Lviv City Of Literature
Lviv is a multicultural city with a long trace of cultural importance being placed, as we say On the Crossroads. As in every ancient city, You will also find numerous stories of great artists, poets, ingeners, salesmens, people which have shaped this City.
Having a brainstorming session, we together with Office were analyzing what is the true spirit of our city, and what differs it from other UNESCO Literature Cities, so we discovered The Figure. Personalities are what drives its development. Institutions are often related to personality, often people are creating networks, not only institutions. Such important figures as Ivan Franko, Mykola Hrushevskyi, Solomiya Krushelnycka, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, Andrey Sheptyckyi shaped our city very well.
And this tradition goes through the ages. Nowadays we experienced how Markiyan Ivashchyshyn, Bohdan Tykholoz, Andriy Sodomora or Mark Zarhin are playing their roles in the creation of a contemporary Lviv city. So every project of The Lviv - UNESCO City of Literature office is being produced around specific Figure - not only the famous on, as Stanislav Lem, but especially around numerous young writers, which are not so famous and are receiving their support from the Office, to build their own image an name, to become another one brick, letter, tag, image, just another story in this huge ancient book called Lviv City.
Lviv City Of Literature Office
The "Lviv - UNESCO City of Literature" office has been in existence since 2015 and is based in the City Palace of Culture named after Hnat Hotkevich. The office is a team of cultural managers who are responsible for the promotion and project support of the title "UNESCO City of Literature" at the local, national and international levels. The team's tasks also include communication with and reporting to UNESCO for the title granted to the city. In fact, the Office "Lviv - UNESCO City of Literature" is an institution that contributes to the implementation and development of the strategy declared in the application for the title, and is an intermediary between the city authorities and the literary environment.
There are three main directions of responsibility the Lviv - UNESCO City of Literature Office is working in. Three layers or stages. On the local level Office is supporting projects realized in Lviv, on the National level Office mediates projects in scale of Ukraine collaboration, the third is the International level. We developed three different icons to differentiate those directions. You see this usability in the Timeline.
Logo was originally made by Konstantin Beglov it uses another context of diversity - letter divercity. City crowded and filled with letters, another association with Lviv as the open book city. The official Lviv slogan is Lviv - Open to the World. I've reinterpreted it for the purpose of our project as Lviv Is An Open Book. Colors we use are basic colors of the paper, print and pencil graphite.
The Figure
The Figure appears in the middle of the Night.
It’s the creature of our imagination, of our minds, visions and beliefs
When the figure turns the light on - the shadow is being exposed on the paper.
The Stanislav Lem Figure
Mirrors - Windows - Hyperspace.
In 2021 was the 100 Years Anniversary of famous writer Stanislav Lem.
There was many different activities being organized in the City, our studio was involved into - like the huge Mirrors Installation with the idea of usage of 100 mirrors outside the Lem Station in Lviv, to create an optical illusion corridor and 100 Years Of Eternity project - documentation of the creation process of the huge mural made by Dilk & Feros. Those projects were being developed under the common quote by Stanislav Lem We don't need other worlds. We need a mirror. So we are using mirrors as the starting point to develop the 2021 Figure project. Stanislav Lem was remembering his oval loft window in the old house on the Bohdana Lepkoho Street in Lviv. So we are playing with the idea of windows as some sort of continuation of the mirror quote.
There are two main elements beside the Window - the Black Hole and the Figure, but slightly more mystical than the original one.
Colors we use are some interpretation of Deep Space, Cosmic Shine and the transition gradient effect between two Worlds or States.
The Vasyl Stus Figure
2022 changed the focuse of the Figure story.
With Red Lines crossed slogan and quote from famous Ukrainian writer Vasyl Stus
Pursue your path - the one that is called yours,
the one who chose you as a brother.
Together with the Vilnius City Of Literature Office prepared an 2022 edition with the translations of important texts for Europe from the perspective of the War in Europe. The main idea is based on the idiomatic topic of «red lines», which we are reconsidering in three basic directions - first one is the topic of the red line itself, in the shapes of clock arowr (time matters), those two lines could also be considered as an open book, second one is the topic of personal borders - here we see the contour shape of the figure, third one is metaphorical border of the book - as the integrity of culture.
