“Scripting Green” is the theme of the new Neural: issue #33 features eco-pornography and the alt-economy, interviews with Amy Franceschini/Futurefarmers, Ether Polak, Beatriz da Costa, The Owl Project, Jacob Kirkegaard, Guerrilla Gardening and HeHe, reports on the Green Platform and the Transmediale 2009 ‘Deep North’ editon. Order your copy here.
Turbochainsaw, the great bastard illustration zine from the UK, just released its new issue “Insane”, including works &y’s (USA), Andrés Brück (Argentina), Cat Lauigan (USA), Debbie Sharples (UK), Geoffrey Kayser (France), Alexander Binder (Germany), Masha Krasnova-Shabaeva (Russia), Conteleta (Spain), Mark (UK), Disco Floyd (USA), Daniel Swan (UK), Paul Dixon (UK), Rob Pybus (UK), Paul Bonnet (France), The Horror (UK), Bomba Massi (Italy). More details, more pictures and you can order your copy (there are only 150 copies) immediately for 7 Euro here.
Gudberg #07 “down to earth” features new works from Gerhard Linnekogel, Arne Quinze and Beetobee.
Gudberg #06 features big names of the international street art scene like: Boxi, Dave the chimp, Miss Van, Zezao, Bronco, Herbert Baglione, Vitché, Daim, Daniel Man, Os Gemeos, Zevs, Banksy, Daniel Tagno, Mark Jenkins, Blu, Tilt, Victor Ash and Heiko Zahlmann. Gudberg is a DIN A3-magazine about art, design, illustration and photography, based in Hamburg, and available here for 5 Euro.
TT:NT: “All Year Rings” - a set of flower rings and all made of paper. Via
* Theory: “The Death of Print. Why the bottom fell out.”
* Save the date: Publish and be damned, self-publishing fair 2009, sunday, 27th september, London
* New book: “The Publications Project 2009“, which presents a new collection of 16 publications varying from magazines, essays, books, playing cards & artist editions to performance artifacts. Via
* Two more great independent publishing houses: Elvis Press, based in Japan, and Boabooks from Switzerland.
* Looks great: “For my diploma I made a concept for a personal travelling magazine, about music, design, illustration, art and sub culture, using my impressions, and interpreting them into the layout of the magazine for that particular city the issue is about: Jaunt New York, Tokyo, Oslo.
Holly Palmer: The Book Porcupine
Linus Svärm: Piniwini
Sebastian Errazuriz: Repisa N5
And many thanks also to Anke and Kevin who found even these two nice bookshelves-blogs: “Books At Home” and “Bookcase Porn“.
A new magazine project from Berlin: Aufstieg und Fall (”rise and fall”). Released the 15th june and coming quarterly in a circulation of 10 000 copies to selected bookstores and kiosks this magazine celebrates “the exciting and often tragic rise and fall of life” and “the wild roller-coaster around every corner”. Chiefeditor Iván Aránega Tortosa explains in the editorial: “Aufstieg und Fall investigates the curious human behavior and extravagant details that lie under the headlines dominating the media and the conversations in the cue of the supermarket. As the old saying goes: what goes up must come down. True, but boring. Long before the information age, Flannery O‘Connor took it a step further and wrote ‘everything that rises must converge’. Life is and will be a journey and all what we see, hear and feel along the way come together and form who we are. People come and go, trends rise and fall, ideas heave and ho and the best we can do is hold on and enjoy the ride.”
The quality of the paper creates multiple orgasms, the pictures are amazing and very emotional (Frank Kalero is documentating the indish Holi Varanasi ritual and Casper Dalhoff photographed people with psychoses), also the illustrations of Herr Müller (who did also the cover artwork) are original and a facinating new visual approach. The layout (art director is Christian Schneider) is playful and stylish, but readable; and finally the texts: they are no revolution or will win a Pulitzer Prize, but they are very amusing and diversified (Ariadne von Schirach is writing about sleeping yourself to the top, there are last words from pilots before the crash, an interview with trend scout Jozo Juric). After all a great new launch! We hope that you´ll rise to the magazine heaven and are already curious about the next issue. More details, more pictures and you can order your copy for immediately 5,80 Euro here.
Dear Elmar Bambach, Julia Marquardt and Birgit Vogel, you dedicate each issue of your Magazin über Orte to a new place. The current issue is about the “Tatort” (crime scene). What inspired you?
The “crime scene” was a new aspect for the magazine. A place that is in principle defined after a happening, namely the action. And we wish to show a variety of places in our magazine.
Concentration camps, crimes, accidents, battlefields - this issue is very dark and sinister.
This is exactly what interested us. The last themes like “kitchen”, “park” or “desk” were not so clearly bonded with a certain association. The crime scene on the other hand is a place of a crime, a homicide; so definitely a negative thing. It was a challenge for us to make a multifaceted issue, with uncommon and unexpected perspectives.
Are you misanthropes? Or how did you came up with the idea to make a magazine only about places?
We are interested in places. Places are full of traces and they also tell many things about people. You can search for something, discover and find things there. Places as a theme suit to this way we see the magazine: a bit mysterious, often indirect and remote.
What does a place need that you dedicate it a whole issue?
We actually think that every place would work for a complete issue. For us the spectrum and the series of the magazine is more import and we choose places we are interested in. The borderline question appears every time: where does a place begin? And where does it ends? Is the “dream” also a place? Or the “flipside”? This are the questions we are faced up to. And it is important for us to answer them anew over and over.
