Ringier annual report 2016

“Communication is all that counts”. That is Rirkrit Tiravanija’s credo. He is the Thai artist who designed this year’s Ringier annual report in the form of an edition of Blick. By creating moments of irritation, he is able to produce surprises.

The Ringier annual report is irritatingly disconcerting. That is because – at least at first glance – it is virtually indistinguishable from Ringier’s Blick newspaper. That is deliberate. The Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, born in 1961, wanted a Blick that everyone would recognise. Or almost.

Anyone taking the trouble to leaf through the Ringier 2016 annual report attentively will be able to detect how it differs from the newspaper. The first volume is a selection of the Blick stories which have attracted the most attention over the last twelve months. They were selected by a team of Ringier employees. That is important, because self reflection and teamwork are central to Tiravanija’s work. The artist has printed one single letter over each of the chosen newspaper pages. When those letters are joined up, slogans appear, such as “The infinite dimensions of smallness”. Or a sentence derived from a quotation attributed to Heny Kissinger “The odious smells of truth”. The artist has already created newspaper images of this kind based on pages from the New York Times, Le Monde and El País.