TIRT

There’s a viral tweet thread by podcaster Shaan Puri that speaks of the metaverse being an inevitable time when the online world has more importance than offline. It’s alarming to say the least but the hopeful team behind The Irregulars Alliance is doing their part to slow this down, manifesting their love of print into a tangible and tactile publication when little else is happening IRL.

Earlier this year, they launched The Irregular Times, known more colloquially as TIRT, India’s first print art and design newspaper “for everyone”. Every issue is a quarterly collector’s item packed with features, essays, photo stories, engaging columns and generous interactive additions — with its latest issue, a mini-zine by Anand Shenoy, and an envelope with materials to create your own cyanotype.

LOVER caught up with managing editor Tarini Sethi and features editor Vasudhaa Narayanan two issues in, to talk all things publishing, working remotely and their quarterly labour of love.

Before we get to TIRT, what is The Irregulars Alliance?

Tarini: The Irregulars Alliance is the parent company, the mom, of The Irregulars Art Fair and The Irregular Times. It's quite simply the umbrella that everything we do sits under. The Alliance exists to enable the growth and prominence of the Indian art scene and works to contribute to India’s community culture. Every initiative by the IA shares a purpose, a set of values, and above all, a belief in the power of creativity.

What’s The Irregulars Art Fair?

Tarini: The Irregulars Art Fair is India’s first anti art-fair held parallel to the India Art Fair. It serves as an alternative space for independent artists to exhibit, introduce the arts to young collectors and foster a dialogue that transcends hierarchies and markets.

So what is the beginning of the beginning for TIRT?

Tarini: After two editions of The Irregulars Art Fair, and two years of having to cancel it because of the CAA protests and then the pandemic, we were itching to do something new. Anant and I were trying to figure out how to continue making an impact in the art world whilst staying at home, and decided that an art and design newspaper would be the best way to do it. We checked the temperature with a few friends and colleagues to see whether they would buy a newspaper of this caliber, even though print was *kinda* dying, and decided we needed to at least try. And so, TIRT was born. 

Vasudhaa: Tarini and I were informally put into a WhatsApp group by a mutual friend. We got on a call about TIRT and what they had in mind, and the rest is history. I’m really interested in curatorial projects that are innovative, challenging and fun to work on. Quite frankly, as hard as it is at times, what makes it easy is having a supportive and curious team. And I think that is where TIRT began. From a place of curiosity. 

How would you describe TIRT to a new reader? Aka what can they expect

Tarini: TIRT is an opportunity to escape. It puts into focus different genres of art, while making sure the reader is constantly surprised. We aim to bring back the interactive aspect of newspapers from not long ago, where one is completely absorbed, and forget for a while that technology has taken over. In the newspaper we highlight new artists, focus on their studio practice, collaborate with new studios and collectives, and push unfiltered opinions and ideas. 

And on those lines, who would you say is the TIRT reader?

Tarini: Since the beginning, we have wanted to make sure that even though TIRT is an art and design newspaper, it is not solely FOR artists and designers. The aim for our newspaper is for it to reach every kind of person, from every professional background, varied age groups, and histories.

The way we do this is firstly by establishing an art jargon that is easy to understand while maintaining a balance of interviews and interactive columns like recipes, advice columns, adult colouring pages, and our “how to” column. We really want to push the fact that TIRT is really for everyone.

Your first issue was called Please Wait For The Host To Start This Meeting. What typically goes on in your Google Meets?

Vasudhaa: Funnily enough, our entire team is remote. Our team is from Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and we keep adding more cities to this list with each issue. I think what became pretty clear early on was that everyone working on the newspaper was excited about it, they cared about it, and were eager to create and bring the newspaper to reality. So our drive really came from a place of wanting to put this out there. The meetings were sometimes long but our personalities lend to working under specific teams really well, so apart from the weeks before printing, our work is mostly smooth. What typically happens in our meetings is Tarini takes screenshots of us mid-thought. I mean, you must’ve seen the back cover of Issue 01! 

Tarini: The challenges of course were a different and also interesting part of it. I think knowing that we managed to pull it off during lockdown confirmed the fact that we could really do this and build something meaningful. 

I often feel like people expect content to be free, and social media has reinforced this. Please tell me much work goes into a publication - especially a print publication, specifically TIRT?

Tarini: Yes! This is extremely true, unfortunately. This is another reason why print as a medium is dying. Due to social media and the internet as a whole, people expect content to be received instantaneously and no one has the patience to wait for things to arrive. The amount of work that actually goes into building a publication is hard to even put into words sometimes, it's definitely something even we didn't expect going into this. 

There is a lot of in depth research and study that goes into each issue. We look for artists from across the globe that are doing interesting work, and then interview them, write about them or commission them for pieces. In addition, we also do interviews online that are then transcribed manually, and sometimes like in issue 2, translate them into Kannada as well. Since this is not just an art newspaper, our design team works really hard to make sure that each column, while completely different in subject matter, works in unison with each other by using the most current type faces and designing each page in unique ways. In addition, in those three months while we're building the publication, we're also building content for our social media pages, and reaching out to physical stores, galleries, and educational institutes to stock the paper.

Honestly, even though this is a quarterly newspaper, sometimes we think 3 months to design this mammoth project is just too short.

Let’s talk sustainability. What is TIRT doing or rather what support does TIRT need in order for it to be financially sustainable long term? 

Tarini: Since TIRT is completely self funded, much like everything under The Irregulars Alliance, we depend very much on selling every last newspaper to be able to fund the next one. Which is why, even though we are a print publication, the world is still on their phones, and so we have to put in a lot of work into our social media pages and PR in general  so we reach more people, who can eventually purchase the newspaper. 

To make TIRT financially sustainable in the long run, we need a few different things. Firstly, we need more eyes on TIRT. Secondly, we need to be able to stock it at many many more places, and thirdly, and quite simply, we need people to purchase it. 

Additionally, how do you decide on print runs?

Tarini: At this moment, TIRT is still very much an experiment. We’re still hoping and figuring out if it's going to work and that's how we are deciding our print runs as well. It depends a lot on how many newspapers we can afford to print, while making sure we print enough to make an impact, small or big. 

What are some of the challenges of creating an independent publication?

Vasudhaa: One of our primary challenges is compensating the artists we commission for the newspaper. We make it a point to always pay people for their work, but our budgets are very tight. We also have a challenging time with securing mutually beneficial partnerships - folks who believe in our work and want to help us, say with printing, or paper, or ink; and folks whom we can help. Finding that sweet spot is really crucial for us, because we also don’t want to simply take without being able to help in return. 

What has been the best part of creating The Irregular Times? 

Tarini: Honestly, even though it's crazy and exhausting, it's probably one of my favourite curatorial projects till date. Of course, meeting new artists and really talking to them in depth about their work is extremely rewarding, but knowing that the newspaper has had an impact on so many people, and has reached people from every corner of India is probably the best part for us. 

TIRT is available for purchase online as well as via stockists. Where can one find TIRT?

Tarini:  We’re constantly adding to our list of stockists, currently we’re stocking at - Midlands bookshop, For The culture, Pulp Society, Poochki Table in New Delhi and TARQ and Method India in Mumbai. You can also purchase TIRT online on our website theirregulartimes.com.

Get your copy of The Irregular Times here and follow them on Instagram.