BL8D #3
219 x 280 mm, 134 pages (hardback)
Tallinn, Estonia (English)
Annual
Magazine first published in 2022
Editor-in-chief and creative director: Maria Azovtseva
Art director: Konstantin Lobanov
Produced by a small team from the heart of the post-Soviet empire, annual chunk BL8D ‘analyzes various culturological cliches and produces new semantic constructions based on them’, primarily concerning itself with the search for identity. The name refers to a form of wandering often found in Slavic tales.
Typically hardback with some special print touches—their previous edition had a glistening cover and cut-outs within—this third issue is another graphic-led affair, bright yellow with a blinking lenticular on the front. Inside, seven heavily collaged, frenzied chapters of illustration and text explore ‘the only surviving fact of human unity’—death.
Against a backdrop of death at a mass-scale, this issue opts to focus on a series of ‘little tragedies’, because as editor-in-chief Maria Azovtseva writes, ‘in a world where "little death" is respected, there is no place for the "great war"’.