Last night I attended the opening Wallen Salon, an exhibition by the Kattenbak collective. It is a pretty unique setting, as the group had taken on a grand old house in a pretty serious state of disrepair in the heart of the red light district and set up their artwork in all the bare rooms. Most of it wasn’t that interesting, to be honest, but there was one exception. On the top floor, right next to the DJ, was a series of posters for The Raven. The designer (should I say artist?) had the whole poem across the bottom third of the three posters and then three different striking woodblock prints of ravens perching on barbed wire on the rest of the posters. What I really liked about the posters is that they preserve the darkness of the poem, yet, thanks to the design, make the poem feel contemporary and not dated at all. Because of that, I think the designer was making a sly statement when he or she put the date of the poem’s original publication in the top left corner.