To prepare a magazine for publication is to barrel an intricate series of confluences toward a great convergence. Two—maybe three—interruptions the momentum can take, but diversion into inertia is sacrilege. Still, unforeseen circumstances happen: people get sick, buildings get bulldozed.
Circumstances are best when the “room” is in a fever. The hum and buzz of discussion and debate, the excitement of previewing layout after layout, the rapid-fire correspondences spanning thousands of miles—illustrations coming in, directives going out, final edits delivered, deliberated over, and delivered again… These are the currents that keep us enthralled, that offer some tangible deliverance from the unnerving, near-magic formlessness of ideas… Something concrete for sand-in-the-hand concepts like art, artifice, deadlines.
But what are we even getting at? Last autumn we asked you to consider the shape-shifting quality of art and artists in the digital age, and what agencies, agendas, and aesthetics would determine the future of the arts. In ways ardent, compelling, provocative, and beyond, we received. What determines authenticity, and how? When do machines serve us and when do we serve them? What were they really up to in Byzantium and why did they think they were alone in the universe?
Our pages venture far and wide, from Brooklyn architect Chris Beck’s thoughtful essay exploring the relationship between artist and computer, to ceramicist and Temple University professor Vero Jacome’s heartfelt piece on the hidden cost of ascribing value to one’s art, to G.V. Rindborg’s dispatch from the cobblestone and white sheet streets of Lisbon. In Contact Sheet, NYC-based freelance photographer Jason LeCras looks back on his vibrant time working in the restaurant industry, long a port of call for artists. Swapping coasts, our resident Arts & Culture correspondent Daisy Silver spotlights one of the more prevalent—and misunderstood—Los Angeles fixtures: the dingbat. In our latest symposium, we welcome incisive and inspired responses from artist Rik Ritchey, historian S.D. Chrostowska, and author Nicholas Fox Weber among others.
We’re moved and thrilled by Jesse Tisch’s Reappraisal of master of the American short story Leonard Michaels, a quintessential New Yorker who turned his back on its publishing industry at the heights of his early acclaim, consequently passed through a period of critical neglect, and was in the midst of a triumphant comeback when he died unexpectedly in 2003. We’re amused and haunted by Yoel Noorali’s “Disgraceland,” a slyly humorous tale depicting a writer’s unforgettable, booze-besotted quest for “authenticity.” James Laughlin Award-winning poet sam sax stuns and subdues us with their “Street Fair,” a vigorous work of sustained intensity, not far from The Velvet Underground. Apropos the underground, San Francisco zine legend and RE/SEARCH publisher V. Vale shares doses of unadulterated wisdom in our Person-to-Person exclusive. Finally, our own Paris Cotz takes up EXPRESS for this issue and, paired with Marta Klopf’s impressive design, sees us off with style—and a glass of wine.
But what about that bulldozer? There’s nothing like moving offices to reinvigorate the imagination, or so it’s been for our Editor-in-Chief David Reid, who is uncompromisingly thrilled by our new location, a former ink factory in the corrugated metal and rust-kissed flatlands of West Berkeley (our former “slated for demolition” offices now formally demolished). Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz described his first impressions of Berkeley, in 1960, thus: “Concrete on top of landfills, land reclaimed from the sea, empty wetlands, beside them industrial and warehouse districts… not a grain of sand, and the water too dirty and too cold.” While the soil’s toxicity may have subsided, and much of the industrial machinery has gone by the wayside (along with the affordable rent), for the most part his description still stands. Throw in a slew of new wine and craft beer makers and their youthful acolytes, and a handsomely decrepit and de Chiricoesque cement mixer, and you’ve got our new home. From our rooftop the Dispatches crew can, on those rare occasions that we gather in Berkeley, take in the Bay through its industrial mists: “The quintessence of American spaces and the alienation of man.”
We all have urgent stories to tell. Vital, vibrant, and of the time and place as ever, these are our long-awaited latest.
