I see corpses choking the life back into their lungs
I see soldiers spitting bullets into the mouths of gun barrels
I see every human being crawling back into its mother’s womb
and disappearing forever
Keith M. JUDGE (USA)
This newspaper recently reprinted what it published when Henrik Ibsen died, just over 100 years ago: “Isolated as he seemed, his mind was yet in more vital touch than that of anyone else in Europe with the mind of this generation.” That certainly applies to the great Swedish film director and dramatist Ingmar Bergman, who has died, at the age of 89 - or certainly, and literally, the part about isolation applies. Since the 60s, Bergman lived mostly on the Island of Faro: secluded, like Shakespeare’s Prospero, yet without having broken his staff. In his late eighties, he gave us a rewarding, and uncompromisingly emotional and difficult movie for TV, Saraband. His great masterpiece The Seventh Seal - much discussed, much adored, much spoofed - was re-released last week in a new print and it looks as fresh as a daisy, its power if anything increased.
Was Bergman in touch with the European mind of his generation? Perhaps he simply was the mind of his generation. Of the great post-war directors, he was the one who shouldered the burden of moral questions: is there a God? Is there a God who is exists, but is absent? Should we behave as if God exists, if we suspect he doesn’t? If he is merely absent for some unknowable millennial span, then how should we interpret this indifference, or this rebuke? And why, finally, does anything exist at all?
No one makes films like Bergman now; even Woody Allen, his great admirer and one-time imitator withdrew years ago from his experiment with the sombre chill of Bergmanian seriousness and prefers light comedy. Of course, Bergman could make comedy, as seen in his Smiles Of A Summer Night, but there is always the sense that this comic register is a variant on his darker, tragic idiom - and not a respite from it.
Bergman was, at the end, quite alone. In an age of digital video, handheld camerawork, reality TV-influenced postmodern media, his gaunt, ecclesiastical presence was out of time. Lukas Moodysson, the young Swedish director of Fucking Amal, Lilya 4-Ever and Hole In My Heart, whose early work Bergman himself sensationally endorsed as that of a “young master” is completely different from Bergman’s, though watching You, The Living, the new film from the seriocomic Swedish director Roy Andersson, I thought I recognised the master’s cold, searching gaze into the limits and the disappointments of our lives.
Bergmanolatry is sometimes an excuse for grumpy denunciations of the decline of arthouse cinema, and the decline of a media that supports it. But right now I’m straining to think of a European film-maker who really does believe in the urgency of moral questions the way Bergman did. It really is the end of an era.
peter bradshaw
this obituary first appeared on the guardian
Fake
In terms of the status of the use of the term “fake,” it is necessary to agree on a few points, drawing on theoretical sources having explored its archeology and anthropology.
The first is, that we are looking for the projection of the real “fake.” Because the debate around the original and the copy has lost its sense outside the circles of the old-fashioned elite, of private collectors of objects and museum experts, or functionaries of the offices for the control of trademarks.
Fake is one of the oldest narratives, an inner problem in art in terms of idea, techniques and expression. Perspective, to take one example, has been developed as a system by which the illusion of spatial dimension is created on a two-dimensional surface. The technics before the industrial revolution work with the three dimensions place, nature and human being. As explains Lewis Mumford, the mechanized systems introduce real time as a fourth dimension into the equation.
Old masters, new masters, clichés, mechanical matrices, Andy Warhol, Elvis Presley, political campaigns, preservatives and coloring for fast food, which help it become healthy, palatable and authentic in appearance. The model fakes in the biotechnics debate around the authenticity of the visual simulations of the DNA links with their excessive aestheticism, or the artificial nature of the computer-based animated presentations of microelements in human biology and physiology, of online games, of reality TV programs like the hugely popular show “Big Brother.”
“Fake pictures are part of the history of photography, going back to the early days of the medium. Elements of the image were retouched out of the image at will or added into it. Stalin used retouching for his political propaganda. Attempted manipulation of this kind seems positively dilettante in the light of modern digital image editing, which adds a completely new dimension to the possibilities of altering reality, and of using simulation and fiction.”
– Rudolf Scheutle, “Kathrin Günther,” in: Moving Pictures – Photography and Film in Contemporary Art (2001), p. 63.
In his essay “Travels in hyperreality,” Umberto Eco explains how his trip through America is a “pilgrimage in search of ‘hyperreality,’ or the world of ‘the Absolute Fake,’ in which imitations don’t merely reproduce reality, but try improve on it.
Not unexpectedly, it leads him to the ‘absolutely fake cities,’ Disneyland and Disney World, with their re-created main streets, imitation castles and lifelike, animatronic robots.” – as paraphrased by Ken Sanes.
And: “Disneyland tells us that technology can give us more reality than nature can.”
Over the past years, commercial cinema has seen an outright boom of movies like “The Truman Show,” “The Matrix,” “Goodbye Lenin,” which make a direct link with the topic. Can it be that the reason for this interest of the spectators is explained by the argument that society is becoming more and more sensitive to anti-utopian sagas, and does indeed care about the debate on the original and the copy.
As an opposite tendency, nowadays on the market the scheme for fast and immediate success refers us directly to the formula dominated by the real “Fake.” The mass media and pop culture, it turns out, are quick at finding their way and satisfy the collective needs of the market and the taste of the audience.
MTV is mixing its programs, balancing between advertising, musical clips and the new realism of a television made by spectators for spectators.
A new picture of the development of contemporary culture and correspondingly contemporary art, where critical reflections and social implications are based on the strong desire for a new realism, resting on the arguments for an immediate consumption, where along with the wars, natural disasters are consumed, and any other incident is welcome.
“People want to hear about real people living real lives in real places.”
– David Boyle, Authenticity – Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life (2003), p. 274.
True art, which is not content to play variations on ready-made models but rather insists on expressing the inner needs of man and of mankind in its time - true art is unable NOT to be revolutionary, NOT to aspire to a complete and radical reconstruction of society. This it must do, were it only to deliver intellectual creation from the chains which bind it, and to allow all mankind to raise itself to those heights which only isolated geniuses have achieved in the past. We recognize that only the social revolution can sweep clean the path for a new culture.
