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Low Budget - Issue Vol.02 Basic idea of a design lies in it’s tendency to fit any given budget.The second publication from “Urban Violence” series is proudly marked as “a low budget issue”,and consists of a selection of works self-initiatively created by artists in achromatic specter. They were not informed about financial limitations, which allowed us the privilege of avoiding all compromises between the design and the assets. Ideas we encountered put a different shade to our views on this publication. Drama imposed on us by the contemporary politization of art unjustifiably ignores the problem of creativity in its relation to material circumstances. With this publication, we have tried to contribute to the understanding that the lack of money should not be an excuse for the lack of creativity. Finally, we stand before you with an issue that owns its very existence to the fact that we have gone around the budget limitations with this selection, not design. The works that directly or indirectly address the problem of urban or every other form of violence have helped us form our own stands on this issue. One of the most prominent forms of structural violence present in mass-democratic societies is budget discrimination. Contemporary societies skillfully incorporate the practice of maintaining the illusion of free citizen’s initiative, while in reality, they censure the contents which are to appear in public by budget selections. What seems to be our inconsolable role of doomed interpassivity in creating cultural contents still leaves room for  the initiatives such as this one. Therefore we feel that the low budget version of “Urban Violence” publication can be considered A3.Format collective’s contribution in developing improvisational frames of Serbian budget design for the year 2009.  We have plenty more to say, but we‘re running out of black. Marko Rakić
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Urban Violence - Issue Vol.01 Primary idea of the A3.Format project has started to develop in its digital format, over the internet. The authors of the project themselves have said that initiation of this project was inspired by “lack of the public space for free thought and expression”. Indeed, today, public space is fragmented, commercialized, mediated and privatized, which to big extent applies to the internet itself. Today, we can not speak anymore about “public” space. Broader rifeness of technology makes the internet accessible to the bigger number of people, which is usually understood as a synonym for openness, non-hierarchal and participative structure of the internet. But, internet as the “public” space is overwhelmed by proprietary monopolies and strongly present technologies of control, and privatized in such a way, it still propagates promises of unlimited communication and total networking of people and goods on the global “super-highway of information”. Under those circumstances, by using a template, standardized format for potential intervention, A3.Format project almost makes ironic template mode of the internet as an open, public space for eternal participation and networking. Based on that, A3.Format project tries to form small-scale and effective online platform, which will create the opportunity to add new quality to the principle of collaboration, outside of representative strategies of dominant media regimes.  A3 format is in the same time format of the poster, which stands for effective and telling form for sending out messages and (unconventional) advertisement. One of the ideas behind A3.Format project is that anyone can take part in it by choosing and printing any work and by further applying it in a different contexts: in a gallery, at the street, in printed media, on the places provided for application of posters and on the places non-provided for application of posters. This creates successful link between participative and vivid internet archive of works and their application in the physical space. A goal is to annually print a book of 100 works in their original format, in a manner which allows every print to be ripped out of the book, so that it can be used as poster. With this book, a process is circled and what was once only an idea becomes a DIY piece of art. In that sense, A3.Format project comments on the principle of authorship in the field of design and introduces something unusual for this practice – principle of sharing in design. By that, this project significantly distances itself from almost exclusive market-driven character of design and it opens possibility for its enrichment by practices of collaboration, sharing, engagement and participation.  Branka Ćurčič
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