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.

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