With his thousand technicians, Trotsky seized the viaducts and the bridges and the telephone exchanges and the power stations. The police, victims of convention, contributed to his brilliant enterprise by guarding the old men in the Kremlin. The latter hadn’t the elasticity of mind to grasp that their own presence there at the traditional seat of government was irrelevant. History outflanked them. Trotsky had the railway stations and the powerhouses, and the “government” was effectively locked out of history by its own guards.
So the cultural revolt must seize the grids of expression and the powerhouses of the mind. Intelligence must become self-conscious, realise its own power, and, on a global scale, transcending functions that are no longer appropriate, dare to exercise it. History will not overthrow national governments; it will outflank them. The cultural revolt is the necessary underpinning, the passionate substructure of a new order of things. We have already rejected any idea of a frontal attack. Mind cannot withstand matter (brute force) in open battle. It is rather a question of perceiving clearly and without prejudice what are the forces that are at work in the world and out of whose interaction tomorrow MUST come to be; and then, calmly, without indignation, by a kind of mental ju-jitsu that is ours by virtue of intelligence, of modifying, correcting, polluting, deflecting,
corrupting, eroding, outflanking… inspiring what we might call THE INVISIBLE INSURRECTION. It will come on the mass of men, if it comes at all, not as something they have voted for, fought for, but like the changing season; they will find themselves in and stimulated by the SITUATION consciously at last to recreate it within and without as their own.
(Fragments of the manifesto “Towards a free revolutionary art” by André Breton, Leon Trotsky, and Diego Riviera from 1938, and “A revolutionary proposal: invisible insurrection of a million minds” by Alexander Trocchi from 1963)
144
The irreversible time of the bourgeoisie in power at first presented itself under its own name, as an absolute origin, Year One of the Republic. But the revolutionary ideology of general freedom which had destroyed the last remnants of the mythical organization of values and the entire traditional regulation of society, already made visible the real will which it had clothed in Roman dress: the freedom of generalized commerce. The commodity society, now discovering that it needed to reconstruct the passivity which it had profoundly shaken in order to set up its own pure reign, finds that “Christianity with its cultus of abstract man . . . is the most fitting form of religion” (Capital). Thus the bourgeoisie establishes a compromise with this religion, a compromise which also expresses itself in the presentation of time: its own calendar abandoned, its irreversible time returns to unwind within the Christian era whose succession it continues.
i narrate these lines falling from my head ..echoes of lost youth
and the joy of denial making my own wickedness soluable..
like
the gold fever of slavery and de mulatta who survived
dat de whitey to bring me through all dis xy and z of my remote growing.
(chorus)
nothing to be gain here..
no pity.. of choice
and armor
of fighting..
you see its simple wicked
twisted transparency
of the said..
it and i ..
standing here with the sun coming
into my cluttered room of faces
hung crookedly from my past
in the future lightrays of decay..
“who knows” i hear dem say..
we may simply forget him..
DYE HARD PRESS NEWSLETTER #6
Introduction
Publication design is about packaging information in the most effective and appropriate way possible. Good publication design begins with good reading, because designers should always be working with the reader in mind and asking themselves how they can design a publication in such a way that it aids the transfer of information to the reader.
Good design is, of course, subjective. That is why no two designers will ever agree, but the majority of professional publication designers do agree on the basics of the craft.
Designers try to give publications a distinct visual personality, and the way designers dress up and display information determines the publication’s image.
This idea of ‘visual personality’ is vital to publication design and designers need to understand the elements that create such a personality.
Elements of design
There are seven key elements in a publication’s visual personality. These are:
• Format
• Grid
• Typography
• Visuals (photographs and graphics)
• Colour and white space
• Rules
• Creativity
These are the elements that make design happen and they have to work in combination and in harmony to be effective. It is important to understand these basic elements before setting out to design a publication.
Format
Format means the size of the publication. In most instances, format will be dictated by considerations such as budget, the publication image that you, as a publisher, want to project and, of course, whether the format is appropriate to your needs.
There are four standard publication formats:
• The A2 or ‘broadsheet’ (the same size as The Sunday Times or Rapport)
• The A3 or ‘tabloid’ (Mail & Guardian or The Citizen)
• The A4 newsletter/magazine
• The A5 newsletter/magazine/book
There are marginal differences within these standards. The ‘mini-tabloid’ size, for example, was popular for a period in the 1980s but has fallen away. There are also size differences among A4 publications – the standard local A4 size being 297×210mm and the US standard being slightly smaller at 285×210mm. However, what you should be interested in are the advantages of each of these formats and deciding which would be most appropriate for your needs.
Broadsheet and tabloid formats are primarily used for newspapers and are unlikely to be used by independent publishers, who traditionally use A4 and A5 formats. So I shall only deal with these two.
The standard A4-size page (which is half A3 or tabloid size) is ideal for newsletters and is the standard format for most magazines. In the context of independent publishing, however, the A4 format is likely to be a bit too big.
The standard A5 (half A4 size) is the most likely format for independent publishing projects. It can also be comfortably used in ‘landscape’ mode, i.e. turning the page on its side so the width of the page is larger than the height.
As mentioned, there are variations on the standard formats and ‘bastard’ formats are occasionally adopted by publishers who want to make a statement. However, you must be aware that the A2, A3, A4 and A5 formats are created out of standard sheets of paper, meaning there will be no paper wastage if these are used. If you decide on a bastard size, be prepared to pay for the wasted paper as the format is cut to size from a standard sheet.
You will have to decide which of these formats best suits the task at hand. If you want to produce a newsy publication, think of going the tabloid route. If you want a magazine feel, opt for A4, and if you are considering a book, use the A5 format. It is vital that you think this through carefully because each choice of format has ramifications.
