WHITE FUNGUS

An erudite brunette in Newtown SC cafe in Melbourne pulled this Kiwi treasure on me – a stranger flogging my own quiet effort – and suggested I should look them up. At a flip I meditated discreetly of incredible publishing orgies where we'd all be chanting the spelling of 'erudite' and feeling each other's stuff in the dim light of weather balloons projected with gusty enchanted South Island river banks. I never saw her nor White Fungus again, until I was alleviating myself of a couple of kilos in my studio bathroom, which I share with a few geniuses and nonsense purveyors alike, and there it was. White Fungus. 'PROPERTY OF THE TOILET 24 FRED ST'. Sorry Leigh, I'll just pop that in my bag for a bit.

The seductress was right. I should have looked it up. White Fungus is a fucking great magazine. It, like most magazines reviewed on this excellent blog, should be available at all nerd-orientated outlets throughout the universe and Australia. It may be a pleasure to find a gem in a loo but it's bloody sad there isn't a more organised distribution network so that all publishing perverts can touch themselves to stuff like this all the time. Diatribe fini.

White Fungus is great. It looks awesome, tailored like the best zine you've ever seen (stapled spine et al) but with the filling of a very expensive sandwich (colour, long historiographical articles, excellent international visual art, classy interviews, intelligent poetry, roquet and aioli). Its design is in the classic literary journal arcadia – a real or imaginary place offering peace or simplicity. Nice lines, although the swapping of fonts irks me so. But this is meant to be the positive paragraph.

This one is the critical paragraph. White Fungus tends to lean close to ra-ra anti-establishment rant and forecloses too much of its heart. Sure, it was hard for me to hear in the editorial that "Obama has truly proved himself a reliable chip off the old block", i.e. Bush block (for Obama is my husband although we have not yet met nor married but will very soon, when he can make it to Redfern which he ESPs me is November), but it gets a bit over the top at points. While political dissertation is great, giving the local council the finger and not offering any potent POV is boring. Don't ever end an article with "No brave or bold decision-making to be found here." Slit slit, bleed bleed, see you later.

As I am currently trying to make an honest woman of myself by organising advertisers into a relatively offensive-free constellation, I find White Fungus all over the shop. The ads appear like epiphanies – so integrated that you don't know they are selling something. Confusion abounds. Check this one out: white page, half page list:

"1. The artist must construct the work
2. The work must be fabricated
3. The work need not be built.

Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership. – Lawrence Weiner 'Declaration of Intent' 1969

[Tiny font] Adam Art Gallery, address."

Fuckin what the fuck? How the fuck is an artwork not fabricated? And how the fuck is an artwork not built? Does Adam Art Gallery love pieces of pine chucked in a corner with some unopened lube tubes holstered to the waists of the moronic art students who are undoubtedly the only people that come to see and circle jerk to this hogwash? Now White Fungus, I dig you a lot, but don't present your sponsors as advertorials. You bear the brunt of their idiocy and it's confusing and it makes me cross. Delineation, my friends. Unless it's funny, make an ad section.

There's nothing that funny about White Fungus. They love to be serious. But they are serious about serious things that are very serious. Like how capitalism is theft and money is worthless and confused women should choose a better idiosyncrasy than getting cummed all over all the time. But for christ's [purposefully uncapitalised] sake, lighten the bejesus up.

That all said, it's an excellent magazine. It's strong, real, effortless and enjoyable. If you can get your hands on a copy, walk out of wherever you are with it.

MONU

Monu – or 'Magazine On Urbanism' – has the same feeling of potential magic for a magazine-lover that a pouch of gemstones at an incense stall at a country fair might have for a ten-year-old girl (sticking pretty close to home with that analogy). However, one of those things ends up covered in dust and the other actually aids you in channelling Jeff Buckley.

It's not a great magazine, but it's an interesting one. It comes out of an architect's firm in the Netherlands (though it is in English), it's biannual with a very small print-run (2000 copies), it's entirely black and white, its paper stock is compellingly thick and its pages are filled with messy design – multiple typefaces, white font on black squares, lots of tiny photographs. Ultimately it begins and ends with its design. And I'm not convinced that I even like its design.

Perhaps I am being harsh. They are doing pretty great things with their content. Monu explores different facets of, yes, urbanism, and it is a clever way to themetise a magazine. Previous issues have included 'Beautiful Urbanism', 'Middle Class Urbanism', 'Denied Urbanism' and 'Political Urbanism'. The issue I bought is the most recent, 'Holy Urbanism'. Contributors are mainly architects, urban planners, designers, and any given title in between, which is fantastic, and the content reflects these interests.

