Editorial
Strategies: Three Examples
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Vision, #5, 1982
Titled
“Artists’ Photographs,” this final issue of Vision (1975-82) brought to
a close an important artists’ periodical that was edited by the San
Francisco-based conceptual artist Tom Marioni. Committed to presenting the work
of conceptual artists, Vision was conceived as being one part of the
programming in Marioni’s larger conceptual art project—the Museum of Conceptual
Art (MOCA, 1975-84).
The
format of this issue is an 8”x10” box containing 62 photographic reproductions
printed individually on unbound pages. Marioni provides an introductory essay
on his rationale for asking these conceptual artists “to send me a photograph
not of an artwork but as an artwork,” as well as brief biographical
information on these now, well-known artists. This last Vision serves a
number of interesting roles, and illustrates how editors of this period sought
to expand the parameters of the traditional magazine format by experimenting
with new editorial models. Firstly, this issue serves as a catalogue for an
exhibition of conceptual artists’ photographs that Marioni curated for the
Crown Point Press Gallery in 1981. Secondly, in presenting a periodical as a
box of unbound pages, he was referencing not only Duchamp, but also a number of
other experimental artists’ periodicals from the previous two decades (Aspen,
Fluxus, SMS). And finally, the periodical functions as a
potential exhibition, indeed, it was exhibited in a number of university art
galleries during this period. Back issues are still available for $50.
zingmagazine, #20, Winter, 2005
Weighing
in at 2.5 lbs., 254 pages, and 3 inserts; a poster, CD and postcard, this
latest issue of zingmagazine offers up an eclectic smorgasbord of
artworks, projects, photographs and texts. Founded in New York in 1995 by Devon
Dikeou, zingmagazine was created in order to serve as a link between the
creative efforts of different individuals & groups working in a variety of
media & disciplines. zingmagazine was envisaged as a site, or
crossing point, through which collaborative exchanges could take place that
would counter the isolation so often found between disciplines. In order to
create a structure for this concept Dikeou adopted a curatorial model
for the periodical, and each issue is built around the projects submitted by a
rotating group of invited ‘curators,’ in what the magazine’s masthead calls “a
curatorial crossing.” This issue contains works gathered by 14 curators, as well
as an additional section that includes a mix of reviews, texts and interviews. The
‘zing’ in zingmagazine springs directly from its adoption of a
publishing model from outside of the world of magazines.
Permanent Food, #14, 2006
A
radically different approach to artists’ periodicals is represented by Permanent
Food. Initiated in 1995 by the Italian neo-conceptual artist Maurizio
Cattelan in collaboration with Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, Permanent Food’s
editorial model turns all the traditional approaches on their heads. Permanent
Food is dependent on submissions of visual images, from a wide
variety of contributors in the form of previously published magazine pages
pilfered from a plethora of different contexts. About the periodical, Cattelan
states, “from the very beginning we wanted Permanent Food to be a second
generation magazine, something that grows by taking what’s already there. And I
also wanted to have a magazine without personality. So the more personalities
were involved, the less the magazine would have looked like the product of a
single person.” The results of this appropriationist recycling model can be
seen in this 194 page issue, and it’s a hilarious, weird, jarring, oddball and
ultimately wonderful cornucopia of images culled from our collective image
bank—all reshuffled together in this printed matter mosh pit.
Note: These texts were originally published in the College Art Association (CAA) News in a column titled The Bookshelf, November, 2006.