This Page is an Occupied Territory is a tabloid-size newspaper-poem written by poet/cultural critic Adeena Karasick, visualized by designer/author Warren Lehrer. Composed in reaction to the occupation, war, slaughter in Gaza/Israel, Karasick’s text and Lehrer’s visuals approach language and the page itself as an occupied territory. It investigates: possession of a region and its inhabitants by force—through blockades, barricades, barriers, and other means. Lehrer’s visual setting involved letterpress printing wood and metal characters, blocks of wood “furniture” (normally used to lock-up type to the bed of a press), dingbats, and borders—that could function, metaphorically, as blockades, barricades, and border crossings. He then made digital scans of the letterpress printed proofs and designed/visualized the poem using Adobe InDesign. The entire text—set in Knockout Middleweight—lives within and around these inky, bordered environments. The poem begins open-aired, with room to wander around in. As the poem progresses, the text and occupied spaces become more and more boxed in, askew, and rubbled-to-pieces. The resulting typographic landscapes approach typography as image and attempt to create an engaging navigational and empathic experience for the reader. Composed at a time of ever-expanding war and daily bombardments of devastating news, This Page is an Occupied Territory is also an homage to printer, experimental typographer, writer H.N. Werkman who started a clandestine anti-Nazi publishing house in 1941, and was executed by them only days before the occupation of The Netherlands ended.
- Designer/Typographer
- Warren Lehrer
- Poet
- Adeena Karasick
- Letterpress Printer
- Roni Gross
- Offset Printer
- newspaperclub.com
