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Produced by a small team from the heart of the post-Soviet empire, annual chunk BL8D ‘analyzes various culturological cliches and produces new semantic constructions based on them’, primarily concerning itself with the search for identity. The name refers to a form of wandering often found in Slavic tales. Typically hardback with some special print touches—their previous edition had a glistening cover and cut-outs within—this third issue is another graphic-led affair, bright yellow with a blinking lenticular on the front. Inside, seven heavily collaged, frenzied chapters of illustration and text explore ‘the only surviving fact of human unity’—death. Against a backdrop of death at a mass-scale, this issue opts to focus on a series of ‘little tragedies’, because as editor-in-chief Maria Azovtseva writes, ‘in a world where "little death" is respected, there is no place for the "great war"’. bl8dbook.com