I was mildly engaged. Some essays were incredibly long, dense and without pictures, and I often caught my eyes reading the words as my brain crept into the forbidden zone of my recently defunct relationship – the perfect ruse.

There were a few very tasty bites. One was a short article on the 'eruv' of Manhattan. An eruv – meaning a legal aggregation of property – is basically a clever invention by Jewish community leaders to loosen the law of carrying on the Sabbath. And when I say carrying, I mean carrying. Kids, bread, anvils or feathers – you can't pick a thing up lest the fate of eternal damnation be placed upon your soul. To circumnavigate this biblical heeding, Rabbis have strung wire around the borders of Jewish communities so that people can carry stuff around (within that perimeter) by claiming it is for the greater good of those inhabitants: he's carrying bread for everyone. A really great article for this theme. Another good one was a piece about Mormon churches, and the expedient measure of global building due to the streamlined design of the actual church. "In 2000, for example, 28 of the 34 temples built are identical, then there is no 'original' in any sense." Accompanying this article are thumb-sized pictures of the facades of the 128 Mormon temples as of August 2008. I really enjoyed that one, too.

The inter-nationality of Monu's contributors gives it a brilliant array of perspectives, and their respective fields of interest makes for great reading. This is a magazine for people in those industries or people with a general interest in the way communities create towns and cities. It's a great idea and often executed with aplomb.

But then there were the eight pages of inexplicable designs of space in 2100 slash Escher rip-offs that had the infuriating narrative of a stoned spoken word poet trying to recount last night's dream. I just couldn't do it. But then again, maybe it was pure genius. I'll never know.

"The Demiurge ruthlessly throws his highways around. Hippocrits only manage to loop his gigantic vertical roundabouts when launched through the AcceleraTor. Hippocrits race to the loop park and descend into the underground. They take their seats. Mother 9 leaves her vehicle and becomes a normal pig again. Naked, she hobbles her last metres towards the finish and enters the rocket. Behind the black ClubClub twin, she breaks through the ground and launches into space like fireworks. All Hippocrits return to the surface, mount their steel studs and race back to their generic villas and compounds."

Jesus Christ, Speedism! Wind it up! And also, what was your mum thinking, calling you Speedism? With a name like that of course you'll end up a cyber goth Alan Ginsberg.

As an editor-geek though, I became increasingly frustrated with the terrible editing. Perhaps it's because the editors are not native English speakers, but it got down to punctuation marks, man. Decide if you're gonna use an en-dash or an em-dash and space them consistently. Decide if you're using English spelling or American spelling. Do a find for your double spaces and delete them. And for christsakes spell the name of your sponsors correctly, because some of us don't even have any. God I'm a crank.

I was happy to come across Monu and I'm glad a bought a copy. I won't be buying another in a hurry but I would recommend it, if that makes sense.



www.monu-magazine.com

EMPTY

The current issue of Empty (15)

Empty is an excellent magazine, and I am happy to say it is Australian and not from a distant decade. This publication doesn't waste valuable page space on the verbal flatulence that you would find in more quoit-centric art mags. Apart from an occasional interview (with Michel Gondry in this issue, no less) and some reviews at the back, Empty's art unfurls uninterrupted across its pages in a sophisticated sprawl of light and night by unbelievably talented artists from around the globe.

Its international pull is fucking amazing, especially considering the magazine is only distributed in Australia. And I was going to say how it meshes the constructs of curator and editor, and why couldn't these guys be running a new Biennale, but then I realised they are the masterminds of Sydney's Semi-Permanent design festival. Which makes total sense. Please make that festival cheaper so I can go.

Kudos to Editor Andrew Johnstone for the cheery announcement "NOW MORE EXPENSIVE!" on the cover, and an eloquent editorial extrapolation on the pains of independent publishing in the Fi-Cri epoch and the subsequent need to raise the RRP ($14.99 to $19.99). It's ballsy, and gives credit to a conscious readership – more than I can say for many magazines that silently increase their price or are suddenly patch-worked with advertising.

Is that the same ant crossing my keyboard or are there scores of you about this filthy table? I digress.

Empty is moving up. The most recent issue (above) contains great, intricate oil paintings and less illustration; perhaps a move away from poppy street stuff, and defining itself from overseas publications like Juxtapoz. Has the increased cover price effected the design qualities of the publication? The paper, printing and colour are exquisite, and provide a beauteous space for moody double-page spreads.

This is a stunning publication; it is curated with high expectations of work and purveys nothing less. This is no mean task with the plethora of designy doe-eyed girls and bags-of-soil installations that fill our cities' galleries. Empty proves that there are thrilling artworks being produced even in the age of Everybody-Is-An-Artist.

