Poster story
„Video killed the radio star“, book is dead, people are not writing letters anymore, nobody clicks banners… In the media world one can always find reasons to panic. Poster as well was mourned several times. Few years ago, when Internet wasn’t yet generally accessible, one could feel the concern that posters will cease to exist because of the popularity of electronic media or because of the speedy life style. I have a feeling that this fear from the unknown new is being stepped aside and pesimists undestood that every media has its own specifics and cannot be fully substituted for another one. Anyhow, nostalgy for good old times may often cover fear of loosing the dominant position or fear of change.
Poster used to be a campaigne itself. Today it is a part of advertising and other strategies and works together with other media. It is certain that this important urban phenomena steps out of the streets on the way of change. But it would make no sense for me to documentate here the various forms in the existence of poster or to proof its vitality. I am the curator of Trnava Poster Triennial 2003. I do not need to advocate poster. My job is, together with my colleagues, to present in the best way possible the world posters and to attract the biggest audience possible. As for the contact between curator and authors, curating of the show of the triennial means first of all correspondence – it would be really difficult to meet with almost 500 authors, who are exhibiting here this year. Such a pitty, because every poster has its own story, and some of them are for sure unique and striking. That’s why Poster Story is the title of one event accompanying Triennial 2003. Initially, we asked only the members of the International Jury to answer the following question:
Which one of your posters (or favourite topic or type of posters) you value a lot or the most? Which one has some special meaning for you, or you made it for a special occasion or for a special client, or it had achieved some unexpected result? The answers that we received inspired us to provide a similar possibility to the other authors. On the web pages of Jan Koniarek Gallery will be published some other poster stories, that will allow the viewer a closer contact with the authors of the posters. The purpose was to achieve more accompanying events. And thus to turn Triennial into a festival, that would include, besides the central competitive show, an accompanying program consisting of other exhibitions and educational projects.
And to add my voice to the prognosis of media development: I expect that posters can achieve another boom in the urban environment – if the various activist movements of the present times would join forces with good poster designers, a true poster revolution could result from this cooperation.
Mária Rišková
curator of Trnava Poster Triennial 2003