GRAPHIC EVENTS:
A REALIST ACCOUNT OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Graphics have a way of living that is often awkward and unplanned. We see it when they are ripped from walls, littered on streets and faded in shop windows. We wouldn’t say they are that way by design, however this everyday difference between graphics and their designs is underimagined in critical discourses. Graphic Events: A Realist Account of Graphic Design intensifies this difference in a montage of original essays and interviews that coax graphics into unfamiliar dialogues.
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A REALIST ACCOUNT OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Graphics have a way of living that is often awkward and unplanned. We see it when they are ripped from walls, littered on streets and faded in shop windows. We wouldn’t say they are that way by design, however this everyday difference between graphics and their designs is underimagined in critical discourses. Graphic Events: A Realist Account of Graphic Design intensifies this difference in a montage of original essays and interviews that coax graphics into unfamiliar dialogues.
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CHEWING THE IMAGE
Online takeaway food photography is a codified genre. The scenes photographed are usually an assortment of dishes laid out in neat constellations on dressed-up tables. The plates, often running past the limit of the frame, look to be part of an infinite offering cropped short. Despite the variety and volume of food, these photographs don’t have a gluttonous or opulent appearance, rather, in a much more vulgar way, they are consuming displays of choice.
Read more soon...
Online takeaway food photography is a codified genre. The scenes photographed are usually an assortment of dishes laid out in neat constellations on dressed-up tables. The plates, often running past the limit of the frame, look to be part of an infinite offering cropped short. Despite the variety and volume of food, these photographs don’t have a gluttonous or opulent appearance, rather, in a much more vulgar way, they are consuming displays of choice.
Read more soon...
TBC, 2025
BOOK REVIEW:
SYSTEMS ULTRA: MAKING SENSE OF TECHNOLOGY IN A COMPLEX WORLD by Georgina Voss
Written with compassion and earnestness, Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World is a book concerned not only with the ways that systems are made understandable but also with the ways we experience how systems behave. “At their core,” Georgina Voss writes, “systems are about the relationships between things, and then the relationships between those relationships” (p. 7). It is this complex entanglement of connections that Voss gives plain-spoken narrative to in Systems Ultra.
Read more soon...
SYSTEMS ULTRA: MAKING SENSE OF TECHNOLOGY IN A COMPLEX WORLD by Georgina Voss
Written with compassion and earnestness, Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World is a book concerned not only with the ways that systems are made understandable but also with the ways we experience how systems behave. “At their core,” Georgina Voss writes, “systems are about the relationships between things, and then the relationships between those relationships” (p. 7). It is this complex entanglement of connections that Voss gives plain-spoken narrative to in Systems Ultra.
Read more soon...
TBC, 2025
TREES HEIL:
ROOM 01
Two models are variously splayed and stacked in a small, Paris hotel room. They are staged in Trees Heil’s distinct style that fuses adolescent dress-up with complex eroticism. The room interior is sparsely furnished, like a make-do doll’s house; bed, lamp, side chair.
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ROOM 01
Two models are variously splayed and stacked in a small, Paris hotel room. They are staged in Trees Heil’s distinct style that fuses adolescent dress-up with complex eroticism. The room interior is sparsely furnished, like a make-do doll’s house; bed, lamp, side chair.
Read more soon...
BOOK REVIEW:
MONUMENTAL GRAFFITI: TRACING PUBLIC ART AND RESISTANCE IN THE CITY by Rafael Schacter
Rafael Schacter’s latest book, Monumental Graffiti: Tracing Public Art and Resistance in the City (2024) is a study that challenges the way we (should) think and act in the places where we live (105). In an argument overlapping recent works such as Smooth City and the Designing Friction manifesto, Schacter similarly finds that the “frictionless” is an increasingly dominant logic of contemporary culture (348). It can be felt, for instance, in our experiences of the city as an “image curated and marketed as one commodity among a host of competing commodities” (314). Public spaces, Schacter argues to the contrary, should be spaces for activity, not passivity, they should be “a site for speech” (242). Graffiti is central to this argument because it is a kind of speaking for speech’s sake (130-131) that actively challenges and rejects the normative uses of and interactions with public spaces; it “emerges through the medium of the city or not at all” (3).
