Visual media has always been a slave to manipulation of masses. In this assignment I am paying tribute to the color red, to the beauty and grotesquity of the communist propaganda, and its many shapes.
Propaganda posters were among the most significant tools for influencing public opinion in the Soviet Union and in all other communist societies. The text that accompanied each poster was a clear and explicit message for the public, while the use of specific techniques (photo manipulation, deformity, and amplification) would indirectly and subconsciously transmit a message in favor of or against an opinion, a person or a political choice.
Growing up on the ruins of the Soviet Union, the communist nation, which united 14 countries, each with distinct language, different religion, different skin color and the shape of eyes, couple of ghosts were still the same for all: Lenin and Stalin. Same furniture. Same lifestyle. Same ex-country and color red.
In ReadAllOver Im paying tribute to this beautiful and eerie form of art, that moved and manipulated masses.
The morphing video unites posters of communist societies (Soviet Union, North Korea, China) depicting perceived reality, painted by state artists, celebrating one, communist future for all societies in the world.
For the morph I selected posters from North Korea to Russia, with the center of the poster pointing a finger or a hand at something, or holding a propaganda material, I then morphed the pictures in a random sequence. It is Read All Over - because it was read all over, and well, because it was red all over.
* While researching for this assignment, I stumbled upon interesting information. That the person who has the biggest collection of propaganda posters from North Korea is a dutch man, who owns a stamp shop in Utrecht (where I live), and since his arrest in North Korea last summer donated his poster collection to Leiden University. You can read about his passion for propaganda here.
** Unfortunately nobody in the Leiden University knows where the posters are. There are more than a thousand.