If one takes design alone, for example, a tabloid is far more difficult to control than an A4 newsletter, and an A5 publication can also require design skill because you have less space to work with. There is also the issue of postage. Broadsheets are difficult to mail and tabloids need to be folded at least once, which means time and money. An A4 publication will fit a standard envelope as will an A5, but of all the formats, A5 is the easiest (and usually cheapest) format to post.
Grid
The grid is the architecture of the page. The grid defines the type area on the page (i.e. the height and width of the type area), how many columns of type will be used, and the size of the gaps between columns of type.
In most cases, independent publishers will use an A4 or A5 format, with the latter being the most likely choice.
For the A4 format, two, three, four and even five columns are normally used because using only one column of type makes for heavy reading. Two-, three- and four-column usage is the most common for the A4 format, but sometimes a five-column grid is used whereby columns are combined into two larger columns, leaving one smaller column of white space on the margin of the page. In this case, text runs in the two doubled-up columns and the small open column is used for pictures, captions and/or pull quotes (i.e. a quote that is pulled from the body text for emphasis).
Most independent publishers will use the A5 format with a single column of type, though two columns are also popular. More than three columns on an A5-page are difficult to read.
Typography
Typography is the most vexing aspect of design because very few people who design publications are trained typographers, as was the case in the past. Today, anybody with a computer and the necessary desktop publishing software can put pages together knowing nothing about type or for what purpose various typefaces are designed. And there are literally thousands of different typefaces available, the vast majority of them bad.
For most independent publishing, you probably need to chose only two or three different typefaces: one for headlines, one for text, and perhaps a third to provide some contrast in pull quotes or subheadings. Generally, though, for most purposes, two typefaces will suffice.
Of the choices you have to make, the choice of a text type is the most important because text has to be readable. As the great typographer Beatrice Webb said: “Text type should be invisible”, meaning you should be able to read the text without noticing the type. Some basic points on choice of text type might be useful:
• Serif type is easer to read than sans-serif type, so a serif typeface is preferable;
• Classic typefaces, such as Times Roman or Century, were designed as text typefaces, so rather stick to a classic typeface;
• Avoid using italic or bold for text type excessively, both are difficult to read; and
• Run out some text type choices and see which is easiest to read and then use it.
Next you have to choose a headline type. You might decide to stick to your text type choice and make the headlines bigger and bolder in the same typeface. This is fine, but it would be preferable to choose another complementary typeface for your headlines. If you are using a serif text type, chose a sans-serif typeface for the headlines. This will provide contrast.
Visuals (photographs and graphics)
Visuals enhance text. Positioned well, they can give life to an otherwise dull page. The basic rules when using photographic images are:
• Don’t allow images to compete on the page. Make one image dominant and others secondary;
• Avoid using poor-quality images. Rather do without them than use images that will not reproduce well. While one photograph can speak a thousand words, one bad photograph can ruin an entire publication;
• Crop photographs to remove unnecessary parts of the image;
• If you are using head-and-shoulder photographs of various people, make the subjects’ images the same size; and
• Captions normally go underneath the images they describe. If they don’t, ensure the reader can quickly identify the photographs to which the captions refer.
Likewise, good graphics add great value to editorial pages, but bad graphics can destroy an otherwise good publication. You have two basic choices: custom graphics and clip-art graphics.
Custom graphics are drawn by an artist to your specific brief. They can be expensive, but independent publishers can sometimes make use of the skills of an artist who wants to give their work added exposure, or who simply wants to collaborate on your project. If you can find a good artist who will do illustrations for love, that is always first prize.
A warning on copyright: you cannot use any graphic that takes your fancy in your publication without first getting written permission from the artist or the artist’s agent. Simply attributing the artwork to the artist is not sufficient. Permission must be sought and granted before using any custom graphics.
Clip art has no copyright restrictions and you can use it without permission. Most clip art is bad and it rarely fits the exact editorial need. However, some clip art is good. If you decide to use it, be selective.
Colour and white space
When designing pages, as opposed to the book cover, the simple rule of thumb for colour is ‘less is more’. Just because you have a full colour facility does not mean you have to spread it liberally across the pages of your publications. Colour is much more effective when used sparingly and for emphasis. Colour headlines, for example, rarely work. Nor do background colour washes across pages. But used sparingly and judiciously, colour adds great value.
Black and white images add contrast to full colour images, so don’t think just because some of your images are in black and white, they need to be rejected.
Remember that white is a colour. It is not neutral and white space adds greatly to the overall colour value of pages. The modern tendency is to use white space liberally so that the text and images on your pages are given ample space to breath.
Rules
By ‘rules’ is meant lines between columns of text type, lines drawn underneath stories or lines used for special emphasis. Again, the rule for rules is to use them sparingly and, in most cases, in small weights. It is seldom necessary to use more that a 2pt rule and rules separating columns are usually 0,5pt or 0,25pt. Cut-off rules separating stories are rarely more than 1pt in weight.
Creativity
While anyone can learn to design a publication given the right equipment and the mental acuity to master the necessary software, really good designers are born, not made. Everyone brings a fresh eye to their own publication and hopefully independent publishers will advance their design skills to reflect their vision for their publications.
How do you advance your skills? Simply, the more you work in design, the better you will get. But don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Look at magazines and newspapers; when you read a book, take note of the design and the way it pulls together. Keep a scrapbook of cuttings from newspapers and magazines, make photostats of good book designs that appeal to you and study the techniques used. Then, when you have absorbed what the designers have done, start to develop your own design style.
Binding
Many independent publishers produce saddle-stitched publications (i.e. a publication that has two staples in the spine that holds the whole publication together). However, your publication may have too many pages for saddle stitching (usually from about 64 pages upwards) or you may simply want a more elegant and sophisticated look, and decide that your publication needs to be perfect bound.
In the case of perfect binding, the pages can either be glued into the spine or sewn in. If the former, there is a risk that excessive use of the publication will result in pages starting to fall out, and you should ensure that the printer doing the binding uses quality glue applied in an appropriate manner. Sewing is more expensive, but much more robust.