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MONUMENTAL GRAFFITI: TRACING PUBLIC ART AND RESISTANCE IN THE CITY by Rafael Schacter
Rafael Schacter’s latest book, Monumental Graffiti: Tracing Public Art and Resistance in the City (2024) is a study that challenges the way we (should) think and act in the places where we live (105). In an argument overlapping recent works such as Smooth City and the Designing Friction manifesto, Schacter similarly finds that the “frictionless” is an increasingly dominant logic of contemporary culture (348). It can be felt, for instance, in our experiences of the city as an “image curated and marketed as one commodity among a host of competing commodities” (314). Public spaces, Schacter argues to the contrary, should be spaces for activity, not passivity, they should be “a site for speech” (242). Graffiti is central to this argument because it is a kind of speaking for speech’s sake (130-131) that actively challenges and rejects the normative uses of and interactions with public spaces; it “emerges through the medium of the city or not at all” (3).
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BOOK REVIEW:
VISUAL CITIZENSHIP: COMMUNICATING POLITICAL OPINIONS AND EMOTIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA by Catherin Bouko
Catherine Bouko’s Visual Citizenship is concerned with a particularly mundane level of online image-based political communication. By dismissing accusations of online engagements with politics as mere “slacktivism” (p. 17) or as “weak substitutes” (p. 21), Bouko blurs (or: pixelates) the division between what is considered worthwhile, sensible deliberation and what is often disregarded as flippant sharings of opinions and more generally just entertainment. As such, what Bouko makes explicitly clear from the outset is that this study takes seriously the way citizens “express their civic voice in everyday political talks on social media” (p. 29). Such expressions could include anything from memes and selfies to hashtags and image captions. For Bouko, these are all modes of legitimate political engagement. This common level of political expression that is often-overlooked, disregarded or undermined in academic research is what Bouko explicitly calls, albeit infrequently, “everyday visual citizenship” (p. 11).
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VISUAL CITIZENSHIP: COMMUNICATING POLITICAL OPINIONS AND EMOTIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA by Catherin Bouko
Catherine Bouko’s Visual Citizenship is concerned with a particularly mundane level of online image-based political communication. By dismissing accusations of online engagements with politics as mere “slacktivism” (p. 17) or as “weak substitutes” (p. 21), Bouko blurs (or: pixelates) the division between what is considered worthwhile, sensible deliberation and what is often disregarded as flippant sharings of opinions and more generally just entertainment. As such, what Bouko makes explicitly clear from the outset is that this study takes seriously the way citizens “express their civic voice in everyday political talks on social media” (p. 29). Such expressions could include anything from memes and selfies to hashtags and image captions. For Bouko, these are all modes of legitimate political engagement. This common level of political expression that is often-overlooked, disregarded or undermined in academic research is what Bouko explicitly calls, albeit infrequently, “everyday visual citizenship” (p. 11).
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BOOK REVIEW:
VITAMIN TXT: WORDS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Phaidon’s Vitamin series has been running for over twenty years, producing eleven titles with focuses ranging from mediums such as clay, ceramics, thread and textiles to material processes like collage and drawing. The latest title, Vitamin Txt: Words in Contemporary Art is a global survey of over one hundred contemporary artists, chosen by a panel of industry nominators—a variable mix of collectors, writers, curators, critics, directors, and historians—that use text in their works. There are instances of text used to evoke the slipperiness of language, text pulled from everyday street-level places, text to express the poetically ambiguous, text as a “bombardment of language”, and so on.
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VITAMIN TXT: WORDS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Phaidon’s Vitamin series has been running for over twenty years, producing eleven titles with focuses ranging from mediums such as clay, ceramics, thread and textiles to material processes like collage and drawing. The latest title, Vitamin Txt: Words in Contemporary Art is a global survey of over one hundred contemporary artists, chosen by a panel of industry nominators—a variable mix of collectors, writers, curators, critics, directors, and historians—that use text in their works. There are instances of text used to evoke the slipperiness of language, text pulled from everyday street-level places, text to express the poetically ambiguous, text as a “bombardment of language”, and so on.
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EXHIBITION REVIEW:
ANTHONY GORMLEY/PAVLA MELVOKÁ
In lead, plaster cast, crude oil, clay, steel, inks, or bread, Antony Gormley is a sculptor. In this new collaborative exhibition with poet and architect Pavla Melková, Gormley’s faintly anthropological fascination with the human form and forms of humanity is entangled with Melková’s words and sustained across seven rooms in the Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague.
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ANTHONY GORMLEY/PAVLA MELVOKÁ
In lead, plaster cast, crude oil, clay, steel, inks, or bread, Antony Gormley is a sculptor. In this new collaborative exhibition with poet and architect Pavla Melková, Gormley’s faintly anthropological fascination with the human form and forms of humanity is entangled with Melková’s words and sustained across seven rooms in the Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague.
