PLAKART in partnership with Museum of City of Skopje announce the competition of 9. International Student Poster Competition, Skopje 2016. The project is carried out with support by Ministry of Culture of Republic of Macedonia, Warsaw Poster Biennale, AUG Design from Czech Republic and several external associates from Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey, Serbia, Germany, USA, Russia.

Identity crisis: a period of uncertainty and confusion in which a person’s sense of identity becomes insecure, typically due to a change in their expected aims or role in society.

The issue of this year festival is “Identity in Crisis” is not accidental. Today we face global issues like ethnical, cultural, religious, age and sex identification and separation. The identity issues are brought into new light.

Today more and more questions regarding the identity cause emotions of frustration, threat. Unfortunately, this term is being related to political events and as such it is simplified into an issue of ethnical identity grounds. Is the faster growth of the technology, the artificial intelligence, movies with mutants are improving identification rights or will create confusion?!

The world, but also particular continents, regions and countries, including Macedonia and the Balkan region, are concerned by identity crisis issues. Cross way of the West and the East, the North and the South, culturally, nationally, ethnically, the issue of the identity is deeply engraved in the genetic heritage of the nations and countries. It is why young designers from all over the world should be provoked to join and work on this issue and to speak-up in raising awareness of the wider public and all concerned parties.

Our responsibility as designers is to state our point of view and to send powerful message!!!

The objective

The identity is something we can not and should not understand as straight, one-meaning issue. Identity is defined by many aspects, but only few of them are fundamental – race, sex and class identification. Further there are ethnical, religious identification, age and the most wider is the cultural identification category.

In cultural context the identity is cross-like structured: where two identifications are crossing vertically and horizontally. The vertical is represent of the tradition and the past, and the horizontal represents our era – our present reality. Neither vertical, nor horizontal leg can individually define the identity, only combined together may reveal the issue of the identity.

Although there are different definitions, theories and standpoints of this question, it is common understanding that the identity is one, unique, indivisible and complex in its nature and as such it should not be divided in groups or subgroups. It is what makes us individual and diverse.

Finn Nygaard | Danmark |

Fons Hickmann | Germany |

Michel Bouvet | France |