Juxtapoz Issue 76 (May 07)

Empty Issue 9 (mid 07) – feeling the 07 vibes

www.emptymag.com

SCRIPSI

As there are no images of Scripsi on the net this picture is a scan of my own copy of the April 1985 issue

I thought I'd counter my grouchy mumblings about Australian publications in my last entry by talking about one of the world's greatest literary journals that so happened to be Australian.

Occasionally you have in your possession an object that is more precious than money, and my copy of Scripsi is one of those objects. It contains the work of some of today's most influential writers and thinkers, and is beautiful – Bill Henson's black and white photographs are dotted throughout its pages: the stunning street portraits he was famous for before the media clusterfuck over his nudes. And it's hugely special to me personally because it's on indefinite loan from one of the contributors.

Scripsi began in 1981 when Michael Heyward, Penny Hueston – who are now married and run Melbourne-based independent publishing house Text – and Peter Craven were in their early twenties and studying at Melbourne Uni. It began as fun; a way to publish the work of their friends and a reason to have parties. It became one of the world's most important literary journals of the time and ran as a quarterly until 1994.

Scripsi's regular contributors included Susan Sontag, David Malouf, John Forbes, Peter Craven, Les Murray, John Ashbury, Salmon Rushdie, John Tranter and Henson, many of whom were a part of the social coterie surrounding the magazine. For it is the product of one of those weird collections of prodigious peers – like the editors of OZ Magazine or the Heidi artists – whose artistic activities feel important in the moment and in hindsight are seminal.

I like that it publishes the work of friends, and that it discusses the work too – extensive reviews about the poetry of one contemporary sits beside a short-story by the reviewer, who is later reviewed by the poet. I like this dialogue about each other's work, I don't know if we are that (interested?) immersed in our friends' artistic trajectories anymore.

And don't get weird about the friends thing. You can do whatever you want when you start your own magazine and you will publish the work of your friends if they are geniuses. But that's all by the by. Scripsi is committed to the best work, whoever authored it. So many current publications take whatever content is going, or run stuff (particularly art) that is fashionable, not genuinely good. Scripsi manages to get it right across all its bases – beit academia, critique, short fiction or otherwise, the work is always intelligent, illuminating, ardent-hearted and very high quality. And sure I'm a die-hard, but the notion that it has been made by a bunch of long-haired Cohen-lovers over bottles of wine in living-rooms in Northcote is pretty charming.

As a reader, it was here that I discovered the poetry of John Forbes, so that was a gift in itself:


Speed, A Pastoral (for Angus Douglas)

it's fun to take speed
& stay up all night
not writing those reams of poetry
just thinking about is bad for you
– instead your feelings
follow your career down the drain
& find they like it there
among anthology of fine ideas, bound together
by a chemical in your blood
that lets you stare the TV in its vacant face
& cheer, consuming yourself like a mortgage
& when Keats comes to dine, or Flaubert,
you can answer their purities
with your own less negative ones – for example
you know Dransfield's line, that once you became a junkie
you'll never want to be anything else?
well, I think he dies too soon,
as if he thought drugs were an old-fashioned teacher
& he was the teacher's pet who just put up his hand
and said quietly, 'Sir, sir'
& heroin let him leave the room.

Beautiful stuff.

Back cover of the April 1985 issue

THE JOURNAL

We have so few decent publications in Australia. Most of them are incredibly shit. Actually, it's a bit weird that the number of art and culture journals is so disproportionate to the popularity of soy milk and jewelery made in the shape of woodland creatures. You'd think there'd be a link, but no. Anyway, in lieu of the balls to make our own stuff, we have plenty of international titles to spend all our money on. So today I bring you another New York offering: the Journal.

There I was, in Magnation on Elizabeth St in Melbourne. And there was the Journal, also in Magnation on Elizabeth St in Melbourne. I was wrapped in clothes, it was wrapped in plastic. For some reason I thought that because it was called the Journal it would be full of writing, which was kind of my vibe that day. And because of the way we were wrapped, I couldn't look inside. So I bought it on a whim, and yes it was very expensive, and yes it was full of pictures and no writing at all.

But I was happy. Because the Journal turned out to be a bloody find.

Its content is predominately beautifully printed artwork. The section 'Salon' is 33 pages of completely unrelated portraits, which is excellent. There is a thinner supplement booklet called 'What's in My Library' with photographs taken and curated by Richard Prince - three pages of which I dare say I cut out and put above my desk because they are so stunning. My favourite article is a psychologist-couch style interview with RZA, where the rapper is shown pencil drawings and responds with what he 'sees': a bottle of vitamin water with a black squiggle next to it - "It shows, nah'mean, that even the biggest thugs can be the biggest minds in the country"; a picture of a raccoon with two open cans of soup - "A raccoon has always got a mask on, right? Well his body always gives him away. Hahaha!" Awesome.

