Frozen Unfrozen. A Poster Novel
A large-format publication comprising 30 interleaved posters recounts the story of an intimate relationship from a wintry Chinese metropolis almost entirely without text. The two characters, called Frozen and Unfrozen, live in a tower block; and because buildings at these latitudes often have no heating, they have wrapped themselves in heating jackets and wear heat pads on their hands and feet. Most of the posters feature a large colour photo, while a few have rudimentary black-and-white drawings. All of them are folded in three and laid inside each other to create a leporello. When leafing through it, one is constantly confronted by combinations of two posters on the ‘double page’ that can be rearranged at any time. The complicated construction is borderline for a book, but in this case it fits, because the story recounted is not clear or complete either. The folded posters also recall the heating jackets and blankets worn by the lovers, while the sheets’ lack of cohesion is a play on the fragility of their relationship. Everything that is united here for an intimate moment in the narrative and the designed form can fall apart again at any time.
