Looking ahead / looking back

Right at the outset I'll let you have a look at the concept I did with Jan Wächter for the yearbook 09/10 of the Theater Basel. We focused on the idea of the yearbook which was interpreted by the theater administration as a look ahead at the coming season. The problems we saw were that the reader is only faced with a promise of the plays and enactments to come. Therefor we decided to address the reader's concrete experiences and memories he has gained as visitor and spectator at the Theater Basel.

Our approach was to confront the look ahead with a visually separated time layer which communicates a look back at the previous season. This time layer differs from the preview of the coming season in that it's placed on small inlays printed on a different paper with all texts and images placed rotated by 90 degree counter-clockwise. Images as a medium that can't be produced in advance are only used in this layer. Formally the inlays remind of columns taken from newspapers as remembrance of an event in the past. The contents refer to the previews and present reviews of plays, interviews with people who were envolved in the production or information about concrete changes, actions or developments happened in the context of the theater and its compartments. The idea is to create a context the previews are embedded in and to give the reader a chance to see what promises made in the last yearbook were kept. That's why we took the cover of the previous yearbook and placed it as a kind of jacket in the direction of the review time layer around the new book to introduce the idea. More pictures of the yearbook in can be found on my portfolio website.