Curator's foreword

The 19th edition of the Tallinn Print Triennial, one of the longest-running art events in Estonia, is devoted to reinterpreting the tradition of graphic art, while reflecting our contemporary time and space. Drawing on the architecture of this year’s main venue, which can be seen as an endless loop, the triennial invites us to imagine the life cycle of a graphic figure: what it is born from, where it dies, and everything that happens in between. The works of 14 artists displayed in the Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe pavilion offer multiple approaches to addressing the unprecedented information glut all around us.

A graphic form – whether it is a handwritten letter or word, a printed sequence of words or simply a symbol – is an imprint that contains the emotions and thoughts of the person who made it, their impression of their surroundings, the technical means used, and the resistance of the material. When the typewriter was invented in the second half of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the first to describe how the technical means of writing shapes our thoughts.¹Robert Hassan, “How Typing Transformed Nietzsche’s Consciousness.” In: The MIT Press Reader, 26 November 2024, https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-typing-transformed-nietzsches-consciousness/. Retrieved on 12 May 2025. Each time a thought is adapted to the platform on which it is published, its mode of expression is scaled accordingly: assertions become aphorisms and ideas turn into puns, rhetorical devices become telegram-style utterances. We seem to surrender to technologies that perform in our place.

The title of the exhibition refers to the potential vested in typeface, the potential for total freedom of interpretation. It embodies the calculated spontaneity of Paula Buškevica and Louise Borinski, the graphic designers of the Triennial, expressing uninhibited impulses while defying similarities to any familiar characters or decipherable symbols. “Visual” headings like these have been used in the past. One of the first of them appeared in the popular science magazine Znanie – Sila (Russian for Knowledge is Power) in 1964: a story by the Russian writer Gleb Anfilov that bibliographers call “Double Knot” to make it easier to refer to it. In 1972, American writer Gahan Wilson published a sci-fi/horror story, the title consisting of an inkblot.²First published in Again, Dangerous Visions 2. Ed. Harlan Ellison. New York: Signet, 1972. I would thank sci-fi expert Jüri Kallas for these citations.

Writing without words is called asemic writing, a seme being the smallest unit of meaning in semiotic terms. In this case, the title refers to a pre-linguistic stage where a thought is not yet fully formed and the vacuum begins to fill with meaning. Due to information overload, the reactive nature of methods of communication and the acceleration in the pace of life it has caused, we’ve come to recognize that the digital was designed for forgetting and the analogue exists for remembering. In such a context, asemic writing serves as a form of resistance that fulfils the function of maintaining memory. Interpreting it requires a little too much attention and concentration, which appear to be in short supply.

But how did we get here, where the biological memory cannot get by without prosthetic devices – i.e., electronics? Paradoxically, the Triennial as an event devoted to the graphic medium provides a suitable platform for an answer to this question. In the 15th century, the printing press and mechanical reproduction of text laid the foundation for standardised accounts of history, and the 19th century invention of the telegraph informed people of current events before they even got up from the breakfast table. But the Gutenberg era is now over, and printed media have been supplanted by countless cameras and algorithms that reflect and channel information from wherever and whenever.³Alessandro Ludovico, Tactical Publishing: Using Senses, Software, and Archives in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 2023, pp 218–219.

To exaggerate, 99% of the communications zipping around the world are volatile and it is not certain whether they will be preserved. At the same time, all kinds of recordings keep on accruing – the world is inundated with messages. The new challenge for humankind is how to shield itself from and filter excessive information. As semiotician Umberco Eco said, we used to want to know as much as possible, but now we want to rid ourselves of as much of the information as we can.⁴Documentary entitled Umberto Eco – La biblioteca del mondo (directed by Davide Ferrario, 2022). And yet – to the extent that “I” means anything – we are our own memory. We are creatures in time, covered by layers of memories.

To counterbalance the burden of filtering information and the expectation of having to be available to all instances 24/7, the main exhibition of the 19th Tallinn Print Triennial is unabashedly static and analogue. In juxtaposition with flickering screens, paper seems almost like a prehistoric information medium, a revolt against digital content generation, although seen from a media archaeology perspective, paper plays an important role in how we got to this point.

The emphasis of the Tallinn Print Triennial’s main exhibition is on information media, whether it is legible or illegible lettering (Mirtha Dermisache, Ülo Sooster, Taavi Villak); clouds – both the ones in the sky (Anna Niskanen), and the kind that devours energy in server parks (Lauri Koppel); light that leaves traces (Gintautas Trimakas); distinctive semiotic systems (Viktor Timofeev, Anne Rudanovski, Maija Kurševa); dataset schematics (Siim-Tanel Annus) and circuit boards (Algirdas Jakas); printing plates used to print nothing (Anastasia Sosunova); and a book that cannot be leafed (Dzelde Mierkalne). The exhibition examines the inception and evolution of an abstract and impulsive visual unit into larger information transmission systems, showing its contemporary manifestations in different media.

The exhibition’s bonus track, as it were – a one-night-only closing event at the Lindakivi cultural centre next to the pavilion – brings together time-based media, including works on 16mm film (Tõnis Jürgens) and magnetic tape (Doris Hallmägi) or installational sound performance art that combine both media (Lauri Lest); short films in a more classic format, which give an original interpretation to found footage and archival material (Maria Mayland and Zuza Banasińska); spoken word (Semjon Hanin) combined with audio and vernacular photography (John Grzinich). This kind of deliberate separation between different media may seem retro in 2025, but the least we can do to ease the natural attention deficit is to create conditions for a concentrated experiencing of different media.

The selection of participating artists was based on the desire to focus on the Baltic region. In our current geopolitical context, it’s essential to create bridges between neighbours who share our values, fostering greater social cohesiveness and forming a united artistic front. The regional focus is also a homage to the very first instalments of the Tallinn Print Triennial from 1968, when it was held as a joint event of graphic artists from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. I hope that this approach supports the effort to insert “cooling rods” into the world of art. Sustainability is not only a material phenomenon but an intellectual one as well, and it is one way to stem the tide of overproduction, acceleration of the rhythms of life and erosion of memory.