2019: The Year According to Alexis Mark

To commemorate the year that was, we invited an array of artists, writers, filmmakers, designers, and performers to share a list of the most noteworthy ideas, events, and objects they encountered in 2019.

Alexis Mark is the shared pseudonym of Marie Grønkær, Kristoffer Li, and Martin Bek and an office for graphic design, creative direction, and communication strategies. Its work takes a conceptual and context-driven approach to design with a focus on challenging conventions through ideas of translation and repurposing of media. Primarily navigating within art, fashion, and culture, their projects include the 50th anniversary edition of the Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, campaigns for fashion label Ganni, and identities for both the contemporary art and design fair CHART and the Danish Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. Additionally Alexis Mark run the project space Annual Reportt, which investigates the overlapping peripheries of various artistic disciplines through exhibitions, lectures and a spectrum of other social events.

1.
VENICE APOCALYPSE: HEIRLOOM, SUN & SEA (MARINA)
AND A FLOODED CÉLINE STORE

We had the pleasure of creating the identity for the Danish Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, which showed the exhibition Heirloom by Larissa Sansour—a project which itself has been a highlight of the year. The exhibition was centered around a two-channel video set in the aftermath of an eco-disaster underneath the biblical town of Bethlehem and had us visiting the Biennale for the pre-opening days. On this occasion we just managed to experience the Lithuanian pavilion showing the opera performance Sun & Sea (Marina), which completely blew us away—and later that day was awarded the Golden Lion. Taking place on a fake yet very convincing beach inside an abandoned building, the cast of carefree sunbathing singers tell stories of their leisurely relationship to the ocean, all the while we, the audience, begin to sense and dread the seemingly inevitable demise of our environment. Not unlike the scenario put forth in Heirloom.

Accordingly, it only seems too horrifically fitting to see the “acqua alta” literally reaching new heights just months later as this image of a flooded Céline store (thousand-dollar-handbags afloat as if predicted by a 10-year-old Superflex piece) made its way around the internet.

2.
INSTAGRAM TESTS HIDING NUMBER OF LIKES,
TWITTER BANS ALL POLITICAL ADVERTISING WORLDWIDE

“The medium is the message,” says the famous phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan in 1964, and for us millennials who live fluently on the internet and social media, this statement seems as true as ever. Perhaps we are just now beginning to question both the value and consequences of the number of likes we receive for our online personas—and in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it is interesting to see Twitter ban political advertisements. While motives in both cases might be more complex than just “doing the right thing” it is still interesting to witness the continuous reassessment of the dynamics between media and societies.

3.
MARK WILSON’S PHOTO OF DONALD TRUMP’S “NO QUID PRO QUO” NOTES FOR GETTY

When we first saw this image of Donald Trump’s handwritten notes for the press on the subject of the Sondland testimony we thought it was fake, despite the fact that it came out right after a press statement so incoherent it felt like a cross between a hopeless haiku poem and a Saturday Night Live sketch. But as Twitter users comment this image makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from satire. And as graphic designers (type-obsessede image-makers) we feel that this photo speaks volumes of the absurdity of the presidential situation of the United States. Naturally the impeachment hearings too fall under some of the most important events of 2019, and our thoughts go out to all of our friends in the US who find themselves stuck in this political twilight zone.

4.
THE FUTURE IS NOW
(LOS ANGELES, NOVEMBER 2019)

There is something daunting about being reminded that we are now living in the future, and that it is apparently set in Goudy Old Style.

5.
JAKOB KUDSK STEENSEN’S  RE-ANIMATED AT TRANEN SPACE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART

We experienced Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s Re-Animated in connection with our work with the visual identity of Tranen. The exhibition was centered around the mating call of the now extinct Kaua’i ʻōʻō bird which was revitalized in a distorted virtual reality environment resulting in an emotional and deeply engaging experience. This is probably the first time we have felt that VR finally seems to really live up to its potential as an artistic medium. Additionally the exhibition was accompanied by the talk “Extinction in Reverse,”, where issues on de-extinction and digital resurrection were discussed. Featuring art historian Xin Wang, biologist Britt Wray, Jacob Kudsk Steensen, and Tranen curator Toke Lykkeberg, the talk excellently unfolded the seemingly invisible relations between digital art, the sci-fi like phenomenon that is the Chinese “CRISPR” twins, and the potential of combating climate change through the resurrection of the Siberian wooly mammoth.

6.
THE FIRE OF NOTRE-DAME

While the April 15 fire of Notre-Dame de Paris was no doubt a tragedy, it also set off a series of interesting events. After French president Emmanuel Macron announced that the restoration could include “a contemporary architectural gesture” through an international competition, this holy grail of western European architecture got transformed into everything from a car park and a rooftop swimming pool to a provincial Russian 25-floor plastic shopping mall. And while these visions are entertaining in their subtle provocation of our European cultural heritage, the subsequent fundraising seems even more revealing of the European self-image. Within a few days after the fire, billionaires and ordinary people had donated nearly a billion dollars—far more than what is most likely needed to rebuild the cathedral. The immediate instinct to protect the image of European grandeur seems indicative of the role of symbols and imagery in the imperialist power structures—be they historic or contemporary.

7.
GAME OF THRONES, SEASON 8

In Scandinavia, Game of Thrones aired on a Monday, and unlike past seasons, this final season didn’t do the job of distracting us from the Monday blues—quite the opposite, actually. The final season turned out to be a global collective disappointment, fans were in a fury over lazy writing and treacherous character developments, only topped by a cameo of the now infamous foam cup. But above all it hurt to see dragon mother Dany’s legacy as “Breaker of Chains” and strategic power woman completely canceled out and limited to naive (mad)girl killed by her lover.

8.
FIRST IMAGE OF A BLACK HOLE

That which was once considered unseeable can now be seen.

Congratulations to Dr. Katie Bouman! She’s the woman who created the algorithm to crunch the five petabytes of data from 500 kg of hard drives from eight radio telescopes to make the first image of a black hole.

9.

JONAS EIKA’S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
AT THE 2019 NORDIC COUNCIL LITERATURE PRIZE CEREMONY

Jonas Eika received the Nordic Council Literature Prize for his short story collection, 

Efter Solen (After the Sun). Eika’s dystopian sci-fi stories challenge contemporary political issues in a mesmerising, repulsive mix of heaping bodily fluids, and the writer received the prestigious award with a very direct message to the audience that counted the Danish Prime minister amongst others. Besides articulating the uprising of nationalism and racism in the European and the Nordic countries he addressed the Danish prime minister directly about the danish government’s foreign policies regarding the refugee camps and deportation centers which display unacceptable conditions for rejected refugee families living there. He demanded that they should be shut down immediately and subsequently donated the entire prize money (approximately $51,000) to that cause.

10.

ANNUAL REPORTT 2019

Spawning naturally from collaborations we have worked on throughout the year, 2019 has taken our project space Annual Reportt into the realm of music. Through various events the platform has taken on the role of concert venue for occasions including a label night for Amniote Editions whom we have been working with since their inception, as well as a pop-up merch store and full blown release concert unfolding the visual universe we have created with the band When Saints Go Machine. It has been a pleasure to be able to explore the traditional definitions, boundaries and expectations of these formats through the platform, and we are grateful for the interest we have been met with. Thanks to everyone who came by this year—we are looking forward to exploring more of these formats in 2020!