Gestern gab’s im Bayrischen Rundfunk eine Radiosendung u.a. mit GuteSeiten – alle Interviews kann man sich hier noch einmal anhören: “Kuschelige Fanzines, teure Hochglanzmagazine oder ganz neu: blinkende iPad-Apps. Wie sieht die Zukunft der Zeitschriften aus? Müssen wir jetzt das iPad mit aufs Klo nehmen? Das iPad ist raus und Apple-Chef Steve hat wieder mal Jobs gerettet. Springer Chef Mathias Döpfner jedenfalls hält das iPad für eine Medienrevolution höchsten Grades. Wir wollen wissen: Gibt es 2010 endlich ein cooles digitales Format für Magazine? Brandeins, Spiegel und die Technologie-Bibel Wired haben schon Apps entwickelt. Aber es scheint auch eine analoge Zukunft zu geben. Viele neue Magazine machen mit schrägen Formaten, aufwändigen Drucken, eingeklebten Polaroids in Miniauflage von sich reden. Einige der Macher stellen dafür ihre Blogs ein, und auf ihren Websites findet sich als einziger Inhalt ein Bestellbutton.”
Since arriving on these fair Australian shores Izrock Mixed Business, publishers of art based zines, have been spotted alot around town. More recently they’ve also been making waves across the water with collaborations including Mike Giant (U.S. Graffiti/Tattoo artist) among others. I caught up with Izrock founder, print enthusiast and moustachioed Monster Children gallery curator Joseph Allen Shea to share a coffee and and his thoughts…
So ‘zines’. How did all this start for you?
I met Marcus Oakley and French (London based illustrators/artists) when I was living in London. These guys were making stuff, but I wasn’t making any art or anything. I just wanted to contribute really… That’s how it came about. I wanted to publish other peoples work.
Although this is a commercial thing, it seems more like a hobby…
It’s just my interest. I’m not making any money out of it. (Yet!). When I first started I was looking for grants but I wasn’t in the system. I didn’t go to art school. No one knew who I was or felt confident in giving me money. I worked really hard as a freelance designer doing mundane catalogue jobs and created the capital. I put quite a lot of money into making my first two books. (Marcus Oakley and Kill Pixie) then just self distributed aswell. There’s something nice about doing it yourself and having a relationship with everyone that you sell to. And the idea is once the network is there you can just build upon it.
Mainstream Print titles are finding it difficult right now, either collapsing or shifting online. On the zine front however, it seems the appetite for the medium is growing… Why do you think this is? I’m a fan of magazines. I’d much prefer to read something on paper than on a screen, especially if its a lot of text… I think it’s the tactily of it. It must be some kind of reflection on everything being on the internet now. It’s just as easy, or easier to publish a blog now. You can put everything online. I guess, it must be some kind of backlash. Some want for human touch and mistakes. Aaron Rose (Alleged gallery director and curator of Beautiful Losers) was out here the other year and I asked him why he makes books. His little quote was ‘There’s no hair stuck in the internet’. I think its those little chancey things, those little human elements that get roped into tactile objects that make it important. I’ve been doing zine fairs for a few years now and it’s (the culture) just getting more and more popular. And the quality is getting greater aswell. It used to be just for anarchists and hippies and a real political message. If you weren’t into that then you’d miss the whole thing. Now people are making anything that’s personal for them.
So who’s buying your publications?
People with an interest in art and design. It’s the same people that will buy an art magazine or a Nieves book or go to art shows or whatever… The content of my books and zines is all artwork. That’s what I do for a job. I curate shows and run an art gallery. At this stage in my life I’m a lot more interested in putting out other peoples work than my own… Even the design of these books are all straight up art. There’s nothing of me in them…except that logo… There’s no crazy, wacky graphic design or fingerprint. It’s the simplest design.
Where can people expect to find them…
In Melbourne and Sydney art bookstores like Ariel or Published Art have them. The Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane) has been a good supporter. They found me. They called up and said give us some stuff. It’s been a bit harder with the Sydney galleries for some reason…MCA (Sydney) and Art Gallery NSW (Sydney) haven’t picked them up.
I keep hearing this! Melbourne in particular seems to embrace the more artistic/creative stuff but Sydney just…
Yeah, I think it’s culturally quite different they are interested in the arts and culture is a way of life I think… Sydney is for me a business city. Its fast paced, can be quite surface level. I think Melbourne is slower. People are taking their time, sitting in cafes, meeting up. It’s a little bit more human. I’m an advocate for Melbourne for sure. I think it’s a great city. Brisbane similarly. People are lovely up there. I went to Brisbane for the first time last year and just had a great time. Felt welcomed… everyone was super involving. They just took you in. I’ll be going back there next month for some more art shows.