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LUCIA MOHOLY: EXPOSURES
I copy edited the exhibition text for Kunsthalle Praha’s 2024 exhibition Lucia Moholy: Exposures, curated by Meghan Forbes, Jan Tichy and Jordan Troeller. It is the first comprehensive account of the Prague-born writer and photographer Lucia Moholy (1894–1989).
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I copy edited the exhibition text for Kunsthalle Praha’s 2024 exhibition Lucia Moholy: Exposures, curated by Meghan Forbes, Jan Tichy and Jordan Troeller. It is the first comprehensive account of the Prague-born writer and photographer Lucia Moholy (1894–1989).
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SILVIO LORUSSO:
EXAMINING THE DUST ON HIS DESK
Considering the everyday ubiquity of design – UX, graphic, product, and so on – it’s surprising that everyday realism is not a more common topic in design’s conversations. Dirty Furniture, the design magazine, certainly offers a thought-provoking alternative to the familiar chrome-polished sheen of high-end furniture publications, and graphic design has never felt as real as it does in Kevin Lo’s latest work Design Against Design, but these are fringe exceptions.
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EXAMINING THE DUST ON HIS DESK
Considering the everyday ubiquity of design – UX, graphic, product, and so on – it’s surprising that everyday realism is not a more common topic in design’s conversations. Dirty Furniture, the design magazine, certainly offers a thought-provoking alternative to the familiar chrome-polished sheen of high-end furniture publications, and graphic design has never felt as real as it does in Kevin Lo’s latest work Design Against Design, but these are fringe exceptions.
Read more
TREES HEIL:
SIGHTING THE IMAGINARY
Trees Heil uses photographs to imagine life. In one deadpan series, eclectically-styled pole dancers are photographed in unusual public settings; twirling on lamp posts, splayed up street signs, and contorted around handrails. The series is provocative and in direct tension with regular, everyday life. “Some people were politely curious and even supportive”, Heil says, “but others walked over with their camera phones ready, they leered and encroached.” Heil’s production assistant had to act as security to protect the magic circle of the playful dance-world from the mundane jeers of the neighbouring real world.
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SIGHTING THE IMAGINARY
Trees Heil uses photographs to imagine life. In one deadpan series, eclectically-styled pole dancers are photographed in unusual public settings; twirling on lamp posts, splayed up street signs, and contorted around handrails. The series is provocative and in direct tension with regular, everyday life. “Some people were politely curious and even supportive”, Heil says, “but others walked over with their camera phones ready, they leered and encroached.” Heil’s production assistant had to act as security to protect the magic circle of the playful dance-world from the mundane jeers of the neighbouring real world.
Read more
A PRIVATE PULSE FOR LONELY PEOPLE
As an installation and performance artist, Nile Koetting builds obscure scenarios. He assembles mundane objects and animates them among sound, lights, and performers making them more lively than mere products. These hyper-liminal spaces look like dissident nichés hidden in a greater, imagined metropolis; they have a bizarre tranquillity.
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As an installation and performance artist, Nile Koetting builds obscure scenarios. He assembles mundane objects and animates them among sound, lights, and performers making them more lively than mere products. These hyper-liminal spaces look like dissident nichés hidden in a greater, imagined metropolis; they have a bizarre tranquillity.
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IN CONTRAST TO RESPECTABLE THINKING
According to cultural critic James Dyer, Pop today is less an aesthetic and more an at- titude. Specifically, it is an attitude that cultivates the easy-going, digestible version of events. He urges artists and designers to immerse themselves in complexity, nuance, and the realisation that no problem has a definite solution.
In this issue we deconstruct Pop to discover elements of irony, satire and escapism, and we look at how Pop’s biggest power lies in how it unifies, how it breaks the boring binary, and how it offers fans a temporary reprieve from the challenges and complexities of real life — and not just a peripheral ‘aside’. Critics can condemn pop culture for its commercialism, and for prioritising narratives and visuals that are merely uplifting and entertaining. What the sternest of detractors undervalue, however, is the relief such distractions from harsh realities can bring; the psychological calm amidst the worst of upheavals that a piece of pop refuge provides. And in times like these, when we all feel so divided, confused and scared, this feels like a crucial reminder that a common-ground amid division can still exist.
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According to cultural critic James Dyer, Pop today is less an aesthetic and more an at- titude. Specifically, it is an attitude that cultivates the easy-going, digestible version of events. He urges artists and designers to immerse themselves in complexity, nuance, and the realisation that no problem has a definite solution.
