BL8D explores mortality in brand new third volume
BL8D returned to newsstands, galleries and independent concept stores across the globe this Spring. BL8D, as Overleaf has previously published covering issues one and two respectively, has always held a vibrant and gripping torch on creativity and modern issues. The issues that the magazine covers are gripping in a surprising, daunting and impactful way. Take their concrete-looking (recycled powder plastic) limited edition slipcase for example – the artistic license brought bullet holes to the surface of the 3D piece, acting as an artefact and a result of war.
In issue three of BL8D we move away from war as a theme – although the Ukrainian fight for peace underpins their work. The team’s vision is enviable and holds its own amongst a very busy print landscape – a healthy one of late. The vibrant yellow and black mix on the outside cover gives way to nine eyes printed as a lenticular placed centrally on the front. From different angles the eyes open and close – offering a window into the theme itself, death. The eyes are symbolic to death it would seem, whereby human beings and the passage of life are depicted, but also could be a call to action – to open one’s eyes to the world around us.
Opening up BL8D we soon find the introduction by Editor-in-Chief Maria Azovtseva. She explains that “in the third year of the war in Ukraine, we realized there was nothing left to ‘plunge into’.” Maria then mentions the lack of coverage in the media of current times, referencing more disasters and the Gaza war as replacements to Ukraine. But issue three focuses on pieces that never make it into the news, because they “happen every day, everywhere, to everyone.” Described as seven “little tragedies” in reference to the articles in the 132 printed pages of BL8D’s ‘biutiful’ issue, ‘Little Tragedies from the life of mortals’ takes the reader back to the storytelling of the previous volumes. The fairytales of the first issue echoes in the uncoated glory of this magazine – but this time we’re facing an inevitable reality. Featuring seven monologues about the fear of death, several artists bring each of the pieces to life – with a small piece of AI mixed into the digital make-up of some of the imagery. The dystopian and surreal visuals of the sculptural pieces in the first piece ‘Christmas at ground zero’ are indicative of the downfall of civilisation, or multiple civilisations of the past. “What did they dream about on dry, lifeless floodplains?’ the piece asks, discussing the nightmare of a nuclear holocaust. The foundations of the piece questions what is important and what was important – history repeating itself.
‘Ballad of Nobody’ by Clarice Sequeira is a black and white journey through a disparaging monologue that discusses, in interpretation, the loss of a person, relating directly to death of self. Handwritten words are dispersed through ghost-like imagery. Clarity is also found in the visual pieces including a vulture’s face looking directly at the reader across a full page, with brushstrokes firmly racing across the image. ‘The sudden realization that maybe I am a spirit, haunting my own existence, never seemingly to fit in anywhere.” This lack of grounding sounds similar to the experience of grief, a key emotional aspect to death. There’s also reference to a previous path where the character, unknown to the reader, should have died at the age of four. It’s a compelling, albeit immersive visual piece that invites us into the mind of someone dealing with the concept of death and grief to some extent.
"The temporary, forever changing nature of the media is how stories are missed, forgotten or even dismissed entirely. The dismissal is what makes the theme of issue three an almost ironic journey, as death is a permanent dismissal - the polar opposite of life."
Stuart Williams, Owner of Overleaf
Each chapter spread opens with a vibrant, almost childlike aesthetic to the art with the text. Each with their own personality and become more and more relatable to each piece as you read on. ‘Pillbox’ is a 2021 piece by visual artist and writer Camilo Londoño Hernández and is a NSFW (not safe for work) piece focusing on the real life story of the artist’s move from Colombia to Germany. Presented in the form of diary entries, the piece dives into the struggles behind pharma-dependency when moving to a new country and explores the artist’s own experience. The work has elements from a written form, including ruled lines, checkboxes and other mundane shapes ready for the pen. Resembling a form is in parallel to the red tape and bureaucracy the artist refers to, including travelling long distances to get the medicine they need for HIV disease. The photojournalism included in relation with the text shows the model, the artist themself, in various states of undress – mostly fully naked, in places around the home. Looking directly at the viewer throughout, the model appears to summarise the vulnerability and despair of the wait behind the red tape process and its impact on their life.
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The human stories that BL8D present are hard to read at times due to the personal struggles on show and the theme of vulnerability in everyday life. The art in all the pieces all show that vulnerability in some shape or form but all are a direct result of the human hand whilst alive – a visual representation of what it means to be alive. ‘Cinco toreros muertos’ by Stas Falkov is a journey through complex narrative coupled with mixed media. It’s a primal story of death and love embodied in the relationship between a matador and a bull. “The spectators, and I – we are all part of this cruel dance, this senseless slaughter, and self-loathing engulfs me,” the artist writes. The passage sits opposite a bright red impressionist painting of a bull and its surrealist tendencies reflect that of the piece as a whole. The movement in the work holds the prose in place whilst the acrylic paint and oil pastel markings dance around the words. The same movement and body distortion is also found in photographic pieces – the reader can almost picture the dance itself.
‘Spaceman’ by BL8D’s very own Maria Azovtseva, she tells Overleaf, is the real story of her family. The ending of said story is one that, in respect of Maria, should be left for the reader to discover. The story reminisces about the life of a man noted as Maria’s father – a man who, she explains, “would have loved LA, and Hollywood would have loved him.” The love life he held “would have made Hugh Hefner jealous” – in reference to the late owner of Playboy. The piece divulges the state of mind in the Soviet Union at the time – a seemingly suppressive time that held little hope for the people living within it – “the same communism that some idiots are so nostalgic about today.” The majority of the visual pieces are paintings by Nick Dahlen and are a defined style of both the surreal, but there is a rigidity to the shapes and forms that make up the characters. The red and orange used around the photographs conceal identities and in turn become faceless representations of the time period. Through the eyes of his daughter, we discover that he worked at a factory assembling “space satellites”, aligning with the name of the piece. But we also get a glimpse of the home life he orchestrated through the eyes of his kin, where the notion of the “perfect home” is challenged.
Throughout the trilogy of issues that BL8D have released, the reader is challenged in some way through the medium of print – but not in the same way we’re challenged by today’s media outlets online. The same outlets that control our visibility to the destruction and atrocities that are occurring each day around the world – unbeknownst to us until the day big business owning newsfeed operators decide to serve the articles over the sponsored, paid content. The temporary, forever changing nature of the media is how stories are missed, forgotten or even dismissed entirely. The dismissal is what makes the theme of issue three an almost ironic journey, as death is a permanent dismissal – the polar opposite of life. The difference is within the ‘biutiful’ (phonetic spelling in Spanish for the word ‘beautiful’) and BL8D showcases this through beautiful human stories at its core. On the surface we are given darkness and eyes that follow our every move, but we are forgiven in believing that they’re following us. They follow the stories that are not yet seen, or believed – the ones that make us human and what bring us together. The eyes invite light into our being, the “windows to our soul” – in the same way they invite us into the soul of BL8D magazine.
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