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the design as a direct response to our experience
of the location. However, the way in which we approach each street and the design when we come to putting the issue together are the same. Because we are visiting someone else’s culture and neighbourhood and effectively sometimes walking into close-knit communities, we have to be really sensitive in how we approach it. We try to be as open as possible and spend as much of our time there looking, listening, researching and learning. Much of the design has an over-arching feeling that we developed in response to Treze de Maio and São Paulo that took quite a literal approach of ‘fragments of a street’. We gathered all the ephemera, we collected photo documentation grouping them into visual moods and ideas, looking closely at the typography, design, colour, architecture and think about how we can develop our findings into a sort of identity for the issue. That’s how our more fluid visual and editorial structure for this issue came about. Some of the pieces seem to run seamlessly into the next with no warning or intersect each other. We deconstructed all the usual navigational elements of a magazine and had to find a new way to guide our readers through. We had effectively one large narrative that evokes the feeling of the street instead of a tidy concrete collection of works. – How important is the translation of issues? For example, you translated Treze De Maio in São Paulo within the magazine but didn’t do so when looking at Boulevard Ring in Moscow? Is this down to resources or demand? Grashina: For us the translation is extremely important as we want the content to be accessible and we want to be respectful towards the place we have spent two months in. Also, a lot of the content we receive is written in the local language of the artists so actually the English is often the outcome of a translation. Resources or demand didn’t play a role in our decision to translate the Portuguese within the magazine as opposed to having the booklet with texts in the local language as in all previous issues. It was a conceptual decision. The São Paulo issue was an attempt to display the interconnectivity we experience while working very intensely on site and during the many editorial discussions we had while putting the issue together. The move to place the Portuguese next to the English was one idea we came up with that would help to make this conceptual change. – You’ve received support from the Goethe Institut and incorporate a few other advertisers into each issue? How selective, or open, are you to the idea of carrying advertising? Are there innovations within this field given the nature of your material which have been explored yet? Ricarda: Well, we’ve had some great support through classic advertisement which is pretty rare these days. Usually there are always cross-media offers you give brands today, whether it’s an editorial link or including social media channels. Since we never approached the magazine in this commercial way, the only thing we sell is a single page or a double spread. I tried to establish somewhat of a narrative with the advertisement in the back of the magazine, a mix of cultural local institutions or commercial brands that get the work we do. For example, in the year of the ‘Flaneur Forever’ campaign by Hermès we offered them the back cover because it worked so perfectly. So there is definitely a certain selectivity, which I think goes both ways. – What have you discovered are the essentials in making a street a vibrant place for culture and discourse? Are there any innovations you have noticed which could aid this? Grashina: I’m not sure if we have come up with a formula for this as we don’t choose streets that are necessarily vibrant for culture nor do we try to transform a street that isn’t (which is also a very subjective assessment to make). But I guess if I reflect upon the experiences we have had on various streets then it is communication that seems to play an essential role – and that isn’t a very mind blowing answer, I know. But if artists are able to engage in a dialogue with locals, if young and old can find a common ground, if minority groups have a place to express themselves and are listened to and if just a general amount of mingling can occur then that seems to help promote a healthy environment. – Do you continue relationships you build with the people in the respective cities. How does this manifest itself? Grashina: Yes, we definitely do. We form very close ties to our contributors as we spend so much time together. Some become very close friends or even house mates. Some contributors remain collaborators for non-Flaneur related projects as a working relationship has been formed that can easily be built upon. We have returned to the cities to do other projects or I even went to live in Athens for six months three years after producing the issue because I had such close ties to the street we chose and the people on it. As we spend so much time onsite the line between Flaneur being a project and just our life becomes very blurred. – What defines a true flaneur of their time? Grashina: Perhaps it’s someone who is continuously able to come up with unique methodologies to read their cityscapes and someone who is able to merge the skill of adapting to their environment with the skill of remaining an engaged and attentive outsider. You can purchase the back catalogue of issues at flaneur-magazine.com €15-€18 Issue #8 on Taipei launches in Spring 2019 69