Name: Lina Ozerkina

Education:
2000-03 Virginia Commonwealth University, USA. BA in Graphic Design
2003-05 Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Netherlands. BA in Graphic Design

Contact:
+370 6 8119 085 (Vilnius, LT)
+39 333 323 6292 (Torino, IT)
lina@alfa60.com

Poster and catalogue for the fourth edition of the Dead Darlings anonymous art auction that took place on December 19th at Mediamatic on location in Mass, Amsterdam. The theme for the auction was “Inadvertent Copy”.

Catalogues, self-published, printed and bound in a limited Edition of 100.
www.deaddarlings.nl

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The brief for this special edition of the Vilnius Contemporary Art Centre's publication “Interviu” was to refer back to beginning of 1900's when the official languages of Vilnius were Polish and Russian. This bilingual issue was entirely produced in Polish and Russian with a supplement inserted for the Lithuanian and English text translations.

This book is based on the international conference and exhibition series Migrating Reality which took place on April 4-5, 2008 in Galerie der Künste, Berlin, Germany. It is also based on material submitted to the online magazine balsas.cc. As with the conference, the exhibition, and the on-line projects, the book is an overview of the topic of migration seen from different perspectives, cultures and a variety of languages.

The concept for the design starts with a literal interpretation of the idea of 'shifting' and 'migrating'. To incorporate the idea of shifting reality, each spread reveals portions of the next and previous pages, this allows the reader to visually feel the 'in-betweenness' of each spread.

“Migrating Reality / Migruojanti realybė”
156 pages, English and Lithuanian languages.

Alfavilnius - has been referred to as an anti-book. A Lithuanian cyborg-novel, a work of wanderings, of ideologies, simulacrum, PR, fantasies, lust, power and world adventure.

The book's unorthodoxy begins with the cover which is in fact a page from the middle of the book, while the cover appears in the center spread of the book. Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville shares as an aesthetic key with the book, while the contemporary cyber-junkie storyline and narrative structure place it firmly in the category of contemporary experimental literature. Alfavilnius is Alphaville's evil twin city.

The brief for the book design was a series of keywords provided by the author among which were terms like virus, spam, junk, sputnik, vampires, tv-towers, corrupted files, etc. This gave rise to the books schizophrenic design with texts interrupting others, layered stings of programming code on the page at key moments in the narrative. At other points the text breaks down, gradually reaching a point of unintelligible binary code.

Bal Onirique by Žilvinas Andriušis is book of experimental and innovative poetry. It can be understood as a synthesis of different forms of artistic expression within the book form. At the same time there is an attempt to penetrate into the depths of the language itself; interpreting and exploring the nature of poetic language.

Logo and brochure for the Information Centre of National Gallery of Art. I started by photographing (thanks A. Miksys) the most important aspects of the info centre: the library and the workspace. These images served as the basis for the design with text objects layered onto the image in English and Lithuanian.

Posters made in collaboration with Jurgis Griškevičius for a one day festival in a Vilnius river-side project space called Kultflux. The concept for our collaboration was to each independantly design a poster (within given limitations) and then to print tiled A4's of the poster on top of each other. The outcome was a puzzle-like series of components that can be arranged in random variations.

“Mapping Lithuanian Photography: Histories and Archives / Fotografijos, istorijos, žemelapiai” is a 224 page book, which acts as a reader and catalogue of the photo/carto/historio/graphies project’s exhibitions. The book is billingual (Lithuanian and English) and contains four unfoladable maps.

Konceptas is a booklet / artwork which is part of an artwork by Gintaras Didžiapetris. The booklet contains transcriptions of radio interviews and audio documentation about a village in Lithuania called Konceptas (which means 'Concept' or 'Conception').
In Lithuanian and Italian languages, each starting from respectded side of the book. Later republished in a French edition.

Design for a record sleeve made for artist Gintaras Didžiapetris. The work centers around a type of 'ferry' platform that allows travelers to cross a small piece of river in the Lithuanian forest. The two sides of the record are recordings of a crossing made on the ferry (which involves a man pulling the platform from one bank to the other by means of a rope), the difference being that side A has the trip across one way and side B has the return, thus forming a kind of loop. It's like an analogy between the ferry crossing the river and the needle crossing the record.

