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The Poster Remediated - anniversary exhibition of the 25th IPB

02-02-2016
Kevin Harber,...
Marco Fieber,...
I am a Man, 1968
Valentina Cala, Je...

The Poster Remediated - anniversary exhibition of the 25th IPB

Poster Museum at Wilanow

11 June – 25 September 2016

 

 

The Warsaw International Poster Biennale is fifty years old. It has been one of the most important forums for the exhibition and discussion of the work of poster designers from around the world. A bridge across the divisions which have separated nations and communities, it has been a truly global platform for five decades.

 

To mark its anniversary, the organizers of the International Poster Biennale have commissioned a new exhibition to explore the past, present and future of this form of graphic communication.

 

Opening in Warsaw’s Poster Museum in June 2016, The Poster Remediated will explore how the conventional poster is undergoing rapid transformation in an age of ubiquitous digital screens and social media. It will show that the internet has not – as some commentators have suggested – killing off the poster. But the medium is being changed by digital technology.

 

Sometimes this means the creation of entirely new forms of poster such as interactive billboard advertisements which address the passer-by in lively and sometimes unsettling ways.

 

In other settings, such as the conflicts which exploded in the Maidan in Kiev in 2013 or in Tahir Square in Cairo in 2011, the Internet has provided an up-to-date means for circulating low-tech and hand-made poster images.

 

The remediation of the poster is not, however, a new phenomenon. The fiftieth anniversary exhibition will also feature iconic designs from recent decades which have found their ways on to cinema and television screens, the covers of books and the front pages of newspapers.

 

Designs like the ‘I am a Man’ poster or ‘Je Suis Charlie’ have been so impactful precisely because they caught the attention of the world’s media. Carried by striking black workers demanding equal rights in Memphis in 1968, ‘I am a Man’ was a powerful symbol in the campaign for civil rights in the USA. And in recent years, its message has been revived in new posters protesting against the deaths of young black men in Police custody in the United States.

 

‘I am a Man’ and ‘Je Suis Charlie’ shows how posters can promote justice and human rights. But posters are often accused of manipulating the viewer and of dominating our streets too. Some activists even remove commercial advertisements from their illuminated frames, replacing these posters with abstract art or anti-consumerist messages.

 

Continuing the tradition of the Warsaw International Poster Biennale The Poster Remediated exhibition will be a truly global exhibition featuring designs from Europe, the Middle East, China, Korea, Latin and North America.


The modern concept of the exhibition and the accompanying online competition was invented by Professor David Crowley, a British curator and an expert in the art of Eastern Europe, who works at the Royal College of Art in London.

 

Competition

The Poster Remediated will also be accompanied by a competition to reanimate classic poster designs from the history of the Warsaw International Poster Biennale. Details will be announced on this website in February 2016.

 

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