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BACKGROUND INFO
PHOTOSTATIC MAGAZINE
began publishing in 1983 as a magazine of graphic artwork produced on the
xerox machine. Over a period of some years, its originally narrow scope
grew to embrace machine-based art in general. Although self-consciously
"counter-cultural" and admittedly esoteric, PHOTOSTATIC gradually acquired a committed following, and
eventually incorporated reviews, essays, humor and other prose writings;
visual poetry, collage, and photography; in fact, anything that can satisfyingly
exist on the black-and-white page and which satsified our esthetic.
What unified these disparate creations
was the fact that they reflected their context, which was the exchange-driven
and do-it-yourself international zine and cassette networking movements
of the 80s. What this movement and PHOTOSTATIC
sought to do, in our eyes, was not
simply to publish a zine or release a tape filled with music |
(sizeable tasks in themselves). It also
sought to do nothing less than change the lives of its participants through
the transformative power of saying and doing things that were really meant,
which of necessity existed outside of the imposed world of our jobs, classes,
social activities, family life, what have you. The phrase "creative
outlet" fails to capture what we were seeking: we really wanted to
change the world. In a modest way, we think we did.
To reflect changes in editorial direction
motivated by a growing awareness and consolidation of the ideas with which
we were working, and by our busy interaction with others doing similar projects,
the magazine was renamed RETROFUTURISM in 1989. We had become
distinctly suspicious of the commonly-perceived fine-art/popular culture
polarity (so-called high vs. low art), preferring instead to work in the
ill-defined space between these two pseudo-extremes. We were most satisfied
when we (at least in our own minds) had negated the over-arching self-image
of this dichotomy, when people found our work difficult to categorize or
even confusing, but nonetheless provocative. The most stimulating cultural
work, it seemed to us, came from places were there was a certain nutritious
tension, a chaotic ferment of conflicting notions, evidence of the continually
extant future and past in dialog with each other, at most dimly outlining
the skid marks of a fleeting present. This seems to occur only vainly in
either fine art or pop culture, both of which are rather too similar to
industrial processes, often producing great wealth but little else.
The point is not merely to be "hip"-although
this admittedly has its pleasures-for to do so is to aim at a target receding
at the speed of light. Nor is it to seek a "timeless" and ossified
classicism (which, too, has its enticements) for who, other than a few post-Fluxus
nincompoops, wants to be bored? We apologize if these thoughts seem abstract,
but the only way to concretely characterize them, it seems to us, is to
make the work that these words attempt to describe. Which is precisely what
we're here inviting you to do.
We are most interested in works that were
made with our way of working in mind; that is, for reproduction on xerox
@ 600 dpi, in black and white, 35.5 x 44 picas (or smaller) and with the
possibility of our own collaborative input into the presentation. In this
modus, visual subtleties are often left by the wayside. We look for graphically
intense works wherever possible. But bear in mind that we intend to break
these rules if something strikes our fancy.
A NEW PHASE
PHOTOSTATIC and
RETROFUTURISM,
along with other publications originating from the same address, carried
on a hectic schedule until 1994, after 41 issues of PHOTOSTATIC, 17 issues of Retrofuturism (11 of these
overlapping with issues of PHOTOSTATIC) and dozens of other titles had appeared, including
audio cassettes, CDs, radio broadcasts, a video compilation, numerous artists
booklets, and a number of performances and public actions. A period of travel
and quiet reflection was needed, hence our three-year hiatus.
That phase is now done. We propose a new
series using the combined titles to begin in 1997. The publication will
be called THE PHOTOSTATIC RETROFUTURIST. We will
retain many of our previous interests, emphases and techniques, with an
appetite for adding unforeseen ones. We will remain not-for-profit and (probably)
small in circulation. Contributors of published work will receive a copy
of the issue in which their work appears. THE
PHOTOSTATIC RETROFUTURIST will not
be copyrighted. We will still be striving to create an exchange-driven environment
for those who are doing work which interests us.
We are still committed the do-it-yourself
modus that punk engendered, but the times have changed. It is still possible
to do meaningful, incisive work with nothing more than a sharp pencil and
a handy surface, by which we mean to say that the zine format has not yet
been superceded by the website. We believe that paper will be a viable medium
for the foreseeable future, in spite of new forms of CRT-based delivery.
The computer goes into our toolbox alongside the postage stamp and the photocopier.
That said, the same esthetic rules apply
as before. We seek work that makes good and effective use of the materials
selected by its maker. This means nothing less than collaborating with the
materials and tools chosen to work with, plumbing them for possibilities,
finding out what they do well and what they do less well, and then pushing,
tweaking and kneading until the completed work works. |