Traditionally I am not into reviews (she says as she writes a review). And clearly the Journal isn't either. Because they have created the best music review section I have ever seen. They show two artists a selection of a mixture of file-footage-type pictures in order to communicate what album is in question, then the artists try to guess it in a very witty manner. It's very good.

Finally, there is a list of zines that the magazine recommends, and their websites. I like this kind of transparency - it encourages connections and possible collaboration, and it's something I try to do in Ampersand. I looked at a few of them online, and landed on one in particular called Fuck You Three Times For Free. The site said that the zines were free, and to contact him for your copy, so I did, and this is the correspondence:

Subject: Three times
Date: Wed, April 1, 2009 9:45pm

Hello ---,

My name is Alice Gage. I publish an art and culture journal
called Ampersand Magazine from Sydney. I found the scant
reference to you in the back of the Journal. Now I'm
intrigued. Would you like to do a swap?

My address is

Thingy
Balmain
NSW 2041
Australia

Please send me your contact details.

I'd like to know about you and what you do.

Kind regards,
Alice Gage

**

Subject: RE: Three times
Date: Thu, April 2, 2009 7:30pm

Hello Alice,
Thank you for the feedback. I would love a swap.
My name is EI and I go by the name --.

my address
Thingy
Tokyo 102-0074
Japan

Your publications seem very interesting. I look foward
to recieving them. Mine is not much, but I put some work
into them so I hope you'll like them. I used to do alot
of graffiti but now I produce works in various dimensions
off the streets.
I do not consider myself to be an artist, though by no
means am I 'anti-established art'.
I am still in search of something missing within me.
I have started a blog project in hopes of discovering
something about myself.
Please check it out if you have time - *********

My lungs feel like raisins from smoking too much recently.
Anyway, hope to hear from you soon.

EI

Isn't that great!

So - good stuff the Journal.


www.thejournalinc.com

BIDOUN

I'm on my second issue of Bidoun. That's pretty good going for a magazine that costs $19.95 in Australia. The bottom of the second copy I have – Winter 2009 (pictured above) – is warped and crinkled because a can of premixed gin and tonic (classy stuff) that I was carrying in my backpack with the newly-purchased Bidoun was mysteriously pierced in transit, leaching to a height of about 8cm. It took a few days to dry out, and I had to carefully un-stick the pages each morning before replacing it back on the window sill.

BUT WHO CARES because the magazine is so great. An arts and culture journal that is published out of New York offices and contains content solely about or from the Middle East, Bidoun is classy and cool and interesting and funny and really well designed. Each issue is themed – the damaged copy in question is 'Kids' – and strikes a really nice balance of art and reading material. Aesthetically, it's the magazine-lovers wet dream, with different paper stocks, perforated pages, weird fold-outs and flaps. Its layout is busy but sharp (how I do dislike minimalist layout), with plenty of designy title pages and headers. Another good decision was to put the advertising (all for international art galleries) in the first 20 pages, leaving the rest of the mag freed up for the good stuff. My hats off to Babak Radboy and Jiminie Ha – very swish.

But what Bidoun does best is bring young stories and art with a Middle Eastern focus to an otherwise fairly ignorant Western peer group. It challenges one-dimensional preconceptions without so much as nodding to them, and divides the broad term 'Middle Eastern culture' into its many parts by bringing together voices from vastly different regions.

Invariably, the subjects of the 'Artist Projects', photographic essays, interviews and true stories are particularly fascinating and there is a good smattering of politics. It takes the piss with panache, and is polished off with three disgusting regional recipes on the last page. It also contains reviews, an international exhibition listing and a glossary of need-to-know Arabic phrases.

I would wager it takes its cues from The New Yorker (and poaches its writers) but aims for a younger, more poppy audience. It's everything Vice could never be.






www.bidoun.com

My blog

This is my blog. Blog! BLOG!

I recently learned that Twitter founder Evan Williams coined the term 'Blogger' back in the early dotcom years. Thanks Evan! What a guy. From 'Blogger' to 'Twitter'! He's really given humankind a leg-up in its quest to become entirely self-obsessed.

So here I am.

This blog's theme is: Magazines I Have Known and Loved. Here I will discuss recent finds from the newsagent's shelves and elsewhere.

I hope you enjoy it.


Bye!