“Stockhausen's Cocktail Bar Menu” by an artist Arturas Bumsteinas is a publication that contains 26 cocktail recipes re-arranged using the musical graphic score “Studie II” by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Since there are 26 pages in the “Studie II” score, 26 relatively famous cocktails were selected and processed through the musical score which re-arranged the cocktails’ ingredients and proportions according the score’s order.

Duration (cm/sec.) corresponds to the amount (ml) of beverage. Frequency (Hz) corresponds to the amount of alcohol (ABV%) contained in the beverage.

Superimposition of sounds corresponds to such actions as mixing, shaking and blending of the beverages.

A Vilnius Contemporary Art Center publication, edition of 1000.

“Bango Collective” is a project of the non-profit organisation Involved, that started in 2006, with a musical focus and concerned with the cultural aspect and social problems of the Gypsy population in Vilnius, Lithuania. Paulius Kilbauskas (Pablik) produced musical compositions using Bango’s voice, his lyrics, the ghetto and the gypsy-culture in the context of a modern society. The result was a hip-hop/dub/reggae mix with a taste of Balkan music.

The catalogue for the second edition of the Dead Darlings anonymous art auction that took place in 2006 at W139, Oosterdokskade 5, Amsterdam.

Due to the anonymous nature of the auction the names of the artists are not revealed in the catalogue. The names of the selected artists are printed on stickers located in the back of the catalogue, that could be applied to the pages as the auction progresses to fill the missing links.

Self-published, printed and glue bound in Edition of 120 copies.

Dead Darlings is an anonymous and subversive art auction series that started in Amsterdam in 2005 in collaboration with Tania Theodorou and myself. www.deaddarlings.nl

A promo EP for A.F.W.I. called .#kli_p., hand-made with recycled cardboard, limited edition of 20.

Bloknot is a ongoing project that came about when my grandmother decided to throw away some old soviet books that were collecting dust in her attic. I decided to give these books another chance by replacing the pages with blank notebook pages.

Hand-bound and re-glued back into the original covers and intended as sketchbooks. The following is a selection of the Blocknots I produced (blocknot in Rus. means 'sketchbook').

Identity for Café de Paris in Vilnius, the concept was to replace the word "Café" with a visual symbol of a coffe drop.

It became a flexible system for a variety of different applications like an event series, a special dj set or a film screening that Café de Paris organizes.

This book is for you. It is first an experimental Sketchbook and second an introduction to typography. Within the Sketchbook’s pages you can find histories, explanations, figures and examples dealing with certain aspects of typographic design and type in use. Printed on selected sketches, original posters, scrap and abandoned print-outs collected during the academic year 2oo4-o5 at the Rietveld Academie, each piece is an original, but I would be happier to know you use the book rather than put it on a bookshelf. In other words, it is what it is: a Sketchbook which is completed only when you write yourself into it by using it, even criticizing it.

Do read, do think, do make.

This book is an edited reproduction of Grammar Is Important by A. W. McGuire, Irwin Publishing, Toronto, Canada, 1949. Re-edited and produced it in collaboration with Tania Theodorou.

“Is Important” is a one-to-one reproduction of the original but edited in such a way that only the example sentences for each exercise remain, while removing any indication of which exercise. This reveals an involuntary poetry within the book.

As a second stage of the reproduction process, the final book was recorded vocally from cover to cover by Patrick Healy.

Self-published, bound and silk-screened in edition of 25. CD included, with an audio recording of the book as read by Patrick Healy.

A series of three text-less self-explanatory instructional books on book-binding techniques.

Each book guides the viewer through a step-by-step process of how to make the book (the one they hold). Each page has a full bleed photograph depicts a part of the assembly and binding process.

Posters made for the Open Day at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy using blocks of linoleum flooring sheets combined with letter-press type.

Tools define professions; when taken out of context these tools can often offer more ambiguous interpretations.

35 hand-cut stencil silk-screened one-of-a-kind t-shirts.

Six lessons introduce the reader to a 'vocabulary' of paper.

This idea is two-fold: firstly it should give you an insight to the world of paper stocks and their qualities, through the practice of Origami folding, and writing, which represents two of many ways one can interact with paper and discover its characteristics and properties.

I have chosen a broad variety of paper for this specific course to bring about an awareness of the differences, similarities, qualities and characteristics of each stock.

