Dapper Dan #33

Language is an irreplaceable tool for understanding and documenting our lives.

Written, spoken and visual, language mirrors who we are. It reflects our histories, narrates our experiences, and traces our existence beyond a cycle that is destined to end right from the beginning.

Everyday life—irregular, unstructured and ordinary in the most extraordinary sense— shares the same characteristics as prose. The dramatised words of playwriting can describe our relation to humankind. And then there is poetry. Poetry hides magical spells and symbolism within its stanzas, rhythmically describing the emotional responses to our experiences. It bewitches with its sounds and captivates with its ambiguity.

These are the words that guide us in issue 33 of Dapper Dan magazine, as Angelo Flaccavento experiments with language, and poet Peter Thickett speaks of survival in a dystopia rife with wordplay. Meanwhile, Saskia de Brauw, Sabato De Sarno and Josh Hickey pen love letters that have something to declare.

Choreographer-performers Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi discuss how transforming basic components of communication can have an unsettling effect, and photographer Roe Etheridge explores the rhetorical question behind his latest exhibition.

Artist Bilal Hamdad talks about entering into direct dialogue with the history of art, fashion photographer Bill Georgoussis demonstrates the importance of the edit, and author Vincenzo Latronico shares his insights on writing his latest book, Perfection.

We also visit independent publishers Void and Outer Space Press and look back at the LGB legacy of AMFI magazine. Finally, we chat to young designers Jacek Gleba, Charlie Constantinou and William Palmer about finding a new language that’s fit for the times we live in.

Because originality is vital. Individuality even more so. And subversion is essential.