Rough tongues

Exhibition of the Swiss poster Weltformat Poster Festival : Lucerne - Moscow , which we already wrote about , moved on a trip to Russia. Her curator Yegor Larichev told Olga Mamaeva about why the genre of a political and social poster is not in demand in Russia and how to change it.

- In Moscow, the exhibition has already been shown. Where will she go further?

- In all cities where the campuses of the Higher School of Economics are located. For example, now it takes place in Perm art residence. By the way, Perm is one of the few Russian cities where there is its own movement dedicated to the poster. A week before the opening of Weltformat Poster Festival there was an exhibition of local designers who work in this genre. After Perm, the project will be shown in Yekaterinburg, in the gallery of street art “sweater”. And in June we will open in St. Petersburg as part of Manifesto-10. So far, however, it is not clear exactly where: either in the building of the Higher School of Economics, or in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Then the exhibition will go to Nizhny Novgorod, it will be placed in a local art-industrial school. And finally, in early November we will open in Krasnoyarsk. Perhaps before that the exhibition will return to Moscow for a while - we want to show it as part of the international biennale Golden Bee.

- It is strange: you call large regional sites, and in Moscow the exhibition was shown at the Faculty of Design of the Higher School of Economics - still not the most convenient place.

- During the exhibition, the faculty was opened for everyone, however, it was necessary to pre -sign up on the Internet. Moreover, we arranged a Swiss design day, 12 participants in the Weltformat project came to us Poster Festival : Lucerne - Moscow , they all gave lectures, talked about their works. This gathered quite a lot of people. The exhibition also turned out to be popular - so much so that we decided to extend it for a month.

- I must say, the exhibiting method was quite unusual - the posters were put up right in the corridors. Why?

- We wanted to disperse them even more, spray throughout the building, so that the audience went around the exhibition as a maze, but decided to leave everything on the same floor.

The Swiss poster is distinguished by frame, a rigid structure, ideal proportions.

- In the regions where the exhibition will come, will the performances of Swiss designers will also organize?

- Just now it is being decided. I hope that a large delegation will come to the Manifesto. Although in today's political situation it is difficult to be confident in anything.

- Will there be a separate program for your students?

- We signed with the Higher School of Design and Art of Lucerne Hochschule Luzern an intent agreement. Rather, this is an agreement between their separation of graphic design and our faculty on mutual exchange. So, in May, we bring three interactive people from Switzerland: one of the best games in the Games of Mario von Richensbach, the founder and chief designer of the Etter studio Christian Etter and American Arthur Clay, who makes a large program to create virtual museums in Switzerland. He will make a presentation of his project for our museum workers, and lectures of all three guests will be organized for students of the Faculty of Design. In addition, the creation of a poster is one of the tasks for our freshmen. We agreed that Weltformat will arrange a virtual contest of student portfolio, the jury will choose the 3 best posters, and we will print them, include in the general exhibition and show them within the framework of the “manifestos”. It would be great to organize a real student exchange, but this is a very expensive thing. And then, in our first year 93 people study - sending to Switzerland all will not work even with a very great desire. I hope they will be able to learn something from Swiss designers at least during lectures and master classes.

- How does the Swiss poster differ from the Russian or, say, French? Is it possible to talk about the National School of the poster?

- National schools exist, but they are not always easy to determine and formulate. The Swiss poster distinguishes strictness, clarity of lines, frame, a very strict structure, perfectly verified proportions. Speaking extremely generalized, their design is a corporate identity of the ideal Swiss bank. For today's twenty-three-year-old Swiss, this is even more characteristic than for older generations. They are the children of those who participated in the student unrest of the 1960-1980s, and are unlikely to want to make a radical design. There is a pattern: the children of revolutionaries, as a rule, become neoconservatives. Young Swiss, in principle, do not want to rebel, they want a calm development, primarily cultural. The amount of money that is now being pumped into the innovative culture of Switzerland - contemporary art, museum technologies, design - amazes the imagination. Despite the fact that the Swiss culture, like the whole world, passed through the crucible of postmodernism, the local design retains the features of the traditional national school. No matter how difficult the poster may be, it is always clear what the author wanted to say. This is always a very clear and capacious statement.

The development of the red poster went towards brutalization, coarsening of the tongue. The white poster was refined, that is, obviously ineffective.

- With Switzerland it is clear. And what is a modern Russian poster?

- It's hard to say. In today's Russia, the poster is basically not in demand. This is not a mass product at all. Those units that are engaged in them do it exclusively for pleasure and in their free time from the main work. For example, there is a wonderful designer Peter of the banks, who left Russia to Prague, he abandoned the design as such, but every day draws a new poster and laid out it on Facebook. For him, this is a tool for communication with the world. In general, any poster is the most understandable language. He is lapidar, expressive, intelligible and clear. It seems to me that the poster should soon enter our use. Now is the time that he leaves the field of the experiment and gains practical content. True, first an order for a poster should appear. Then the domestic school of the poster will also be revived, partly lost.

- Do you associate this with the civil and political activation of society?

- Certainly. After the collapse of the USSR, all microsocial mechanisms were destroyed - society was very atomized. Now the situation begins to change slowly, different foci are formed everywhere: somewhere they are created by the state, somewhere-civilian activists, somewhere-just neighbors who want to solve problems in their yard. It is only necessary to give this a strengthening-and over time we will see a strong system of horizontal connections within society, which help to live humanly and love others. And a poster is an ideal media for communication between different groups of people. The poster can tell about the values, goals and meaning of this or that community more than any manifesto.

- You are talking about the domestic school of the poster, obviously, referring to Soviet experience. Is it possible to use it today, or is it already not applicable to modern life?

- It would be strange to use it directly. If we want to re -renew the country and society, you probably need to look for new technologies. The Soviet poster has established itself and gained distribution during the Civil War. If she had not been, there would not be a Soviet poster. At the time of the confrontation of red and white movements, an active search for the language was ongoing on both sides, with the help of which it was possible to convey to a semi -literate worker certain values. The development of the red poster went towards brutalization and coarsing of the tongue, chopped phrases, an uncomplicated copywriter were actively used in it (“every blow of the hammer is a blow to the enemy!”). The white poster, on the contrary, was very intelligent, exquisite, and therefore obviously ineffective ("1000 years of story is looking at you. Wash the bloody spot from your homeland"). They failed to understand their audience and navigate it, unlike supporters of Soviet power. This is perhaps the most striking example of how and by what laws the political poster works. Creating a new poster language today, it would be nice to remember this.