It’s also great seeing stuff going off on a global level…
I think you want to be talking to an international market. Especially because it’s so niche. In Australia its growing, but it’s tiny. There are tiny pockets everywhere. It’s nice to be able to talk to all those pockets all over the world that have an interest rather than trying to push one market and one city. I brought Mike Giant out to do some shows in Australia (2007) and we made a zine on his experience. (this way/that way). It’s sold all over the world and has helped people come to me. Stockists in Japan will call me up…. People are buying boxes in the hundreds.
Who’s worth keeping an eye on in Australia? Rain Off books. They do distribution of a couple of US titles and they make they’re own photography books aswell. 3 other small publishing companies, well companies may be a strong word!… but ‘individuals’ that I do work with regularly and we do collaborative zines and projects and always go to the zine fairs together. I’ll keep working with those guys: Mark Drew who does ‘Making Ends’ and also runs a gallery called China Heights. Dave Ladd. ‘He, She, It, they, I’. He’s from Adelaide, but we used to live in Dalston (East London) together. Another good friend of mine Tristan Ceddia from Melbourne does Serps. Serps are a gang/gentlemen’s club/art collective. We all gelled immediately and made this zine called Brofile after the Canberra Zine fair invited us to go. We’ve since moved around as four like minded people.
I’m guessing you’ve picked up a few zines over the years?
Yeah. Probably a few Hundred. I’m gonna help the national library of Australia build a collection of zines. I’ll be calling up everyone I know to donate one copy of everything and then it’s there forever. I think that’s what everyone wants.To have their publications in a central place where they’re looked after. I know I do…
Australian independent publishers and distributors RAINOFF are hosting a temporary store in Sydney over the next 2 weeks. I caught up with Co-founder Rob Milne on how RAINOFF began: ‘RAINOFF started in October 08 with a small publication by Sam Ash. A major reason for us starting out publishing was that we’re really into books and magazines. So we wanted to create our own. Naturaly we wanted to publish work that we thought deserved recognition. Distribution came as a second thought to the publishing… we thought since we will be distributing our own books we may as well try to distribute other publishers that were previously not available here. Opening the store was a very exciting venture, even if it is only for two weeks. Hopefully it will provide insight into independent publishing for a wider audience. Many of the titles and publishers that are in the store are previously very hard to come by in Australia. It was important for us to bring them all together in one place. When asked about the future of print publishing versus online, Milne believes the future of print is secure, questioning the disposability of internet content:
‘It’s a way to create a tactile and timeless object to be cherished and collected… there can be no comparison between holding a book in your hands and viewing images on a screen. Some things just don’t come through…’
The gallery/store features collected works by international titles such as Daddy and Fantastic Man as well as some sound local titles. ‘There are lot and lots of great independent publishers producing things all the time’ says Rob. ‘Be sure to check out Serps Press from Melbourne and The Spring Press from Sydney. Both do amazing work.’
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
Dear Nicole and Elke, how did everything started? Why did you had to start Jungsheft - a porn magazine for girls?
We had the idea on our holiday. We asked ourselves why we could not see really good looking boys naked - like for example the friend of a friend. We just thought about normal guys and we also wanted to read about themes besides typical hair tips. We didn’t just wanted to think about it, and so we started producing the first magazine - that happened four years ago already.
And why did then Giddyheft - a porn magazine for boys followed? At least there are already plenty of magazines for boys.
Many friends of the girls that ordered or bought the porn magazine for girls wrote us that they would also like to see girls from the next door naked. And this is how we started with the porn magazine for boys.
How long does it take you to produce one magazine? And how do you find you models? Casting, recommendation, verbal propaganda, application?
We are collecting themes the whole year and then we are looking for persons who want to write something about this themes. Things get more precise tree months before each release. Then we meet once a week and combine the things that at the end go to the graphic designer. The models usually apply - and mostly they produce the pictures alone or one of our photographer friends takes the pictures.
Would you like to work full time producing these magazines? Or are you happy with this “hobby”?
Of course we would love to be the female Hugh Hefner.
What is it that you wish for your magazines? Is there something that you couldn’t realize until now? And where could you still need some help?
People who want to write and advertisers would be great. And we would also love to be able to offer a subscription - but we are already working on that.
Little target group analysis: Who are your readers?
Boys and girls between 18 and 35 years.
Which other magazines would you like to recommend?
Feigenblatt. It has more erotic and the editor is really working hard for it every issue.
Internet killed the magazine star? Your final statement about the current media crisis: Will there be no more magazines soon?
I can’t imagine that there won’t be any paper magazines anymore soon. But I am convinced that there should only be as much magazines as that can be sold. So many magazines only have artificial circulation. The market will just adjust and the wheat will be separated from the chaff.
More information, more pictures and the opportunity to order the new issues of these two great porn-fanzines immediately here.