In this issue we deconstruct Pop to discover elements of irony, satire and escapism, and we look at how Pop’s biggest power lies in how it unifies, how it breaks the boring binary, and how it offers fans a temporary reprieve from the challenges and complexities of real life — and not just a peripheral ‘aside’. Critics can condemn pop culture for its commercialism, and for prioritising narratives and visuals that are merely uplifting and entertaining. What the sternest of detractors undervalue, however, is the relief such distractions from harsh realities can bring; the psychological calm amidst the worst of upheavals that a piece of pop refuge provides. And in times like these, when we all feel so divided, confused and scared, this feels like a crucial reminder that a common-ground amid division can still exist.
Read more
BOOK REVIEW:
CROONER: SINGING FROM THE HEART FROM SINATRA TO NAS by Alex Coles
It is made explicit from the start, and not repeated until the conclusion, that the aim of Crooner is to reanimate the underappreciated history of crooning. Coles claims that “[n]o other archetype has been as persistent as the crooner in the past sixty years, and no other archetype has been so continually overlooked by music historians” (176). Throughout, Coles characterises the crooner as an icon running vein-like through diverse spreads of popular music genres from disco (55-70) to reggae (111-128) to hip hop (159-172) and more. Careful to define the limits of this ambitious study and manage the reader’s expectations, Coles clarifies that Crooner is not a “musicological study” or a “sociological analysis”, rather “Crooner seeks to simultaneously describe the impact each voice has on the archaeology of the archetype” (8).
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CROONER: SINGING FROM THE HEART FROM SINATRA TO NAS by Alex Coles
It is made explicit from the start, and not repeated until the conclusion, that the aim of Crooner is to reanimate the underappreciated history of crooning. Coles claims that “[n]o other archetype has been as persistent as the crooner in the past sixty years, and no other archetype has been so continually overlooked by music historians” (176). Throughout, Coles characterises the crooner as an icon running vein-like through diverse spreads of popular music genres from disco (55-70) to reggae (111-128) to hip hop (159-172) and more. Careful to define the limits of this ambitious study and manage the reader’s expectations, Coles clarifies that Crooner is not a “musicological study” or a “sociological analysis”, rather “Crooner seeks to simultaneously describe the impact each voice has on the archaeology of the archetype” (8).
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DESIGN REALISM PART TWO:
WHAT’S IN IT FOR MY MOTHER
Residency for the People hangs annex-like off the back of Eindhoven’s looming St. Catharinakerk. It is a sort-of-art-space, that’s how Lucas Massen, its creator, describes it: “we're a sort-of-art-space and a bar, it's how we embed ourselves in society.” During the day, the poky main room is lit by street-facing windows dressed in short drop cafe-style curtains. In the evenings, a soft light glows from candles and a few ceiling bulbs. Bistro dining chairs hug the walls and wooden-topped stools hem the tables. A low metal counter serves as a bar. I ask for a beer and make my way back outside. Despite its fringe-like appearance, this place has been in concert with Eindhoven’s design scene for several years. This year they host New Store, a project initiated by the Nieuwe Instituut.
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WHAT’S IN IT FOR MY MOTHER
Residency for the People hangs annex-like off the back of Eindhoven’s looming St. Catharinakerk. It is a sort-of-art-space, that’s how Lucas Massen, its creator, describes it: “we're a sort-of-art-space and a bar, it's how we embed ourselves in society.” During the day, the poky main room is lit by street-facing windows dressed in short drop cafe-style curtains. In the evenings, a soft light glows from candles and a few ceiling bulbs. Bistro dining chairs hug the walls and wooden-topped stools hem the tables. A low metal counter serves as a bar. I ask for a beer and make my way back outside. Despite its fringe-like appearance, this place has been in concert with Eindhoven’s design scene for several years. This year they host New Store, a project initiated by the Nieuwe Instituut.
Read more
DESIGN REALISM PART ONE:
THE INEPTITUDE OF THE INTERPRETATION
This article was commissioned by Dutch Design Week 2023 as part of their Creative Voices initiative. It responds to two themes set by DDW: the “narrative” of Speculative and Social Design and the “mission” of Creating our Living Environment.
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THE INEPTITUDE OF THE INTERPRETATION
This article was commissioned by Dutch Design Week 2023 as part of their Creative Voices initiative. It responds to two themes set by DDW: the “narrative” of Speculative and Social Design and the “mission” of Creating our Living Environment.
Read more
PRAGUE CITY UNIVERSITY INTERVIEW
Last semester we welcomed James to PCU where have gave a Visiting Artist Lecture, as well as a workshop for Graphic Design students. The workshop included a street walk to document fonts, which the students then took back to Bishop's Court studios to use to create new design pieces under his guidance. We asked James for a short interview to introduce him to the PCU community, and to learn more about his professional background, the types of projects he will be implementing, and his insights on the future direction of design.
