The Dream of the Leaflet
Helen Cho
In my childhood, my memories are dotted with the image of balloons carrying North Korean leaflets across the border. It was illegal to possess these bits of propaganda and one was instructed to bring them into school. On a woodland walk, one would often find the rain abused pieces of paper along with an exploded balloon hanging overhead. And so it came to mind: what was the dream of the leaflet?
Four parts of the dream:1. leaflets are for the vastest audience possible, crossing the hurdles of borders and government.
2. leaflets are essentially transitory in that, as soon as the message is transmitted, the vessel is of no use - in fact, it becomes merely dangerous or burdensome.
3. leaflets must reflect the urgency of the situation at hand. It is not for time immemorial that they are produced but as a sudden motion: a coup, a blitzkrieg, a bonfire.
4. leaflets embody subversion in their mode of distribution as well as their content. Thus, the dramatic flurry of leaflets out of the sky before the bombing of Hiroshima, the agitated man upon the street corner.
The web as it stands right now almost fulfills all these criterion. All this may change with sites that charge admission through membership, products that 'censor' content, and electronic cookies that track the coming and goings of the recipient.
So it appears that the time of the leaflet is now. And Piotr is unique in that he consciously exploits the historicity of this form.
First, his use of color is spare, and the lowered printing costs in the print medium of such a choice are parallel to a lower bandwidth in the electronic medium. His printed medium is always free and never sold.
Secondly, for print medium, he uses paper that will disintegrate and for the electronic medium he mimics this by changing the format or order of his pages.
Thirdly, his format is unusual in that he thrives by subverting whatever boundaries have been handed to him. The bug in an early Netscape browser was a crack into which he delved and created the Electric Posters, the vertical rectangle of the browser is merely a small window into the horizontal journey of the Fire Serpent as well as the long vertical rootworks of his Inner Vessels index page.
Lastly, and this is what I find most interesting about him, is his use of history to strengthen and charge his message. His choice of imagery, language and color is reminiscent of fascist propaganda. He does not ask us to exonerate and depoliticize a style - this sort of depoliticization can be seen in any sort of imagery that does not consciously refer to its source. This sort of depoliticized art can be seen in the recent forties style environmental posters advertisements as well as the icon for Macromedia Director. They are trying to evoke nostalgia and power while turning away from the historical implications of the era. This is the kitsch of advertising.
Piotr, instead, he asks us to enter into a direct dialogue with propaganda and history and race. How do you feel - what do these images evoke? Conflicted, I reply, admiring of the lines, wary of the history.
He is fighting fire with fire - and the imagery of fire is something that is quite prevalent in his work. He takes symbology and language and refashions it into a speakable subject, an object of discussion and commentary, a means to fight against this same fascism. By doing so, he takes away the exclusive hold that this subject has had upon a portion of our language and imagery. He allows us to speak of these lines again, to reuse these words again - he is giving them to us. But not as simply 'art' separate from history. With every step we take, we must consider how these two have colluded to create such a strong impact upon us. We must begin to investigate how we are manipulated, not only by the Spleen, but by all the other more obvious organs of the body republic.
I created this stamp to honor the work of Piotr Szyhalski.
The Exhibit