In either case, if you are going to perfect bind your publication, when you design the grid ensure that you leave some extra space in the spine area (or gutter) of the page to accommodate the perfect binding. If you don’t, you are likely to see your text begin to disappear into the gutter of the page when the publication is printed. This results in a reader having to force the book open to read the text, thus putting pressure on the spine. If in doubt, consult your printer.
Software
There are no hard-and-fast rules regarding the best software to create your publication. The industry standard desktop software has been Quark on Apple Mac, but I have seen excellent publications done on graphic packages such as CorelDraw. If you are starting out, you might do well to consider the Adobe graphic suite containing InDesign (page make-up), Photoshop (image manipulation), Illustrator (graphics) and Acrobat. It is available for Mac or PC and this creative suite of software is poised to become the new standard, as well as being reasonably priced.
The best guide to good publication design is Kiss – keep it simple, stupid. Keeping it simple is always the best option, though not always the easiest, given the vast array of seductive design options and techniques available. Remember you want your publication to be read, not to necessary win design awards. Always keep your readers in mind. If you put design obstacles in their way, they will stop reading and all your efforts will be wasted.
© Kerry Swift, 2005
1. All great Writers should gather at the entrances of the major publishing houses and urinate on their doorsteps.
2. All great Poets should use the pages of the country’s most prestigious literary magayines as toilet paper!
3. All „poets” that rhyme should be castrated at once!
4. Poetry and prose should be immoral and blasphemous! If your poetry shocks and offends religious extremists, puritanical feminists, politicians, black nationalists, white supremacists, and everybody else then you’re probably doing something right! The paintings of Picasso, the symphonies of Mahler, and the sculptures of Rodin shocked and offended many people too! The last thing the world needs is more boring polite „literature”!
5. If you write prose just like ten thousand other writers than why bother writing? Garbage men contribute far more to society than „writers” and „poets” that write like everybody else! No two authors or poets should read even remotely alike!
6. From this day forward the words Poet, Writer, Sculptor, Playwright, Painter, Composer, and all other Artists should appear in capitals. Alfter all, some guy named god who doesn’t even exist appears in capitals and since Artists are greater than god then words like Poet and Artist should be capitalized.
7. There is no god as written in the bible. Rather, every Human Being that lives on earth is a god because Humans are the most creative animals on the planet. Therefore, Artists are gods!
8. Who cares about the rules of grammar? Take a baseball bat and SMASH the rules of grammar into pieces! Language must obey the wishes of the Writer. The Writer should take language and mold it and reshape it as he sees fit just like a Sculptor.
9. Poets and Writers need to look at the rest of the art world and learn. Poetry and fiction currently appear to be most backward mediums of the art world. Painting has raced forward like a fast car, jazz music has run forward like a rabbit, even classical music in the last hundred years has left the writing world behind in both innovation and boldness. Writing and poetry are
progressing forward at a crawl – just like a snail. All Poets and Writers should think of themselves as wrecking ball operators – we must SMASH the literary world as we know it into bits with a bold and revolutionary writing!
10. The system we live under has nothing to offer but endless wars, prisons, poverty, homophobia, racial and gender discrimination, class oppression, anti-sex puritanism, and human extinction from nuclear war. The literary establishment has nothing to offer us but airport novels, censorship (in the form of political correctness), pretentious „literary” magazines filled
with hack „poetry” that sometimes even rhymes, and the never ending boring banal „well-polished” „wellcrafted” „literary” fiction whose main purpose seems to be to help insomniacs fall asleep. Bartok’s symphonies don’t help people fall asleep! Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a riot when it was first played! Poetry and literature must become explosive, chaotic, alive, exciting, dynamic, etc. – just like the times we live in!
11. More than anything else remember there is no one else like you on the entire planet! So why should you write like everybody else? Write like nobody else writes! If you’re not creative than why should future generations bother reading your writing? Every Writer should be his own literary movement! Every Writer should be his own literary revolution!
Wolf LARSEN (USA)
Nitewalkz: Can you please introduce yourself and your work?
Franco Mattes: We’re a duo known as 0100101110101101.org. What we do is called Media Hacking, NetArt, Culture Jamming or whatever, but none of this is a perfect description of our work.
Nitewalkz: What is “Culture Jamming”?
Franco Mattes: The word “Culture Jamming” has been made up by Negativland in the beginning of the 90ies. After it was quoted by Naomi Klein in her book “No Logo!” and the Adbusters it became famous.
Eva Mattes: “Culture Jamming” is the natural instinct of people to take things and manipulate things that are already there and put them together to make something different out of them: To mix symbols of everydays life and make some creative work out of it.
Franco Mattes: It’s somehow like a collage using contemporary materials from different directions. Not only visual material, but radiowaves, sounds etc. Without asking for permission.. That is very important for “Culture Jamming”! Things are there and you should be able to use them without asking for permission, because they are Public Domain: Symbols, Ideas, Music, Slogans, Logos and so on…
Nitewalkz: Your biggest project so far was Nikeground. Can you exlain the idea of “Nikeground”?
Franco Mattes: “Nikeground” was a performance which we started in September 2003 in Vienna in collaboration with Public Netbase. The basic idea was to claim that Nike was pulling out a new Guerilla-Marketing-Super-Large-Skilled-Media-Campaign named “Nikeground”. The campaign consists of buying and renaming famous places in all major cities of the world. So you would have Piazza Nike as well as Plaza Nike, Nike Beach, Nikestreet, Nikestraße and so on. The first of the places to be renamed was the historical Karlsplatz in Vienna. We claimed that in January 2004 the Karlsplatz will be renamed to Nikeplatz.
We initiated a big marketing and media campaign. We had a massive flyer distribution in the public transports and a “NikeStyle”-Website: nikeground.com. But the main attraction was the Nike-Infobox, an eight-ton high-tech highly-designed container with a floor elevator.
Eva Mattes: It had to be very fancy to make it more believable that Nike started the campaign.
