Typographic enstrangment. Transforming everyday letters into typographic art.

Private exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, 13.5. 2016 klo 15:19.

My artistic doctoral research has been published and it is not only a publication but an artist book exhibiting 24 of my artworks produced during 2013–2020.

1. Text Set in Info

2. Life is Worthless

3. Sugar Daddy

4. Try

5.  Notes from an important meeting

6. To from who?

7. Truck drivers

8. Up for a chat?

9. Sy vrou und kinders is

10. R is for robbery

11. Kahdeksan julistetta ja yksi kukkaistarravihko

12. mewe

13. Kaksi lattiakaivoa ja, 

14. blingbling

15. blind fear

16. westafrica

17. Paljon jotakin, ja

18. Whereinmeanswhat 

19. Tate Jukka ja Pekka

20.Lohen sielun elämää, Sagen nicht mer

21. 3112, 2113, 321 ,

22. DALr22

23. On top of dead

24. Labyrintissä

https://lauda.ulapland.fi/handle/10024/64571

Abstract

The subject of my research is highlighting everyday words through making typography strange, that is, the visuality and art of making written language visible. The starting point of my research is that typography is invisible and simultaneously ubiquitous, therefore we are habitual to it, do not see nor react to it. It is rare to encounter material whose reason for its existence is not obvious and self-evident. According to the theory of ostranenie (Viktor Šklovski 1893–1984), we can be reminded of this familiarity and existence of everyday details. Art can make the mundane visible, requiring the viewer to work harder and build a stronger presence to the everyday. This is how art reveals our invisible, yet, cryptic world. In ostranenie, enstrangement, life is synonymous with art and calls into question the mundane, which is no longer experienced nor seen.

In this research, I aim to show what the process of typographic enstrangement is from the perspective of a graphic designer and to discuss how enstrangement emerges in my designs, and how, through the process of enstranging typography, the viewer also becomes a questioning reader. 

In this research, typography is seen as a dialogical tool with which the reader starts to explore their own perceptions of the world as they reflect texts they did not notice before. Typography is no longer a traditional servant nor medium of delivering third party communication, but becomes carnivalistic art and a medium of dialogue. In this process, typography has the opportunity to become visible. In this research, I discuss the my typographic artistic production through the literary theoretical concepts of enstrangement (ostranenie, Šklovski) and carnivalism (Bahtin). This research is based on my analysis of the artistic material and the description of the artistic process. My research method is a combination of artistic and practice-based research, generating new knowledge and identity for research in graphic design, among other things. This research takes graphic design closer to the arts, a blurs this ambivalent and predetermined territory.

The research data consists of 24 typographic works I have designed. During this research, I conduncted and curated four exhibitions, commissioned six stamps and two sculptures, and wrote a researcher’s diary, all of which are part of the method I used to develop the typographic language of enstrangement. 

In this endeavour, I identify and map development of my own artistic thinking. In this research, the world appears through the carnivalistic Ministry of Truth and Typography® which is the fictional typographic test laboratory that transform everyday language to artistic language. This artistic research was conducted between 2013 and 2020. My research responds to the wish expressed by Jan van Toorn (2010), a critical practice provocateur and graphic designer, to bring out ideological and social contradictions in graphic design practice and in artefacts produced. This research blurs the sensitive line between art and graphic design, facts and fiction, and border between the designer and communication.

Keywords: 

artistic research,

carnivalism,

graphic design,

enstrangement,

everyday, 

polyphony,

typography

.