Narratives etc.
Final adjustments to the archive are in progress; the narrative section will be available shortly, which will enable the building of the initial narratives and the subsequent release of the site. DB
Progress Update
All images are now scanned, photoshopped, and uploaded to Streetprint. All basic bibliographic information is in place. So, there is now an archive that should be going live soon. Streetprint is going through some changes at the moment. Once these are complete the archive will go public. The narrative part of the site will follow, which will allow for the interviews, photos, stories, etc. to be added. DB
Images
Image uploads in progress, biblio revision resuming.
Update
At the moment, the Streetprint site is under construction. Popular print artifacts are added regularly to an off-line site, each artifact with visual and bibliographic description. The site itself is also undergoing various transformations by way of the software team responsible for the platform. Progress thus far has been good, but online representation will not likely take place until the new year. DB
Word Games etc.
Scanning documents in preparation for the development of a digital archive would seem to offer little to report, however a few preliminary observations are well worth noting.
The scanning thus far has primarily dealt with periodical publications - magazines and newspapers. The magazines in particular (reference here is to mainstream mags and newspapers, dailies and weeklies) offer a rather startling picture of (1) repetition, (2) homogeneity, and (3) interpellation.
(1) Word games, and sudoku to a lesser extent, appear in nearly every publication. Some publications highlight such items, others simply add them, tack them on to the end of other things. Other forms of repetition include sex, cooking, and current affairs. (2) The format is surprisingly similar across a variety of publications. Busy cover page, two ads, contents often mixed with newsy items, celeb news, main article, then a series of variety ‘reports’ making up the basic contents: home, garden, beauty, cooking, celeb, health, perhaps sport, then games. The magazine may be glossy and high priced, or it may be decidedly cheap and aimed at a middle or working class audience, often women aged 20-45 I would say, but the variation, on a superficial level at least, is minimal. The extent of the difference relative to each publication and the associated readership is no doubt significant in some way but would take longer to tease out. (3) A quick look at the publishing credits and the ads for other magazines demonstrates that many seemingly independent publications are in fact part of a print portfolio owned and operated by one company in some way or another. However, the economic crisis may have something to do with this observation. Many publications were under great stress due to decreased ad revenue, a situation that could lead to greater self-promotion.
The word games, but also recipes, are quite striking because they often appear in publications that would seem to offer no such thing. For example, a magazine on home design will have a recipe for cakes; a publication on gardening will demonstrate how to make summer drinks, etc. All will have a word game of some sort.
It is also noteworthy that there are very few, if any, local men’s magazines. In fact, I do not think that I have even one, unless the more politically-oriented Czech and Slovak mags such as Tyzden or Tyden are considered, although I do not see why they should be strictly ‘for men’. There are foreign-produced examples such as GQ or auto mags, as well as the more sexually explicit variety, available in Bratislava but most of these, I think, must be considered as more niche than popular. Along the same lines, I am not aware of any magazines for men or women, for example, in the gay and lesbian category.
The most popular magazines (I refer here mostly to the women’s magazines) have the following qualities in common: color print; many photos; short texts; busy, layered organization (besides main articles); emphasized sex/sexiness; variety of expected topics (cooking/home, beauty/sport, current affairs/games); recognizable structure. It might be fair to say that each magazine breaks down into: What’s new? How to. Play. The overall emphases focus on relationships (celeb, personal, and family), self-improvement (entitlement?) relative to everyday life, and distraction (joy?).
DB
… ?
New Phase
Now back in Canada and more or less settled in Strathcona once more, as of the week of September 8th Streetprint Bratislava moves into the next phase - the development of an archive and website. The first steps will involve the physical scanning of texts followed by bibliographical description and uploading images to build the archive. This will take several weeks at minimum. Otherwise, an ongoing review of recorded interviews and notes will help to flesh out the narratives and organize the information that will hopefully lead to an interesting ‘narratives’ section on the website.
Updates and info will continue. DB
Box Stores
I should add before I forget that in a conversation with someone from a box store in Bratislava I found out that the books section is run by a contracted company. This company works with publishers. But the stock changes according to buyer preference. In short, there is no literary aspect to the selections - everything is driven by demand, or profit. It is not surprising then to see a rather eclectic mix, for example, cook books, dictionaries, romances, mysteries, picture books, children’s books, the latest best seller, etc. on shelves, in piles, or on tables. DB
Social Networking
Back in Edmonton, a few comments on the social networking aspect of this project:
I set up a Facebook page, which allows people to become friends. This was then changed to a Facebook site, which is better because people become ‘fans’ rather than ‘friends’. The goal of the site was to generate conversation among Slovaks, mostly living in Bratislava or Slovakia, that would contribute to my understanding of ‘pop print’ as it pertained to the Bratislava/Slovak environment. This was difficult for me as I am not inclined to use Facebook for personal reasons and since I was not using Facebook previously the whole thing had to be started from scratch, with 0 friends or fans. My wife was able to provide pseudo fans through her Slovak contacts to boost numbers. However, critical mass was never reached. That being said, there was some very valuable discussion and information gathered. Ideally, this site would have been started much earlier, and perhaps with less emphasis on the project and more on print, books, what’s cool, what’s not, etc. I think it would be easier to engage people when there is nothing at stake, no project emphasis. Friends want to help with such things, but fans perhaps just want to come and go and not feel the obligation. Perhaps. It would also have been useful to connect to other sites or forums for discussion of books, thus creating links. This was attempted several times, but never with any success. It may have been better in some ways to simply participate more on the sites already up and running, for example the Facebook site Knihy which boasts of 40,000 plus users. Overall, the Facebook site did not add anything to the collection aspect of the project, with few good tips coming forth. However, in terms of book recommendations and narratives related to streetprint in bratislava, there was benefit, and this speaks to potential future use by others, particularly those with a better grasp of and more contact with the Facebook realm.
