Typozone /3/

…one, two, three…many…as we often say.

Psychological research also confirms that children really comprehend the concept of counting only when they have to count more than three things. We as organizers seem to be in the same situation with this third edition of Typozone. We are now beginning to realize that after three, there is only many to follow. In the foreword to the 2017 catalog we ourselves mentioned that we were hoping to organize Typozone more than on one occasion. Yet looking back at past events from 2019, it is already clear that we have become the initiators and participants in a process. We as organizers, the town of Eger, the participating universities, our invited and interested guests all take part in a similar fashion. Of course, this fact–beside providing some naturally occuring satisfaction– also highlights the need for responsible work to be done, so that Typozone becomes a decisive event of Hungarian and international visual arts.

This year, just as on previous occasions, we have the pleasure to welcome as partners many tutors and students from all of the country’s graphic design departments. They have also been joined by the Department of Visual Communication of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, supporting our original idea of presenting university courses that study the changes in the typography of our time as widely as possible. We hope that this will create an actual panoramic view and thus generate the opportunity for direct dialogue as an example of the freedom of the universities’ experimental atmosphere.

The question may arise as to why a traditional, offline presentation is needed at a time when gaining this level of knowledge and experience is ever more possible online? Can the latter compete with the former? Does it need to compete at all? Or is there something quite different here? It is about a stagnant moment captured from a continuous flow, which can exist and take effect as a reference point, as a highlighted event.

We also have the Golden Thumbtack Society among our co-operating partners, who are with us not only in the process of the installation of the exhibition, but also as a kind of spiritual supporters, thus supporting the creation of current and future exhibitions. Thanks to our collaboration, we can now present more posters than last year: there are fourteen prints from every university.

Last year’s theme of SYNCHRONY was replaced by COPY/PASTE this year. Our time is characterized by the need of constant reproduction, copying, recycling and the presence of unimaginable amounts of digital versions. The COPY/PASTE command once stood for a basic editing activity in word processing. Nowadays, however, it has become a general symbol of the new context created by the appropriation and mixing of existing content. In this collage culture, an unimaginable amount of COPY/PASTE is produced per minute in both content and form. In 2019, works on this topic are presented in two categories: in the first one, we asked for pieces dealing with the theme with total artistic freedom, in the other one we expected works with existing poetic texts.

The graphic and typographic reflections of the chosen topic in this catalog will hopefully bring the creators and the recipients closer to the questions that may arise in the true-false-authentic conceptual range. And thanks to these works, we may have the opportunity to think about the current state of the meaning shift when it comes to the notions of original and copy.

The exhibition is organized as a program of the Eger Spring Festival by the collaboration of the EszterházyKároly University, the Media Eger Ltd. Kulturma Group and the Cultural and Art Centre of Eger.

Lajos Csontó
head of Visual Arts Institute