Earlier this summer I spent time in Tallinn, Estonia visiting the exhibition Signals from the Periphery (SFTP), curated by Elisabeth Klement and Laura Pappa, whom I had collaborated with during the first edition of The Ventriloquist Summerschool back in 2015 (full disclaimer: TVSS is represented in the Spaces, Places and Projects section of the show.) Laura, Elisabeth, and I spent an afternoon walking around the exhibition and discussing the issues at play during the preparation and execution of their initiative.
The program aimed at surveying recent and urgent developments in graphic design at an international level, dealing with subjects such as economy, cultural interexchange and hybridization.
João Doria (JD)
Could we start with a concise description of the exhibition and the program at large?
Elisabeth Klement & Laura Pappa (EK & LP)
Signals from the Periphery is an international graphic design event that took place from July 1 to August 13, 2017 at the Tallinn Art Hall. The project brought together urgent developments in graphic design with a focus on practices that extend the field. These practices often expand into other cultural fields, while creating new hybrid forms, as well as seeking out new opportunities to sustain themselves. The exhibition at the Tallinn Art Hall showcased works from around 100 individuals or studios from around the world. The majority of the works shown were already existing projects. Next to that, five murals were commissioned from five artist and designers who expanded a specific research interest or project in the form of a wall piece. Alongside the main exhibition at the Tallinn Art Hall, a satellite student exhibition took place at the EAA gallery. The exhibitions were accompanied by a dense program of workshops, lectures, performances, book launches, and other activities. Most recently, the book Signals from the Periphery came out which elaborates further on some of the aspects of the project.
by Rudy Guedj and Will Pollard
JD
I understand the SFTP as an iteration of what the two of you have been investigating since 2013 with the work you have done at the Asterisk Summer School. In what way are the two initiatives connected?
EK & LP
Signals from the Periphery follows up on several themes that grew out of the Asterisk Summer School in Tallinn. The themes for the summer school editions have been collaboration, play, and—what we consider the very core of the exhibition—peripheries of the field of graphic design. With the summer school we’ve always been interested in bringing people together in order to explore surroundings and share thoughts and experiences. Similarly, the exhibition brought together like-minded works and placed them in dialogue with each other. When we were invited to put together this exhibition, our first thought was that we needed to open up the exhibition format and extend it to other forms, such as the public program and an upcoming book that carries on the ideas and practices of exhibition. These seem to be much more in line with our previous activities, but also in our opinion both crucial elements to accompany exhibition-making.
JD
I can tell that your take on periphery isn’t about geography. Can you unpack this idea of “periphery” in the exhibition and in the Asterisk Summer School contexts?
EK & LP
We’ve always been more interested in what’s happening in the fringe as opposed to what’s going on in center. Both of our practices belong rather on the outskirts of the graphic design discipline, and we’re keen on exploring this further, both through something like the Asterisk Summer School or the Signals from the Periphery exhibition. Periphery in this context functions as the opposite of mainstream graphic design, but also as a sort of outsider from any discipline altogether. The exhibition highlighted works which don’t necessarily belong to an existing canon but rather combine different skills and areas of knowledge, for instance, through collaboration or a sheer amateur’s enthusiasm of a different field.
JD
The lineup has very defined generational cuts. Could you talk about that as well?
EK & LP
Our intention was to concentrate on the younger generation, while also showcasing works and practices that paved the path to working in this manner. For instance there were five works from the legendary Dutch graphic designer Karel Martens whose practice we thoroughly admire. Karel has had an independent practice next to his commissioned one from a very early stage in his career. Many visitors to the show, unaware of his background, have noted that his works are the most telling and interesting in the whole exhibition. And needless to say, the generational cut plays little role here—his works could be considered one of the freshest and most on the point. Karel has clearly been an influence to many of the younger participants, and this is by no means a coincidence—he’s been an educator for years, and thus also crossed paths with many of the other participants.
Clearly the younger generation has elaborated their practices to have a more substantial and defined output, especially in regards to the status of creating independent works as a side-practice. Many of these undertakings, besides just fulfilling to need to create works without the presence of a commissioner, have taken more serious forms such as small businesses or a career as an artist.
JD
What was the motivation behind choosing the specific categories you did? (Can I call them nuclei?)
EK & LP
Initially we were interested in separating the works through different domestic spaces: the living room, the study, the kitchen, the recreational area, and so on. Even though this type of classification strongly appealed to us, we realized separating the works through fields of action would make more sense. The categories in question include objects and products, typography, publishing, tools, and music as well as events, spaces, and projects. While typography and publishing are relatively traditional graphic design forms, something like creating tools or running spaces could be considered a new phenomenon in the field of graphic design. As the exhibition largely concentrated on practices rather than individual works, these categories helped to define and show the different ways in which people whose practice departs from graphic design have ended up working.
A category we consciously left out of the selection was art. Though many of the works are put forward as artworks, we decided to fit these under the auspices of other subjects. For us, this type of distinction is fairly irrelevant. Similarly, we prefer to leave open the question to which extent other works could be considered graphic design or not. These types of classification have, in our opinion, become largely redundant. In the end it’s all just works of different kind that exist in the world in their own right.
