Living Magazine [Method]
Living Magazine [Method]

Summary/Abstract: Recently, the transcultural art magazine Journal for Northeast Issues launched a Living Magazine. This publishing project originated from considerations of the present necessities and possibilities of social art. Its implications, the editorial group’s working process of recent years, were projects, artists’ conferences, meetings and exhibitions in various European cities. For example, one of the major projects was related to an idea of New York linguist Mary Louise Pratt about social spaces as “contact zones” where cultures meet and deal with each other. Such spaces can mirror highly asymmetrical power relations and clashes, but they can also be places of mutual understanding and learning. Pratt describes the “arts of the contact zones” in terms of heterogeneity and seeming incoherence. She identifies the preferred artistic methods of transculturation, critique, collaboration, mediation, parody, imaginary dialogue and others. Her concept has gone on to exert wide interdisciplinary influence and has been applied when critically studying institutions of cultural history and art. The Urban Contact Zone project in Hamburg related the concept to problems of urban spaces: the current restructuring of public spaces and present-day urban development and competition. In a series of talks, performances, actions and exhibitions, the project brought together a wide range of artistic research and attitudes from a variety of international metropoleis. Many of the contributions appeared in print in the Journal for Northeast Issues’ Living Magazine. What is of interest when dealing with a “living magazine” today, and why should it be carried out in a globalized context? A great deal of the answers lie in the historical achievements of this format.

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