. This reciprocity—platform and guidance offered freely, labor and research given in return—forms the foundation of the program.

Why Self-Documentation?

Self-documentation is at the core of Paper Lab’s DNA. It is both practice and philosophy: a way of tracing the self not through narrative, but through marks, layers, accumulations. To document is to map—to create a visible topography of thought, memory, and presence. Over thirty days, this mapping becomes clearer, deeper, and more personal.

In this context, text is as vital as image. Language can serve as reflection, annotation, or score, deepening the narrative and conceptual layers of the journal. The visual and textual together create a multi-dimensional record—one that resists closure and instead remains open, fragmentary, and alive.

Documentation

Each participant sustains a visual and textual journal for thirty days. The form is open: it may take the shape of notes, sketches, layered works, conceptual scores, or material experiments. What matters is not the outcome but the commitment to daily practice, to the accumulation of traces.

The discipline of showing up each day creates its own discoveries. Some days may result in elaborate works, others in a single mark or sentence. What binds them together is the continuity: a month-long rhythm that unfolds into a personal self-topography.

Notes

• Free of charge, exclusively for Paper Lab members and past participants.

• Limited spaces—registration required.

• Both sessions will be recorded and available to participants.

Closing

30 Days on Paper is a seasonal commitment to presence, rhythm, and repetition. It is an invitation to explore how time inscribes itself through labor and reflection, and how paper becomes both surface and witness.

By engaging together across the seasons, we create not only individual self-topographies but also a living archive of our community—one that grows with every cycle.