The next issue is about “home”. Can you already tell us something about it?
“Home” is for us again a kind of enlargement of the term place. “Home” is mainly a personal feeling, an attachment to a familiar place. Concomitant it is also understood as homely and concrete, as your own four walls. We find this ambiguity interesting and both sides should be found. But the issue will surely tell more about the association as of the concrete place, in contrast to the issue “desk” or “kitchen”, that are also placed in a homely environment.
How long do you need for the production of the issue? How do you proceed?
As soon as one issue is released we begin working for the next one. We learn new things every time. The start is a soon as possible agreement of the new theme. Then we start with the research of already existing works that we can imagine in the issue. This phase is very important for us because only like this we can win a feeling about how the theme can work and where the hassle is. Crucial is for us if we can wangle the balance between the individual works. A kind of river should be generated, in which every work, equal if famous or not, short or long, should find it’s place and is presented in an adequate way. Decisive for the magazine is the choice and the combination. The issue is working if we are establishing a collective ambiance at the end and if the individual works do not appear isolated. This is our goal. To reach that we are testing a lot, we discuss about the choice and the order and work intensely on the layout. We are often firmly in the last weeks deciding which works are being shown in the issue. This process is very exhausting but also exciting and we are having lots of fun doing it. What is difficult is when we have to reject some authors, whose work we liked, but finally did not fit in the combination. We are making an effort to be as honest and fair as possible.
Who are your readers?
Many readers are surely coming from fields like photography, art, graphic design and literature. Others are interested in a certain issue or a place. And there is also an international interest because the magazine appears bilingually.
What are you favourite magazines?
Three examples: “Archivo”, “mono.kultur” and “The Purple Journal”.
What would be your wish for the magazine?
We would love to find more partners that we can enthuse for our magazine. It can only survive when we find people that can identify themselves with the concept and can also financially support us. We can imagine a collaboration bounded by the theme or also a long-term cooperation. We would love to work together with institutions and to accompany each issue with a discussion meeting or a workshop. And certainly we want to develop the magazine first of all.
And finally your statement to the media crisis: is print going to die? What will happen to magazines? Are we going to read in 2020 only with Kindles?
With the media crisis the realization of smaller projects, like our magazine, is becoming more difficult. Some things in the society are concomitant winning proportionality. Thereby the people are becoming more awake, more open and more sensitive. And maybe this social climate is a special chance for the acceptance of remote things and exceptional things. Probably the reading and the reading custom will really change a lot. Precisely classic print media like newspapers, where the more important thing is the actuality, will disappear more on the internet or they will be available through other electronic forms. But on the other hand there will also be a return. The haptic experience with paper and print will win some estimation. This will surely happen in an always smaller becoming niche, but the quality will further exist. Translation: Alexandra Bieber
More details, more pictures and the opportunity to order Magazin über Orte 4 (”Schreibtisch”) and Magazin über Orte 5 (”Tatorte”) immediately here.
Alexander Brauch and Patrick Müller (aka Gebrauchsgrafikundso, the guys who did this fabulous website) getting horny because of Alain Bieber (left) and Giddyheft.
Above: During the panel; Below: The calm before the storm…
Some weeks ago - on 26th may - we celebrated the official launch of GuteSeiten in Hamburg, at the Kunstverein, with a lot of drinks and magazines. It was really great, thank you very much for accommodating us and thanks to everybody who joined us. Matthias from PSFK organized a great panel about the future of magazines with journalist and consultant Alexander Böker (”Ich glaube, dass das Ausbleiben der Anzeigen ein dauerhafter Zustand bleiben wird und man sich als Redaktion ein bisschen davon löst, immer nur auf die Anzeigenerlöse zu schielen und vielleicht wieder mehr auf den Leser kuckt.” - 93:15), journalist Verena Dauerer (”Wenn es uns ganz schlecht geht, dann drucken wir eben wieder schwarz/weiß und alle denken es ist Kunst.” - 27:56), consultant, publisher and founder of the Lead Award, Markus Peichl (”Wir werden es erleben, dass wir in Deutschald eine relativ große Altersarmut unter Journalisten haben werden.” - 86:15), and journalist and co-founder of GuteSeiten Alain Bieber (”Es werden noch viel mehr kommerzielle Mainstream-Magazine sterben. Und das ist auch gut so, denn die meisten sind völlig überflüssig.” - 9:30). You can see the whole discussion now on video (german only, sorry) - above or here. If you missed this event don’t be sad, we’ll be soon again on tour: The next GuteSeite-Lounge will be probably in Frankfurt. And if you would like to invite us also for a magazine exhibition, lecture, workshop or panel - just drop us a line.
Manfred Naescher just finished his third issue of Screenshots: This issue features images from the film “The French Connection” (1971) by William Friedkin. This issue of Screenshots is concerned with only one scene: The car/elevated train chase, as reflected in Gene Hackman’s face. The French Connection is a series of portraits of Hackman’s cop on the hunt. The watercolors focus exclusively on Hackman’s facial expressions, while the actual car and the context of the chase remain strictly peripheral. This issue of Screenshots is an homage to the power of acting: Free of gimmicks, quick cuts and other means of distraction, this scene shows the visceral intensity and clear focus of Gene Hackman’s art. Read more details, see more pictures and order your copy here.
