Monkeys presenting the new issue of 032c
“OUR MOTIVATION: What does 032c ultimately want to achieve?
To ENERGIZE the reader…”
A simple reason for why I think this magazine is brilliant, I really admire the work and the radical approach of the 032c makers. I guess it is the same with e.g. music, art or design, whether it is about research, entertainment or just consuming, I am really into a story, digging for it to find that one extraordinary something. It corresponds to my nature that I scrutinise a piece of music that unifies a wide range of listeners, or a piece of art that is understandable to any viewer. When most of it is easily digestible, made for everyone to be understood, I am asking, has this art failed? And not rarely it gets boring and loses excitement. Not to be misunderstood, I think I have a soft spot for edgy things or in this case a magazine that is engaging with a certain approach far beyond the mainstream. And that’s where 032c is located … “We went so far underground that we came out on top of the other side of the new mainstream.”
One of the strengths of 032c is refusing the existing structure, denying the machinery of the market, defining an own system with their radicalism. “The first issue was meant to look like Dieter Rams had designed a punk fanzine.” (Publisher Joerg Koch in an interview for meatmagazine) A couple of issues later: the relaunch by Mike Meiré in 2007 (Issue #13) provoked a huge and heated discussion among graphic designers which was really funny to follow. The crucial question was: how far can you go? The whole thing had been blown up by the design scene and was called “The New Ugly”. Meiré was stretching types, sort of anti-designing pages, the elements looked more like being loosely put together, crashing the grid. Most of the layout of the magazine was opposite to a learnt structure or that of a mainstream title. It still was that Dieter-Rams-punk-fanzine approach, but even more pepper to it, even twice as radical.
Once again, they manage to make a 284 pages “book”—issue #019 is full of compelling stories and art. And I can explore things I would have never been searching for. Learning at a high standard. This (pics below) and a lot more of this radness. Be sure to get it!
A 40-page dossier on the American author’s pursuit to understand the tyrannical world — William T. Vollmann.
The summer life of 2010 …
Pierre Alexandre de Looz activates the secret Vogue history of Cy Twombly, photographed by Horst P. Horst.
Artist MATTHEW BARNEY previews the Detroit chapter of his opera “Ancient Evenings”.
Director Paul Schrader and king of disco Giorgio Moroder crystallize 30 years of “American Gigolo”.
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