ÅBÄKE; MUROGA, Kiyonori (eds.)
Detour, the thirteen movies of Juzo Itami

I am still alive, a parasitical magazine. Issue 25 edited by Kiyonori Muroga and Åbäke.

For this issue, originally published in IDEA 374, we went to interview Kenichi Samura, the graphic designer of Juzo Itami, our favourite Japanese director who unfortunately passed away in 1997. In this interview we cook for Kenichi and he tells us about how he worked for the great director. The methods are unorthodox and one would want to collaborate in such ways. Kenichi never worked for other cinema related clients so he isn't quite sure what the normal ways are.

Accompanying the interview are the original ten posters designed by Kenichi Samura alongside ten new posters made, painted, designed based on a description that omitted the fact they were Japanese movies from the eighties. Swedish poster by Samuel Nyholm; French poster by Prune, Matteo & Jean-Claude Chianale; Greek poster by Farida El Gazzar; Kosovar poster by Bardhi Haliti; English poster by Fraser Muggeridge; Italian Alessandra Genualdo; Turkish poster by Pinar & Viola; Korean poster by Karl Nawrot & Na Kim; Estonian poster by Laura Pappa; Norwegian poster by Yokoland; Czech poster by Radim Peško.

Limited edition of 100, hand bound.

* I am still alive, a parasitical magazine. Whenever we were asked by a magazine to represent our graphic design work it always seemed flattering yet lacking the excitement of any project. To reheat a dish, however much loved when cooked the first time is only appreciated in a hangover. Our reaction to this was to propose the hosting magazines to give us full control of the pages, form and content, as if the existence of a vehicle was enough for us to investigate something nobody commissioned us for. I am still Alive, the parasitical magazine, or a magazine in a magazine is a continuous publication of our interests. We can only thank all past and future hosts for their trust and tolerance in letting go of editorial control, typos, our faith that we don't fall into the journalistic deontology, the loose responsibility towards the porosity between fact and fiction and grammatical mistakes. The project is very opportunistic indeed as piggybacking in such ways save us from having to pay the print or care about distribution. If you are such generous editor/publisher do not hesitate to contact us. As an additional soft abuse we'd ask 100 extra copies of our own pages. [publisher’s note]

Published by Dent-De-Leone
Film & Video / Graphic Design / Food Culture