Franco Mattes: The container was installed in the middle of Karlsplatz and three fake Nike representatives worked in it and we’ve had a telephone line for feedback. Then we started spreading the news of the renaming and the installation of a big monument in the middle of the Karlsplatz: The Nike “Swoosh”. 36 meters long and 18 meters tall.
This really pissed of the citizens of vienna because they didn’t want that huge plastic monument shit in the middle of their main square. The city council quickly denied their involvement in the campaign, claiming the reason, that since World War II it is impossible to rename streets and places in Austria unless the names look similar to other names. To avoid messing up the mailing system. The citizens became angry for different reasons: Some argued about Nike exploiting people in sweatshops all around the globe, others wanted a public referendum for such a big decision. But the main reaction was surprisingly: “If the city can make a lot of money out of it… let them do it!”, or: “They own everything anyway, so why don`t we let them pay for it? Maybe we can exchange the renaming of the square with less advertisement in the streets.”.
Eva Mattes: And then there was Nike’s reaction. The first day we opened this big container they came to check who’s behind the action. They issued a press release which was stating that they’ve nothing to do with that action. We tried to explain them, that we were doing a cultural project and that we liked the idea of using the Nike-Logo, because it is omnipresent. We see it everyday since we are born, so why can’t we use it for a cultural project? Everyday landscape is full of logos and many artists are using landscapes for their work.
Nike didn’t agree with this arguments. We received a legal injunction that said that we have to withdraw or erase any reference to Nike’s name and logo within 72 hours otherwise we they’ll start a legal battle about 78.000 Euro against us. We decided to erase nothing until the end of the month. At the end there was a trial and their request was refused, because our attorney could explain that we did a cultural project and we’re not another company fighting against Nike. So they had to accept the possibilty for people to use their symbols in art and cultural works.
Nitewalkz: What reaction did you want to provoke? What was the purpose of the action?
Franco Mattes: We didn’t do it to provoke any reaction. We never do things to obtain a direct reaction. We wanted to trick an entire city and any reaction was welcome. Probably we expected to have more protests and not: “Nothing is ever happen in Vienna. At least it is better than nothing…”
Nitewalkz: Let us talk about Darko Maver? Who was he?
Franco Mattes: Darko Maver was a project we started in 1998 and which went on to the year 2000. It was about creating a non-existing artist and meaking him popular. We created the character of Darko Maver, who was born in former jugoslavia with a very stereotypical biography. The perfect artist: He lived a totally bohemian live, no parents, no art schools, problems with drugs and with authority in general and so on. So we could be shure that such a character would attract the attention of the media world immediately and they would jump on him as the new “mode artist” from eastern-europe.
The fictional Darko Maver was building very realistic murder scences with mannequin puppets – in a kind of splatter-movie style – which he leaves in public spaces (train stations, public toilets, hotel rooms etc.). He sets up this very violent and crazy and realistic situations waiting for unaware people to discover them and to provoke a media reaction. No mannequin ever existed and no Serbian newspaper ever reported Darko Maver’s performances. The images, that have been believed as “lifesize mannequin” are actually photos of real crimes, horrifying images of corpses freely available on the Internet.
The interesting and sick aspect of the story was the matryoshka-like structure. What Darko Maver was doing in the fiction - creating realistic scenes to provoke media reaction - was the same thing that we – 01.org - were doing in the reality. We were showing Darko Maver’s work in exhibitions and galleries, we faked press coverage and curriculums … what ever you need to do to push the career of an artist. When we finally thought that we had enough of him – the media attention was on the top – we killed him, because that would raise his attraction even higher. As you know a dead artist is better than a living one. When we were invited to the biennale in venice in 1999 we told the public that Darko Maver never existed. It was of course a big scandal in the media and art world. But I really want to make clear that Darko Maver was not a prank against art institutions, galleries or magazines at all. Most of this people knew that it was fake an they collaborated with us. The project was more to prove that art can be created and planned and even be succesful if you’re doing the right things with the right people in the right way.
We wanted to dismantle the way an artist is promoted and created by turning these mechanisms upside down…
Nitewalkz: Your latest project is United We Stand. What is it about?
Franco Mattes: “United We Stand” is a promotional campaign for a non-existent movie. The “movie” is called “United We Stand” and the subtitle is: “Europe Has A Mission!”. The campaign started with the production of a poster, which features five actors. Two of them are Ewan McGregor and Penelope Cruz. On the center of the poster is a big european flag and under the flag you can see to armies fighting each other: The Chinese and the US-Army. This is a situation that seems predictable in the near future for many analysts. They state that in about ten years the United States will have to declare War on China. Due to economical reasons. The screenplay of the movie is about the european president – a very handsome and charming guy – who immediately calls for a task force: five high-trained specialist known as the german, the italian, the english, the spanish and the french guy. This task force has the mission to avoid the global war between China and the USA without brutal force. European Style!
We’ve already promoted the movie with a huge poster campaign in Berlin, Brussel, Barcelona, New York City, Bangalore (India), Vienna and Bologna.
Eva Mattes: It is supposed to be a european propaganda movie - produced by Europe - to upgrade its dusty iconography. A big budget movie to make people feel the “European Spirit”.
Nitewalkz: Which Is?
Franco Mattes: I`ve no idea. And nobody knows
Eva Mattes: That’s the question of the movie. We want people to think about what Europe should be. Should it be as patriotic and strong as the USA? Or should it show the cultural variety and diversity of Europe?
Franco Mattes: When you start asking people to “Act as a European!” or “Be European!” they don’t know how to act. There is no european stereotype. You’ve got german stereotypes - blonde hair and drinking beer -, italian guys – good looking and always trying to cheat anybody – and english – red head and always drunken – and so on. But there is no unifying european stereotype and maybe it’ll never be. But why? Think of Peter Fonda in “Easy Rider”, think of his leather jacket with the european flag instead of the US-flag on it. It’s amazingly stupid. Or: Jasper Jones. Imagine his work with the european flag. This makes people laughing. But again, why?
