As artOmat, the most unconventional Christmas market/art show in Zagreb started yesterday, so did the the art project on it. One of the more interesting things on the opening was the presentation of This Town Needs Posters’ project Plakatomat, an infinite poster that will be made in collaboration with the visitors during December 17th and 18th.
We’ve talked with Hrvoje Spudic and Sven Soric, the duo behind TTNP about the state of posters as mediums and their plans for the artOmat project.
Who, or what, is This Town Needs Posters?
TTNP are two architects, Hrvoje and Sven, who use analog, manual and DIY methods to create and print posters. We’ve started doing this in collage, as a way to promote different concerts and film events on the independent scene because, well, this town needs posters. There are still people who primarily communicate in that way in the public forum, from street artists and activists to people working in independent culture that don’t have the funds to mass communicate trough now usual means.
Posters come from the need for easy, cheap and effective communication from and to groups that do not have the same media privileges as some other groups. The Internet does offer a wide range of possibilities for communication, but there’s always an option o click or not to click on a certain link. Posters placed in a public forum cannot be ignored, if it is well made.
What will you be doing on artOmat?
We’ve been organizing poster workshops for a year now, from political and activist posters to ones referring to culture. We’re going to try something different on artOmat- an infinite poster! We’re going to hook up a typewriter and a printing machine with a stream of paper and let people write what they feel like writing on it. Then we’re going to artistically intervene on the papers as they come our way to the printing machine. We’ll be doing that for two days, and display the end result at artOmat. It’s exciting, not knowing in which directions other people will take us.
What are DIY posters and how do they differ from other means of production?
To put it simply, we are just trying to use available analog techniques to reproduce a certain information. Desktop publishing is also a DIY technique, using printers and scanners, but we are interested in the details of the materials with which we work, the feel of their textures. The procedure is quite simple: we use wood, linoleum, paper, cardboard or some other material to create fonts and shapes. We glue them on a surface to get a print form (it’s like a giant stamp), apply color and then print it on paper. It’s a very primitive method in its essence.
Can posters still be an effective way of communicating and conveying information to the public, or is their role today primarily that of an aesthetic and visual public ornament?
We’ve tapped into that question in the first answer. It’s a question of democratization of communication, the ability of individuals to express themselves in public spaces. Posters today, it seems, have found their niche in culture- they are mostly produced for plays, concerts, films…as visual identity is a very important component of any art or performed work. The poster provides a public abstract, it distills the message of the work, functions as its teaser. It’s the message that matters and poster’s aesthetics are there to clearly communicate that information, not to be viewed as something separate, as a form.
If you’d like to be a part of creating a DIY ‘infinite’ poster, This Town Needs Posters will be producing it throughout December 17th and 18th at Mestrovic pavillion, where artOmat takes place.
The market opened with another poster focused exhibition, 1,2,3, Postering!, with 123 posters made by local and regional artists, designers and other creative professionals as part of an ongoing project commissioned by visual arts and culture magazine Vizkultura.
The market will also host a variety of different art project trough its eight day run time, with a hundred selected artist, fashion, graphic and product designers, craftsmen and creative manufacturers displaying and selling their works.
