BB Being photographers, what is your relationship to graphic design?
AB & NS We work within the context of magazines.

BB How have you two met? What is the nature of your collaboration? Do you each take a certain role in your projects, do you each have preferences in the type of projects you work on?
AB & NS We met at the art academy, but started working together after graduation. We both have the same goal but different approaches. sometimes the inspiration comes from technical perspective sometimes from the moment itself, but more likely both.

BB Your work has been commissioned by and published in a wide range of magazines. Is there a difference between the time you have become involved with this type of work, and now?
AB & NS When we started we took more time to develop a concept, now a days we experiment with different ideas on the shooting day, think we got more certain of what we can and can not do.

BB The International Exhibition is this time focused on small sets, editions, visual identities, long-term collaborations. Is there a long-term project you have been involved in? How did the collaboration develop?
AB & NS The long term project is blommers-schumm, we have collaborated a lot with several people over the years. Always small projects but on the other hand an approach that you build up with someone.
Our collaboration developed from a helping situation, after a while we could not say who did what and we decided to work under one name.

BB This edition of the Brno Biennial responds to the metamorphoses and the state of contemporary graphic design; its multitude, variety, vagueness and apparent superficiality. Can you identify some of the basic parameters, current themes or motivations of contemporary graphic design?
AB & NS We can only reflect on our own work which is very diverse. For us that’s a way of refreshing ourselves and keep all options open. We believe to have built up an identity where we try to think away from the expected or a fitting context.

Anuschka Blommers & Niels Schumm (NL)

Anuschka Blommers (1969) and Niels Schumm (1969) both studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. They started working together in 1998. Blommers and Schumm question the status quo of fashion photography by operating in a grey zone between fashion, art and photography, with shifting perspectives, where images move back and forth between different meanings. A state of uncertainty thus emerges in which merely an expression or a small detail seems capable of turning an image upside down. Their photographs have been published in magazines such as Fantastic Man, Gentlewoman, Another Magazine, Purple, Interview, ID, Dazed & Confused and NY Times Magazine. Meanwhile their work has been exhibited in museums and galleries, e.g. The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Groninger Museum, Foto Museum Foam, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, ICA in Boston and Deichtorhallen in Hamburg.

Biennial News

Short interviews with collaborators of the 27th Brno Biennial, authors of its exhibitions, jury members and Biennial Talks speakers.

COLOPHON

Interviews and graphic design: Radim Peško Radim Peško (1976) is a graphic designer based in London. He works in the field of type design, editorial and exhibition projects. In 2010 he has established his RP Digital Type Foundry that specializes on typefaces that are both formally and conceptually distinctive. His work includes identity for Secession Vienna, typefaces for identities of Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Aspen Art Museum, Fridericianum, Berlin Biennale 8, various work for the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Bedford Press London or a long-term collaboration with artist Kateřina Šedá. He has lectured at many schools including Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam, ÉCAL Lausanne, HFK Bremen, KISD Cologne, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon, Sint-Lucas Ghent, University of Seoul. Since 2011 he is part of the curatorial board of the International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno., Tomáš Celizna Tomáš Celizna (1977) is interested in graphic design in connection with new technologies. He is a founding partner of design studio dgú in Prague (2001 to 2005), recipient of J. W. Fulbright Scholarship (2006), and holds MFA in graphic design from Yale University School of Art (2008). He currently lives and works independently in Amsterdam. Collaborations include, among others, OASE Journal for Architecture, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Since 2011 he is a lecturer in graphic design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and a member of the curatorial team of the International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno., Adam Macháček Adam Macháček (1980) is a graphic designer. Following studies at the AAAD in Prague, Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and ÉCAL in Lausanne, he co-founded in 2004 studio Welcometo.as in Lausanne and is a member of 201∞ Designers collective. His work includes publications, exhibition catalogues, illustrations and identities. Collaborations include, among others, the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Théâtre de Vevey (seasons 2003–2012), Galerie Rudolfinum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Chronicle Books, Editions Pyramyd, Museum of Czech Literature, Brno House of Arts, California College of the Arts, Airbnb. For Brno Biennial he initiated and organized exhibitions Work from Switzerland (2004) and From Mars (2006, together with Radim Peško). Since 2011 he is a member of the curatorial team of the International Biennial of Graphic Design in Brno. He lives and works in Berkeley.
Translation and copy editing: Alena Benešová, Kateřina Tlachová
Production: Miroslava Pluháčková
Printed by: Tiskárna Helbich s. r. o.
Print run: 2000
1st edition
Published by the Moravian Gallery in Brno, 2016