The blog was far more satisfying for me as it allowed for the reporting of work in progress, however incomplete, in a form that presented, if not encouraged, more extended involvement. It was often time consuming and nomadic internet use is not always convenient, but between text and photos the blog was personally more rewarding. This was in part because in contrast to the Facebook site, the English blog seemed a release from the difficulties of writing and speaking in Slovak. It was, I think more importantly, also quite good in that it forced me to record and to consider what I was doing on a regular basis. This was particularly useful after unrecorded conversations, time spent walking and looking, or as regards comments and discussions after recorded interviews. It was not uncommon for interviewees to continue talking after I turned off the recorder, suddenly coming back to the topics at hand just when I seemed to be on my way out the door, and often providing key information. The blog certainly could have been more of a personal story, for I was using it mostly as a reporting mechanism. But this aspect could be explored further by others, perhaps. Mariana’s addition of Facebook access to her blog site was a good idea. I added this to the bottom of my blog - it could provide something of a crossover between the two forms of communication, as well as languages and network communities. Along these lines, it is clear to me that knowledge of html is useful. I mucked about with it regarding tumblr, but the trial and error process is painful and slow, and particularly aggravating with so many other things to do and not enough time to do them.
It might be worth giving future participants info as to how to set up email, Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc. specifically for the project with proper domain names, links etc. so as to make the process smooth and coordinated.
DB
A final post and a few random comments from the airport in Vienna as I have five hours in the middle of the night and free wireless to idle away the time until a flight to London.
Two weeks in Bratislava to prepare would have have been at least as valuable as the two months prior to departure in Edmonton. The internet is simply not the same as hitting the street.
In preparation meetings prior to deparature I remember speaking enthusiastically of making big purchases immediately, thus clearing the way to other forms of inquiry… no such thing happened. The first week in BA I walked, met people, spoke a lot, looked a lot, and bought nothing. It was not until the fourth week that I began to make purchases, feeling more confident about what was popular and the best way to go about making the purchases. For example, I wanted to make good use of the money, not only making good choices, but also spending the money where it would go the farthest. However, I also thought that I would spend the money at shops I wanted to support - which generally means smaller more artistic or eclectic shops rather than the supermarket. These directions were often contradictory. In the end, I made purchases from a number of locations, but spent the bulk of the funds I set aside for books (not magazines or newspapers) with a firm that offers internet orders at discount prices. Lower prices, same books, convenience, and a young, friendly management team with good knowledge of the pop market (they have a shop as well). The price was key, but having someone to speak with about specific purchases was equally important.
I also remember speaking about the narratives component of the project and suggesting that focusing on one or several sellers/publishers would be a good way of narrowing the range of investigation while strengthening the result (case studies). This did happen to some degree, and could be highlighted with further work in Edmonton, but not as I had planned. I ended up speaking with many people, and in almost every case, the stories they told or the situation they described overlapped with other narratives. And so the result, which is yet to be determined, seems to be more of a network of partial stories, each contributing to an overall view of the way in which literature is produced and received in Bratislava today than a selection of in depth tales.
The photography is quite important, I think. It really gives people a better sense of what you are looking at and sets the print in the street.
There is room for follow-up work in BA, perhaps by others with different persepctives, skill sets, and knowledge.
I would have liked to arrange for a sort of round table discussion with some of the biggest publishers, sellers, writers. This seems to me possible in BA.
The terms pop lit and street print are often confusing for people. Popular print is perhaps better as it does not limit by way of lit or the street. The internet is another/related matter.
My wife is now fast asleep on an airport bench, no longer attending our baggage, and so I will return.
DB
With only a couple days remaining in Bratislava I finally made it out of town, for business purposes of course, to the town of Leoploldov (45 minutes from BA) with a friend and local book seller as well as an American expat poet. We visited the largest antikvariat in Bratislava, a stunning den located directly across from the train station with thousands upon thousands of books, most old, others not, alongside a remarkable selection of accordions new and used, lamps both communist and eclectic, radios, ghettoblasters, and tv antennas, gum boots, plates, strange religious artifacts, etc. I was aware of this place a few weeks ago, perhaps even a few years ago, but had avoided it until now since I considered the focus of the project to be primarily contemporary. However, this antikvariat opened my eyes to a whole section of pop lit that I had not yet begun to collect or describe. I had a conversation earlier in the summer with an older writer who mentioned something called ‘radokaps’ - basically short stories or series, romance, horror, adventure or other, that came out weekly when he was younger. I assumed them to be long gone, but I came across stacks of them at the antikvariat, as well as stacks of other similar items, mostly from the Soviet period and in Czech. I purchased quite a few of these for the project. Many of them are from the 70s and 80s, but some are also from the 90s, and a few from as late as 2002. This led me to have another look in some local BA shops where I found that some of them at least were still in circulation. More research would be required to determine the exact changes over the past 15 years, but they do continue in Czech in a variety of forms. I have made some further purchases of contemporary issues, but it seems that little has changed and that all the older, and cheaper, copies I have from the antikvariat are just as good. But let us get back to the antikvariat, where the owner sits behind mounds of books, turning on the lights in various sections of the shop as customers move about the stacks, drinking with those who have tired or simply need a break, occasionally breaking out an accordion to entertain, whether himself or others is unclear…. a wonderful place, a project in itself … and I must add that not a day later, in conversation with my wife and her family I came to understand that my mother-in-law had thrown out many such items from their cottage less than a year before this summer! A very good example as to why this project is important. The materials disappear, or sometimes end up in antikvariats such as the one I visited, but even this antikvariat is likely to be sold soon, as the owner indicated. DB
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