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Rene Wanner's Poster Blog

As reported in the AGI newsletter, Henry Steiner, born in Vienna in 1934, trained in the US and in France, and working in Hong Kong since 1961, has been awarded a honorary doctorate by Hong Kong Baptist University in recognition for his work for graphic design in Hong Kong.

Details about ordering a copy of the Golden Bee Biennale catalogue 2004 can be found on the Golden Bee web site http://www.goldenbee.design.ru/eng/news/catalogue/.

Prices are:
Post fee (for everyone): $ 40
The price of catalogue: $ 30
The price of catalogue for the participants: $ 15

Oleg Veklenko, the director of the International Poster Triennials "4. Block" in Kharkov, Ukraine, will open an exhibition in Basel, Switzerland, of selected posters from the 2003 Triennial. He will also show photographs that he took at Chernobyl during his work as liquidator a few days and weeks after the accident on April 24, 1986. Place: BAZ City Forum, Aeschenplatz 7, Basel, Switzerland Date: Thursday, November 11, 2004 at 1830 The exhibition will be open during the events of the Culturescapes festival on Ukraine which include a Chernobyl Symposium on Saturday, November 13, at 1100, and a Round Table discussion "Ukraine What Next?" on Sunday, November 14, at 1100, in which Oleg Veklenko and Anna Shishkova, organizer of the 4th Block Triennial, will participate.

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On Monday, November 15, Oleg Veklenko and Anna Shishkova will give a lecture and slide show "Chernobyl, an ecological artifact" in Bern, Switzerland. Place: HKB - Hochschule der Kuenste Bern, Fellerstrasse 11, 3027 Bern, Switzerland Date: Monday, November 15, 2004, 1215 - 1330

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Oleg Veklenko "Remember 4th Block!" Documentary photography. Honored artist of the Ukraine, Professor of Kharkov Academy of Design and Arts Oleg Veklenko arrived in Chernobyl on April, 29th, 1989. Just like many other Ukrainian reserve officers, he was mobilized. For a few days he didn't get to Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and was impatient to get to see the contaminated ruins of 4th block. Then for two months 4th block became his everyday reality. Dozens of young men, pulled out of their usual life and dressed in military uniform had to do totally unheroic mundane jobs - digging soil, loading containers, washing the machines of the plant with soap powder. Occasional pictures that Oleg took almost absent-mindedly have become a priceless document and a memory of those who are gone now. Documentary photographs printed from scratched negatives, some spoilt by radiation, were one of the corner-stones that 4th Block Eco Poster and Graphics Triennial began with in 1991.

David Consuegra, jury member from Colombia at the 8. Bienial Internacional de Cartel en Mexico and invited speaker at the Festival Internacional del Diseno y las Artes in Xalapa, died of a heart attack at the age of 65 in his hotel in Mexico City in the night of October 30, 2004, after happily celebrating the conclusion of the festival with his friends.

I met David a few days ago at the World Trade Tower revolving restaurant in Mexico City, and we had an evening of intensive discussion on typography, on posters, on the problem of content and form and how, or if, both should be in some agreement in posters, if posters should have a meaning or message, if all designers of "Tosca" posters at the Biennial had seen the play and also understood it, if a font of a text should match the content of the text, what to do about the default font in a browser on which a web designer has no control, and so on. We both completely forgot to look at the splendid view of Mexico DF at night.

Later, in Xalapa, Maestro Consuegra presented an overview of his book on "American type and type designers" in which his immense and thorough knowledge of the history of typography is preserved.

I learned of David's death in an unexpected way:
On November 1, the "Dia de los Muertos" is a big fiesta in Mexico. Many families make a small altar in their home, richly decorated with flowers, with portraits of family members or friends who have died, with their favorite food and drink and cigarettes or books. In Mexico, All Saints Day is a happy celebration, with smiling skulls made from sugar or chocolate, skeletons dressed up as distinguished ladies, parties with music at the cemeteries and so on. It was rather a shock for me when Lourdes and Luis Almeida showed me their altar and mentioned that they also have a picture of David, the page from the Bienial catalogue.

"All of us must die" said the smiling La Catrina on the stage of the Teatro Estado in Xalapa on the night after David's death, and I know this is no comfort for David Consuegra's family, and especially his wife who was with him in Mexico. But what a way to go for David, what a time, what a place ...