Are we laughing because we don’t need a stupid brand like the USA? Or are we laughing out of frustration, because we don’t have this kind of imaginery and we’re not able to build it? Or are we laughing because we know that one day we’ll have such kind of imaginery: A large superpowerful nation instead of small independent countries?
Eva Mattes: The project is a piracy of hollywood propaganda movies like “Saving Private Ryan” or “Black Hawk Down”. Those movies are badly camouflaged as action movies which shows their intellectual poverty. Our movie is more ambigiuous: Somehow it is making fun of these movies and on the other hand it asks the question: What do you want to be? What does Europe want?
Nitewalkz: Is your work meant to be Communication Guerilla?
Franco Mattes: You can call it what you want: Communication Guerilla, InfoWar, Hacking Art, Media Activism, Media Hoaxing or simply pure art.
Nitewalkz: Are you both artists or some kind of left-wing political activists?
Franco Mattes: (laughing) None of that, but rather artists.
Nitewalkz: So how would you describe yourselves??
Franco Mattes: Usually we say we are spectators because we are staging paradoxical situations and then we’re sitting in the armchair and watch what happens.
Nitewalkz: Situations! Do you know the book Society Of The Spectacle by Guy Debord? Are you influenced by the Situationist International?
Franco Mattes: I’ve never read that book and none of their publications and i’m really surprised that in europe our work is always beeing compared to the Situationist International. We just don’t know them and we’re too young for beeing part of that movement.
Eva Mattes: We’re much more influenced by pop culture and…
Franco Mattes: …american drugs…, people, pranksters like Joey Skaggs or the KLF of the mid-90ies, Dada, Futurism…
Nitewalkz: KLF considered themselves as Situationists…
Eva Mattes: The KLF are wrong!
Nitewalkz: Would you agree with the opinion that billboards and advertisements are a pollution of public space?
Eva Mattes: In a way… since it is there and you can do nothing against it. The only way to survive that pollution is to use it in a creative way.
Franco Birkut: I’m used to them. I was born in this society and it did not come from the moon or another planet. It’s like TV, playstation, techno music etc. It doesn’t bother me. This is my world. I’ve never been in world without billboards and i also can’t imagine a world without trees. Maybe I would like it, maybe not.
Nitewalkz: Do you think the way information is distributed is affecting the content of that information?
Franco Mattes: No. I think that McLuhan was basically wrong. The medium is NOT the message, but the message is the message. Tools are overvaluated. There is too much discussion on tools and the way information is distributed and perceived. Let’s concentrate all energy on the content and not on the container or the tools.
Eva Mattes: The more information from different sources and directions you can get, the more precise is your idea of what’s going on. I would put them all on the same level.
Nitewalkz: What is your opinion on contemporary copyrights?
Franco Mattes: Totally outdated. Todays copyrights are not a protection for the artists but for the distributors. Labels, big art institutions, publishers and multinational film distributors.
Eva Mattes: The distribution of culture should be more important than the law that protects single works.
Franco Mattes: The free distribution and the fair use of culture is not in contradiction with the fact that an artist is getting paid for his work.
E.g.: The Free Software Movement. Linux showed that you can survive and even win against super-giant multinational software companies. Or Negativland: They do music since 1981 without copyrights and they survived. Or Wu-Ming: Five italian novelists whom are offering their books for free download.
We sell limited copies of the same content signed and numbered which we’re offering to download from our website for free. And we’re investing the money we earned to preserve the free distribution of content. The author rights were basically super-democratic when they were invented hundred of years ago. They allowed single people to be independent of religious or political institutions. Today copyright is doing the opposite: Restricting the possibilities for an artist… and slowing down the cutural development instead of improving it.
145
With the development of capitalism, irreversible time is unified on a world scale. Universal history becomes a reality because the entire world is gathered under the development of this time. But this history, which is everywhere simultaneously the same, is still only the refusal within history of history itself. What appears the world over as the same day is the time of economic production cut up into equal abstract fragments. Unified irreversible time is the time of the world market and, as a corollary, of the world spectacle.
like a blind man looking over his shoulder seeing nothing..
feeling the sun fall down from orange clouds..
water pours from the mouth of the sky as ironbirds make their
way across waves of raindrops.
the closure of my own awakening sings and sighs.. through this
indoor outdoor stream of consciousness.
never can the manchild find his way back after a long days journey
into adulthood..
the pained rising of light and the falling of the stars..
crashing in the shoreline’s edge. the light in the window is all.
i babble like the brook dripping waters to the well of our own understanding.
dead arrogance at the backward glance..
the blindness of our own ignorance..
forgive and forget is only regret,pain of denial.
i dig deeper to find that gimcrack amidst the rubble
of my own issues..
with wings to fly to distant places..
spaces of my own neon window..
glowing in the
darkness..a million miles away.
i crack under heat
the lines show a stream
leading to the sea
of remote possibilities..
waking is said feeling.
DYE HARD PRESS NEWSLETTER #7
FORWARD
A book cover, like a poster, is an attention grabber – a visual and verbal message designed to make us react by wanting and buying what is offered. The book cover is essentially the packaging of a product – what we see on the outside indicates what we should find inside.
BOOK-COVER PSYCHOLOGY
On display, the front cover of a book is usually the first thing we see. It presents the title, the author’s name and sometimes a subtitle (‘A collection of short stories’) or a strapline (‘New gripping number-one bestseller’). Almost immediately we look at the back cover if it’s a soft-cover book or with a hard-cover book to the inside flaps of the dust jacket.
The back cover gives us the blurb – a brief encapsulation of the content of the book – often no longer than a paragraph in length. Good blurbs are selling blurbs: they raise questions to which we will find answers in the book. This is what makes us want to read the book and buy it. A review or two adds credibility.