JD
Could you point to a couple of projects per category that illustrate the range you’ve been trying to address?
EK & LP
One of the spaces we feature is fanfare, run by Freja Kir and Lotte van der Hoef in Amsterdam that facilitates different events and presentations by graphic designers. As their space was for a long time temporary, they developed a display structure that is adjustable and can take a different shape for different requirements of showing work. We have borrowed this display structure to show it in the exhibition for the works in the music section. fanfare has also initiated a series of record designs that are featured in the music section on their display furniture.
Another interesting example is Kulenturato, an Amsterdam-based agency specializing in handmade tapestry, which is represented in the exhibition with examples from the interior they have made for Apoxiomen Museum in Croatia. Kulenturato is a side project of graphic designer David Külen and artist Nora Turato. They view their tapestry endeavor both as a means of income as well as a way to escape to a sort of visual indulgence, neither of which is relating to their main practices.
For the workshops we invited two duos to lead the workshops, Kulenturato tapestry design agency led by Nora Turato and David Külen.
JD
We were discussing if there’s an air of nostalgia to the show given that the works displayed using new media are largely outnumbered…
EK & LP
It appears that the definition of new and old media seems to get in the way of talking about the works and exhibition as a whole. There were indeed a lot of objects as well as books shown in the exhibition, but at the same time you can see people using a combination of media to show and distribute their works. Jung-Lee Type Foundry is an interesting example here. For Real-Time Realist, a reader she produced and published under the foundry, which also functions as a type specimen, Jungmyung Lee commissioned a great diversity of texts and visual material. The printed book is promoted through a digital rap video that introduces the content through some saucy rhymes.
JD
There seems to be a tight connection between all practices displayed in the show and the landscape of design programs situated within art schools/academies in the sense of being autonomy/independency-first rather than industry-first in their approaches. Could you elaborate on that (no need to necessarily agree) and how it was articulated as well in the workshops?
EK & LP
Undeniably, there is a strong connection between the education people have received and how they proceed to work following their studies. The schools at the heart of this are really connected. There is also a familiar scenario of people studying abroad (i.e. The Netherlands or the United Kingdom) and returning to their native countries to set up similar conditions for their practices they experienced in their educational environment. You can also recognize many collaborations and friendships throughout the show. It’s undeniably a network of design practices that relate to one another through education, fields of interest, method, or distribution.
For the workshops we invited two duos to lead the workshops, Kulenturato carpet design company, led by Nora Turato and David Külen, as well as the producers of the fanzine Dark & Stormy, Bart de Baets and Rustan Söderling. Although all of the above have studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, we wanted the participants of the workshops to see how radically differently practices can develop and how designers can go on to make drastically different work having followed a very similar education.
JD
The selection of independent spaces and initiatives points towards a more optimistic engagement in terms of self-reflexivity than the emphasis on publishing in trade magazines or organizing public debates of previous generations. Is it so?
EK & LP
Signals from the Periphery tries to take a look at what happened to the practice of graphic design following the niche following the self-publishing renaissance. We set out to show the many ways in which graphic designers are finding new outputs and definitions for their practices and what kind of potentiality does design education have in form, social engagement, and diversity of output. It was important for us to involve projects that are ongoing, current, and could potentially give an idea of the zeitgeist of a part of the vast field of graphic design that is actively steering itself away from more traditional forms of the discipline.
(2015) by Paul
Haworth & Sam de
Groot
JD
In the beginning of this post, we described SFTP as an event rather than an exhibition. Can you elaborate on how the recently launched publication expanded the whole program and in what ways?
EK & LP
We see the book as a companion to the show and programme. The book sets out to give more in-depth insight into some of the (very diverse) practices highlighted by the project. While many of the designers presented in the show also have a practice in writing or have interests and projects that require a textual approach, the book primarily contains contributions from practitioners rather than people who very directly work with language. The topics that surfaced include education, self-organization, work, technology, storytelling, and much more. The book gave us the possibility to take a closer look at the work of some of these people, document new endeavours and commission new writing in the field of graphic design. The book includes nine contributions of various kinds, ranging from texts, interviews, discussions to visual essays. All of these carry the spirit of the exhibition without physically showing it. Rather than making a catalogue of the show we chose to capture Signals in this manner.
JD
You managed to accomplish so much in a year, and the book came as the final gesture to pave the way for future exploration. Are there any signals that we should look for that point to the future of graphic design?
EK & LP
Probably the best place to look at where graphic design is going is the work, projects, and practices that make the viewer question if what they are looking at is in fact graphic design. These instances always lead to discussions which open the door for new definitions to sneak in. As we see graphic design now, it is often flirting with other disciplines, and it will be interesting to see what’s further to come in this arena. Many of the works that were presented in the exhibition were propositions rather than finished works. We’re very curious to see how these projects and initiatives are further realized and how the boundaries of disciplines will be further diffused and questioned.
Signals from the Periphery is available for purchase via signalsfromtheperiphery.ee.
Thank you to Aryn Beitz for the careful commenting and editing along the way.
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