Secondly, over the course of the lessons, one's sensitivity to paper should grow to a point where you will be able to recognize a paper's qualities and judge its abilities. The reader should come away from this course with a new sensitivity to paper and a set of guidelines with which you can approach future ideas concerning paper use.

This experiment was done on the occasion of a class held by Will Holder in which the students were asked to learn a 'language' and then in turn teach it to Will.

Newspaper “The Noise” was created as part of a 'European Newspaper' project at the Rietveld, with the brief that it should 'unite' the countries in Europe.

I began by defining music as a subject that unites nations despite their various language barriers. The result is a music themed newspaper that illustrates and maps the tour routes of several bands and performers across Europe along with interviews and fragments of texts about them.

To show the routes of the various band's tours, an invisible map of Europe is suggested as the underlying layer of each page showing only the lines connecting the tour's stops in mayor European cities.

Silk-screened in an edition of 25.

The book 4:1 is the result of an experiment in reducing languages to shared symbolic imagery.

Four individuals of different nationalities were asked to compile narrative 'story lines' with a given set of 90 symbols. Each language uses a different alphabet or ideogrammatic system: simplified Chinese, Russian (Cyrillic), Italian (Roman), Hebrew (Hebraic). (In the case of Hebrew, pages are placed in the back of the book and read left to right.)

The set of given symbols was derived from commonly used words or concepts in an archetypical (international) student house hold.

Each language remains illegible to the other individuals. The pictograms thus form a bridge between languages allowing for an intuitive understanding of each composed narrative.

A photo series about people's motivations for coming to the Rietveld Academy. I asked several students to answer the question “Why did you come to the Rietveld?” the resulting answers where anonymously projected over spaces and surfaces of the temporary Rietveld building on Oldenbarneveld Straat, Amsterdam.

Produced in collaboration with photographer Adam Etmanski.
Black & white digital prints, size A1.

A series of posters made from collected info-graphics and symbology commonly found on cardboard boxes that I collected around Amsterdam.

An interview with photographer Idan Hayosh about his time in the Israeli military service. From an assignment about interviews and interviewing given by Jop van Bennekom.

5 sides / photographs produced for an assignment given to create a five image sequence. Subject of interest for my explorations was the matter of elusiveness, what appears to be caught in fact is not, and what appears to be free, might in fact be already caught.

Greeting cards made on the letterpress using random inks and papers followed by other postcard experiments using various techniques ranging from photography and collage to silk-screen printing and xylene transfers (don't try this at home).

Poster about the decline of letterpress printing. Made using 2 hand-cut stencils for the image of the printing press and red letterpress printed text. In edition of 5.

Manual exercises in typographic form. All works were made by hand using exacto-blade, white-out, glue, paper and a photocopy machine.

100 hand-bound pocket-sized books filled with paper samples from a bankrupted advertising agency. Various book-binding techniques were applied.

Two books in one slip-case which represent the route from home to school via bicycle. The first is a photographic representation of the route and the second is a typographic interpretation. Both books and the case are hand-made using paper, thick cardboard, print transfers, color photographs, glue and an inked bicycle wheel.

An experimental closed-circle accordion book that deals with the memory of specific persons from my youth, to whom I identified familiar objects and signs collaged using various techniques. On the inside of the book's 'loop' stenciled letters spell: Life Like An Open Book. Each page has an envelope containing a letter written and mailed to me by each specific person.

A poster for the word 'Positive'. The letters that spell out the word were cut out and glued to the poster, then the poster was carefully positioned on the main street at night, with black acrylic paint placed in front of the poster (at the distance measuring the radius of the car tire).

Essentially I used the tire like an ink-roller. After the cars run over and almost completely covered the poster in black paint, the poster was repositioned, dried and the letters were peeled off revealing the word.

The idea was to play with (or invert) the meaning of the word within the context of typography in terms of 'negative' and 'positive' space.

An exploration of hidden messages: a small hand-bound book (with images of TV static and well-known disaster photographs) is placed inside another book which has all pages glued shut. The small book (which opens) represents the TV and the inaccessible book represents real books. I tried to make a visual and material analogy about the way in which we are subjected to TV images daily, which can not be paused in order for us to realize or sympathize with their significance the way we can with a book.

Sketch on a phtographic print.