A Work in Three Acts

Postcards is a video-art project by Italian artist and performer Eleonora Marzani. It consists of three films made of 42 videos in total, which have been shot over three years with the participation of just as many performers.

Each video is completed by a text, which is actually an interview made by the artist to the participants. All the texts have been published in three booklets, that have been distributed on the occasion of a homonymous exhibition at Galleria Biffi in Piacenza.

The Layout

The booklets are characterised by an articulated layout evoking the feeling of disorientation that is at the core of the art project.

In fact, participants have been brought in unknown and strange places and left alone waiting. In the videos we can see people who don’t know where they are, who do nothing and just wait, without knowning what. (And the disorientation feeling is also emphasised by the clothes that they wear, that have no meaningful connection with the places.)

Photographs are set on the double-page spreads in a lively way, while texts partly overlap images. Thanks to this layout solution, and also to the generous white space, both texts and images seem to slowly slide up and down on the pages as they are weightless.

Synthesis and Complexity

The covers enhance the complexity of the art project through a graphic synthesis which looks simple, but actually expresses the very essence of the artworks—the division in three acts and the concepts of time, waiting, loneliness, and the unknown.

In this way, the richly illustrated pages are balanced with plain covers that intentionally lack any evident reference to the contents. The only visual element is the vertical segment that, through repetition, makes a distinction between the three covers, also indicating their order of reading.

An Intellectual Expression

The absence of any other element including the title, gives a mysterious charm to the covers, that so seduces both the eyes and the mind of the readers.

In this way, it becomes clear that the illusory simplicity of the graphics is not the product of an extreme minimalism, but the essential aesthetic expression of a profound intellectual research.

The Posters

The graphic design project also included a system of promotional posters that propose the same graphic device of the covers, emphasising the sequential meaning of the vertical strokes.

—Nicola-Matteo Munari