Posters in Action. Visuality in the Making of an African Nation, by Giorgio Miescher, Lorena Rizzo and Jeremy Silvester.
Posters in Action: Visuality in the Making of an African Nation is the culmination of six years of collaborative work based on the research and documentation of the two large collections of Namibian posters held at the National Archives of Namibia (NAN) and the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB) in Switzerland. Editors are Giorgio Miescher, Lorena Rizzo and Jeremy Silvester.
In Posters in Action: Visuality in the Making of an African Nation we argue that these poster collections form an important part of Namibia's heritage in the field of visual history, and that the historical posters in these collections played a crucial role in shaping the visual representation of Namibia. One aspect of the work has been the attempt to look at posters as an (inter-)active medium rather than restrict the analysis to a limited range of subject matters. A consistent effort has also been made to compare and contrast posters produced in Namibia with posters produced about Namibia in other countries in order to consider the role that they played in the creation of a Namibian identity. In this respect the volume has benefited very much from the photograph collection of the National Archives of Namibia. One of our main aims has been to generate a debate between researchers, designers, printers and students about the role of posters in Namibian history, by creating opportunities to see and discuss historical posters. For this purpose several workshops, exhibitions and transnational collaborative frameworks were initiated. Our initial workshop Posters in Namibian History was hosted by the History Department of the University of Namibia in Windhoek in June 2002. Follow-up workshops titled Plakate im Kampf (Posters at War) were hosted by the Basler Afrika Bibliographien in May 2006 and by the John Muafangejo Art Centre in Katutura, Windhoek, in September 2006. These workshops were part of a collaborative project in which students from Switzerland and Namibia also created two poster exhibitions that were mounted in Basel and in Windhoek from May to September 2006. Another series of workshops, Posters in Action, was first hosted by the Museums Association of Namibia in November 2007, on the occasion of which a revised poster exhibition was displayed at the National Art Gallery of Namibia in Windhoek, and later, in January 2008, in Basel. The authors of this volume were all engaged in this collaborative project. We would like to thank our partner organisations in Namibia, particularly the Museums Association of Namibia who facilitated the exhibitions and the workshops in Namibia, and the National Archives of Namibia for granting access to its poster archive and its photograph collection. The National Art Gallery of Namibia and the John Muafangejo Arts Centre provided venues for exhibitions and workshops. In Switzerland we would like to thank the Basler Afrika Bibliographien and the Carl Schlettwein Foundation for generously supporting the project from the start. Our gratitude also goes to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (DEZA) and the Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries (KFPE) for making the physical exchange of students and scholars between the two countries possible, as well as to the Max Geldner Foundation, the Werenfels Fond (both in Basel) and the University of Basel for their financial support. The History Department of the University of Basel was a close collaborative partner during the last years. [...]
This is an excerpt from the book: Posters in Action. Visuality in the Making of an African Nation, by Giorgio Miescher, Lorena Rizzo and Jeremy Silvester.
Title: Posters in Action
Subtitle: Visuality in the Making of an African Nation
Editors: Giorgio Miescher, Lorena Rizzo, Jeremy Silvester
Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien
Basel, 2009
ISBN 9783905758092 / ISBN 978-3-905758-09-2
Softcover, 21x30 cm, 256 pages, 214 full colour illustrations
Miescher, Giorgio und Silvester, Jeremy und Rizzo, Lorena im Namibiana-Buchangebot
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