ANATOMY OF A BOOK COVER
Softback
Front cover
Spine
Back cover
Endpapers (not essential)
Softback with flaps
Front cover plus flap
Spine
Back cover plus flap
Endpapers (not essential)
Hardback
Caselining
Caselining spine
Endpapers
Dust jacket standard with spine and flaps
ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS OF A BOOK COVER
Front cover essentials
Title
Author
Strapline (if necessary)
Edition (not necessary for 1st edition)
Publishers’ logo – not essential
Spine essentials
Title
Author
Publishers’ logo
Back Cover essentials
Blurb
Review extracts
Author/s brief biography/ies with/out photographs – not obligatory
Publishers’ logo
Publishers’ website address
Barcode with ISBN number
Recommended Retail Price (RRP) SA and international prices if applicable
Flaps – soft cover or dust jacket – essentials
Front cover flap – book blurb (can be more detailed)
Price – not obligatory
Back cover flap – author/s brief biography/ies with/out photographs
Publishers’ logo – not obligatory
Publishers’ website address
THE DESIGN PROCESS
Questions to consider when designing a book cover
Background
1. What is the book title?
2. Does it need a subtitle? (for example, “A Collection of Braai Verse”)
3. Is it one book in a series – does it need a series or genre brand? (“South African Alternative Poetry” or “Language - Poetry”)
4. What is the book about?
5. Who has written/edited it? (author’s/editor’s name/s)
6. Is author/editor previously published? (author/editor biographies)
7. Who will read this book? (target market/readership)
8. Why should they read this book? (what value will it give the reader?)
9. How will it be marketed? (introductory offer, piggy-back, advertising, e-marketing, instore display, or radio/TV )
10. How will it be distributed? (subscription, mail order, Internet, retail)
Technical
1. What is the size of the book? (custom, standard or A5, A4)
2. What is the format of the book? (landscape, portrait – always quote height first)
3. How many pages of text and what is the stock (or type) of paper? (necessary to calculate spine thickness)
4. What is the weight of the cover board stock? (necessary to calculate spine thickness)
5. Is the cover to be varnished, laminated, foiled or embossed?
6. How is the book bound? (stapled or perfect bound?)
7. Is printing conventional litho, digital or laser?
8. Is cover to be full colour or spot colour and how many?
9. Can colour/image ‘bleed off’ trim?
10. What marketing support material is required? (such as sell sheets, mailshot offers, or posters)
Most writers want to be involved with the design of the covers of their books. You, the publisher, however, are responsible for briefing the design and final approval of the cover. You carry the risk and the cost of producing and marketing the book and want it to sell. The choice of cover is yours, not the writer’s.
Commission a designer or prepare at least three visual alternatives of your book cover to print size, which you can trim and wrap around book dummies (see below). You can then test your covers on friends, local bookstores (ask the manager if you can see what your book looks like on their shelves – they know what sells), book clubs, libraries, schools (if youth subject matter).
Design considerations for book covers
Front Cover
Which comes first: the title or the author? There’s no set rule, but generally the title comes first, then author. Many publishers of contemporary novels by established writers use the author’s name as a brand followed by the title, for example, ‘John Grisham – his new bestseller – The Testament’.
You can dictate the order of author/title and its weighting, establishing which should be more prominent. The combination of title and author – the titlepiece – can and should be used on the title and half-title pages in the preliminary pages of the book. This creates a consistency of identity from cover to text. Your titlepiece effectively becomes the book’s logo.
Cover Typography: Look at book covers. Look at the typography. Typography is the juxtaposition of text with images. How many typefaces are used? Does it work? If not, why not? Use a clear, legible typeface for your title whether it’s a serif or a sans serif typeface. Limit the number of typefaces you use, for example, one for the title, and a complementary one for author’s name. Avoid clutter.
Cover Images: Do not use clip art or copyright free graphics on your cover: they serve only to cheapen your efforts, and worse, your author’s. When using photographs or illustration artwork, shortlist a selection of potential images and use only the best image/s for a cover.
Now, can the image/s you’ve selected be used better – perhaps deep etched, given a different background, altered, flipped, given a different treatment, for example, negative, soft focus, solarised etc? Technology allows us to manipulate images at will.
How do your selected image/s work in conjunction with your titlepiece? Does it have an impact? Would you buy it? If it doesn’t work, don’t use it.
Remember, the only time your cover is likely to be seen in isolation is when a reader is holding it. What will it look like on a shelf of a dozen other books?
Create a horizontal version of your titlepiece using the same typefaces for the spine and don’t forget your logo!
Book Cover Spines
The spine is generally the most visible element of a book since this is how we usually see a book on bookshelves.
Staple bound publications don’t require spines but there’s nothing stopping you from creating a ‘false spine’ down the left-hand and/or right-hand edge of the front or back covers respectively – particularly if it’s a series.
Perfect bound – square back – publications have a spine which should be used to identify the title, author and publisher. There are two considerations when calculating the spine thickness:
1. The actual thickness of the bound text stock
2. Plus the thickness of the cover stock
Hard cover publications require three considerations to calculate spine thickness:
1. The actual thickness of the bound text stock excluding the hard-cover casing
2. Plus the hard-cover casing thickness excluding the dust jacket (you will need this if you’re printing or foiling the spine with title / author / publisher logo)
3. The hard-cover casing including the text plus the dust jacket
How to calculate the thickness of the spine:
You will need a caliper (a tool used to measure thin materials such as paper) to measure the thickness of the paper stock, or a printer’s material caliper chart, which is much easier.
Printers and publishers generally use the following formula:
(number of pages ÷ 2) = number of sheets x paper grammage calipher in mm = spine thickness mm
Soft- cover book example
160 pages of 60gsm bond text with a caliper of 0.084 mm and covers of 250gsm Gloss Art board (unlaminated) with a caliper of 0.241 mm
(160 ÷ 2) x 0.084 = 6.720 mm
plus 2 x 0,241 = 7.202 mm
I would format the spine at 7.5 mm allowing for the bulge of the fold to front and back covers, but keep spine titlepiece height and width of publishers’ logo within a 5.5 mm dimension and centre these two elements on the width of 7.5mm
You can make your own dummy using the actual paper stocks you will print on and measure the bulk with a ruler. Alternatively, if you’re using a commercial printer, ask them to make a dummy using the stocks specified in their quotation.
