Punctum. A project to discuss texts in several media: face-to-face meetings, printed publications, blogs, website. It is a society of readers and researchers, those in whose life the text is not the last one, and those who understand the power of the living word. Together we look for and discuss texts that resonate, hurt, light up, change.
The project is based on face-to-face meetings. Each of them uses a distinctive, borrowed schedule that is consistent with the subject matter of a particular meeting. It is used, for example, in annotations, information posters and bookmarks.
The theme of the first meeting is «The text as a guide: the ownership of feelings and ideas». The legend of the event refers to the secret societies of Renaissance, an era of first printed books and humanistic ideals.
The first meeting resulted in the creation of a printed publication supplemented by a public manifesto, a participant ' s card and a special decoder. The publication includes participants ' comments on texts related to the overall theme of the meeting, as well as key points of discussion.
It also contains photographic material, feature artifacts and quotations from the texts mentioned. There’s a time code in the fields that supports the idea of recording live speech.
Personal stories and intimate moments, which the participants are not willing to share openly, are encrypted with the font «Stenographer». It’s a caste typeface created specifically for a project based on cyrillic stenography. In everyday life, it is used for the quick recording of oral speeches, but it has a different function as part of the project, which is to conceal information. If the text is willing and has sufficient diligence, it can be decoded by means of a decoder that is available only to the participants in the meeting.
The theme of the second meeting is «Text as evidence: documentation of experience». The paperwork was based on photos of writers. Similar to the first meeting, bilateral posters were created.
The curly system in the second printed edition follows the logic of the first edition: encoded information, photographic material, thematic artifacts, quotations and statements. By joining the meeting, each participant becomes a co-author of the printed publication.
The initials of the participants use gothic font, as in the logo of the project, to highlight the idea that Punctum is primarily people.