Read more
Last semester we welcomed James to PCU where have gave a Visiting Artist Lecture, as well as a workshop for Graphic Design students. The workshop included a street walk to document fonts, which the students then took back to Bishop's Court studios to use to create new design pieces under his guidance. We asked James for a short interview to introduce him to the PCU community, and to learn more about his professional background, the types of projects he will be implementing, and his insights on the future direction of design.
Read more
DECEIVED DECEIVERS
In the opening scenes of Blood Sucking Freaks, a controversial mid-70s splatter film set in New York’s SoHo, the self-proclaimed master of the theatre of the macabre, Sardu, has just interrupted his assistant who was excitedly applying thumb screws to a restrained, naked woman on stage. Speaking like a knockoff Vincent Price, Sardu addresses the meagre audience:
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In the opening scenes of Blood Sucking Freaks, a controversial mid-70s splatter film set in New York’s SoHo, the self-proclaimed master of the theatre of the macabre, Sardu, has just interrupted his assistant who was excitedly applying thumb screws to a restrained, naked woman on stage. Speaking like a knockoff Vincent Price, Sardu addresses the meagre audience:
If you find what you see a little upsetting to your stomach, then just pretend we are playacting. But if you are sceptical or bored then just pretend that what you see is real.Later, unsurprisingly, it’s revealed that Sardu truly is mutilating, murdering and dismembering women during his shows; there is no “playacting” on his stage.
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FLASH DESIGN FICTION:
95
95 is a short (flash design fiction) story written for the 2023 Urban Tree Festival. It was long listed for the competition. It is also hosted on Walk Listen Create, the home of walking artists and artist walkers.
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95
95 is a short (flash design fiction) story written for the 2023 Urban Tree Festival. It was long listed for the competition. It is also hosted on Walk Listen Create, the home of walking artists and artist walkers.
Read more
BOOK REVIEW:
SYSTEMS ULTRA: MAKING SENSE OF TECHNOLOGY IN A COMPLEX WORLD by Georgina Voss
Written with compassion and earnestness, Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World is a book concerned not only with the ways that systems are made understandable but also with the ways we experience how systems behave. “At their core,” Georgina Voss writes, “systems are about the relationships between things, and then the relationships between those relationships” (p. 7). It is this complex entanglement of connections that Voss gives plain-spoken narrative to in Systems Ultra.
Read more
SYSTEMS ULTRA: MAKING SENSE OF TECHNOLOGY IN A COMPLEX WORLD by Georgina Voss
Written with compassion and earnestness, Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World is a book concerned not only with the ways that systems are made understandable but also with the ways we experience how systems behave. “At their core,” Georgina Voss writes, “systems are about the relationships between things, and then the relationships between those relationships” (p. 7). It is this complex entanglement of connections that Voss gives plain-spoken narrative to in Systems Ultra.
Read more
TBC
VENICE PIZZA
Venice Pizza is an exhibition curatedby Nick Deakin. My contribution to the exhibition was a conversation with Nick on May 21, 2022 sat outside Bragazzi’s café on Abbeydale Road, Sheffield.
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Venice Pizza is an exhibition curatedby Nick Deakin. My contribution to the exhibition was a conversation with Nick on May 21, 2022 sat outside Bragazzi’s café on Abbeydale Road, Sheffield.
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EVERYDAY GRAPHIC DESIGN
In this brief Collision, we explore a tension between the contemporary graphic designer David Carson and the 1960s artist Jacques Villeglé, an artist Carson has never heard of. By highlighting this awkward difference between an ideal designerly intention (Carso) and a grubbier everyday reality (Villeglé), we stimulate appetites for more realist-inspired discourses of graphic design.
Read more
In this brief Collision, we explore a tension between the contemporary graphic designer David Carson and the 1960s artist Jacques Villeglé, an artist Carson has never heard of. By highlighting this awkward difference between an ideal designerly intention (Carso) and a grubbier everyday reality (Villeglé), we stimulate appetites for more realist-inspired discourses of graphic design.
Read more
A FALLING HAS COME
A short fictional essay about a paranoid aesthete that finds solace in dried glue at a grievous time of mourning.
A Falling Has Come was presented at Dying.dialogues as part of Toronto Design Week 2023.
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A short fictional essay about a paranoid aesthete that finds solace in dried glue at a grievous time of mourning.
A Falling Has Come was presented at Dying.dialogues as part of Toronto Design Week 2023.
Read more