I prefer the dummy route because it is the most accurate way visually and three dimensionally to determine the spine thickness for a soft cover book, dust jacket, hardcover book or slipcase. Printers generally do not charge for these dummies – particularly if they want the work!
The bonus is that I can use these printer’s book dummies to test covers and I end up with book dummies of various sizes for use on other projects.
Front- and back-cover flaps - softcover or dust jackets
Soft cover
Some soft-cover books have flaps almost the same width as the outside front cover. This strengthens the cover and adds bulk. It also provides space for a more detailed blurb and author’s biography as well as a marketing opportunity for other books you may have published or plan to publish.
Dust jackets
The width of dust jacket flaps varies depending on the size and format of the book. Generally allow for a flap of at least 80mm width. Remember to allow for the thickness of the hard-cover caselining.
You can extend the cover design on to the flaps from front and back, but be mindful that your blurb and or author biography be legible if overprinting imagery. Be wary of white type – whatever its size – in images or solid panels of colour, especially if there’s a lot of text.
Back Cover
There is no reason why you shouldn’t repeat the titlepiece on the back cover though at a smaller size, since this reinforces awareness of the title. Similarly, your front cover imagery can be extended, repeated, flipped, or adapted on the back cover.
The blurb is all-important: present it in a typeface that is legible – that you can read easily – and readable – that invites you to read. Remember the leading (line spacing) between lines of type is just as important as type size.
Reviews can be given a different typographic treatment to draw attention, for example, in different typefaces or panels – but a word of caution: avoid clutter. Simplicity rules.
Barcodes require reproduction at prescribed sizes and will not ‘read’ if placed on dark backgrounds, in which case create a white panel to ‘behind’ the barcode.
Exercise discretion when sizing your logo. The book is your product and that’s what you’re selling. Don’t forget to include your website address or at least an e-mail address: I might not want to buy the book but I might want to see what else you publish.
BOOK COVER FINISHES
You can print a varnish – ¬ matt or gloss – to protect a cover from finger grease marks or even to isolated areas of images on your cover, including type.
Similarly you can combine varnishing with foiling – using metallic foils to highlight type or image. Embossing also adds another dimension to a cover by raising selected areas of type or image. Lamination of a cover – with either matt or gloss – is the best protection for a book that is going to have regular use.
You can combine all of these processes depending on the cover design and the capability of your printer. These finishes, however, do cost more.
Robin Stuart-Clark © April 2005
Ai un nume de-anvergură / Lema şi cimilitură /
Se pronunţă pasă-mi-te / În trei feluri diferite:
Cu sau fără paranteză / În pronunţia engleză /
Când pe nume-ţi zic ciracii / Tu eşti Doctor Smarandacii;
Dar în lumea francofonă / Extra sau autohtonă /
Ori de-i laşi, ori de nu-i laşi ? Toţi te strigă Smarandaş;
Doar pe piaţa românească / Mulţi vor fi să recunoască –
Şi c-un ac, el tot sărac e / Paradoxul Smarandache!
Epigrame paradoxiste
A FI sau A NU FI:
Într-o lume din poveste / Totul e, deşi nu este – / În
oglinda paroxistă / Nu-i nimic, deşi există!
UITE-L NU E:
Dacă-l iei pe “uite-l nu e” / Nu-i nimic bătut în cuie – /
Dintr-un lac fără de broaşte / Paradoxul se va naşte.
ÎNTREBARE: Fără sfaturi din afară / Un răspuns pe loc aş
vrea; / O femeie, de-i uşoară / Poate să rămână… grea?
Logici
De-i profundă ori precară
În meandrele gândirii
Sfânta Logică Binară
Dă verdicte omenirii.
Pân’ ce află că există
Şi-o să stea cu ea la masă
Logica Paradoxistă
Care trece drept frumoasă…
De le-om prinde cu minciuna
Că roşesc ca nişte sfecle
N-o să ţinem cu niciuna
Şi le dăm nişte porecle:
Dacă nu-i cu supărare
Fiin’c-aşa căzută bobii
Sfintei Logice Binare
Prescurtat, i-om yice Lobi.
Şi cu voia dumneavoastră
Sper că-mi veţi ierta sincopa –
La Paradoxista noastră
O să-i spunem simplu Lopa.
A vuit restaurantul
Când, c-o mină preţioasă
Adevărul, arogantul,
le-a poftit cu el la masă.
Când a fost să-şi dea bineţe,
Lobi intră ca stăpâna –
Lopa, face feţe-feţe;
Nu-i dă mâna să-i dea mâna…
Dintr-o mie de motive
Care cum se potriveşte,
Lobi vrea aperitive
Gata cât ai zice “peşte”.
Orice-i dai pe nemâncate
Fie dulce, fie acră
Nu-i plac ciorbe-amestecate:
Ori e albă, ori e neagră!
Dar cu lopa-i altă vorbă
Şi nicicum n-o lasă moartă –
Se amestecă în ciorbă
Orişicând e rost de ceartă
Căci cu ea e altă treabă
Şi-a văzut cu ochii visul
Ei de fel nu-i place graba
Si acceptă compromisul…
Nu e chip s-o lase baltă
Când e rost de-o aventură…
Lobi pare mai înaltă –
O problemă de… statură!
Doar aşa se mai explică
Şi nu-i vorba de mirare
Că deşi e fată mică,
Lopa este fată mare…
Cochetând cu adevărul
Îi ia mâna pe sub masă;
Astea-s sarea şi pierul
Ce fac mâncarea gustoasă…
Adevărul, surdo-mutul
Comentariul şi-l abţine
Mulţumit cu începutul:
“S-auzim numai de bine!”
Şi cum are sita nouă,
Bea doar o cafea Expresso
Între două nu îl plouă –
(Na-ţi-o frântă că ţi-am dres-o!)
Dinu LEONTE (USA)
146
The irreversible time of production is first of all the measure of commodities. Therefore the time officially affirmed over the entire expanse of the globe as the general time of society refers only to the specialized interests which constitute it and is no more than a particular time.
