Johannes Wohnseifer
August 28 - September 27, 2009

Daniel Baumann
A Question of the Footnote

“Artists’ magazines up into the mid-80s were driven by the conviction that not only was a new perspective necessary, but that a new form of publicness needed to be created for this purpose. The aim was to democratize contemporary art, to decentralize the discourse and to build self-administered platforms for art and reflection. At the end of the 1980s, however, contemporary art became more and more a part of the mainstream as a new class of young urban professionals began to fill their lives with painting, Sony, sculpture, Saab and Le Corbusier. The development became more and more widespread and at the same time more exclusive, reaching its apex in the now concluded decade of finance. In this context, the artists’ magazine became less and less a space for a different publicness but quite the contrary: a refuge, a niche and a secret meeting place where, beyond the market, culture industry and opposition as lifestyle, something like an awareness of life and wild thinking not only appeared possible but actually happened. There something was realized that used to be curse words and that appears to us today as a kind of freedom: a hermetic seal and misunderstanding.”

Thus reads the concluding paragraph of my article, “Kiosk, Xerox und Selbstermäch- tigung. Ein Entwurf zur Geschichte der Künstlerzeitschrift,” which appears in the handbook/sourcebook accompanying the recent acquisition of Christoph Keller’s collection of artists’ books and magazines by the Nationalbibliothek in Berlin. (1)
As a sort of roaming fringe-space, Keller’s substantial trove toured the global exhibition circuit/circus over the past several years under the title Kiosk: Modes of Multiplica-tion; it became a meeting place for those interested in and passionate about the subject and was one of the sites where the potentialities of empowerment, alternative, and niche could be investigated. For reasons of space, I was unable in the above-mentioned article to elaborate further on some of the information about certain maga-zines. I would like to compensate for this here, making this text first and foremost a footnote.

0 To 9 (2) (1967 – 1969, 7 editions). “Published from 1967 to 1969 in seven limited mimeographed editions, 0 to 9 was edited by artist Vito Acconci and poet Bernadette Mayer. Seeking to explore the relationship between language and the page, Mayer and Acconci brought together the pioneers of 1960s experimental poetry and conceptual art. Sol LeWitt, Adrian Piper, Dan Graham, Ted Berrigan, Clark Coolidge, Robert Barry, Les Levine, Robert Smithson, Hannah Weiner, Emmett Williams, Dick Higgins, Yvonne Rainer, Aram Saroyan, Bernar Venet, Alan Sondheim and the editors themselves are but a few of the artists and writers who appeared in 0 To 9. When considered as a whole, the chronological development of 0 To 9 provides a key understanding to, and perhaps the only exhaustive investigation of, the interstices between the concept-driven poetry of the late 60s and the pioneering formation of conceptual art. 0 To 9 was the first to publish the works of Dan Graham and Adrian Piper, as well as Sol LeWitt’s ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’ and Jackson Mac Low’s first poem series governed by chance operations, the ‘Biblical Poems.’ 0 To 9: The Complete Magazine: 1967 – 1969 collects early works by more than seventy renowned artists and poets and provides a glimpse into the poetics of Vito Acconci.” (3)

Archigram (1961 – 1974, 9 issues). “In 1961, Peter Cook and David Greene, recent architecture school graduates, published a protest sheet in response to the conservatism of existing architectural journals, which at the time eschewed experimental work. For the editors, the magazine’s title, Archigram, reflected ‘the notion of a more urgent and simple item than a journal, like a ‘telegram’ or ‘aerogramme,’ hence ‘archi(tecture)-gram.”’ Sharing similar interests, Michael Webb, Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, and Dennis Crompton – who all worked at the Taylor Woodrow Construction Company in London with Cook and Greene—became involved in the publication. The magazine, which saw nine full issues, was committed to the propagation of avant-garde activity suppressed by educational institutions and neglected by the mainstream press. The magazine Archigram featured visionary designs by architects such as Cedric Price, Yona Friedman, Frei Otto, the Japanese Metabolists, and even the Archigrammers themselves, for what was initially a publishing endeavor transformed into an architectural collaboration which would take the same name as the protest sheet. The 1963 issue of Archigram was devoted to ‘expendability’ – one of the prevailing concerns of experimental architects of the 1960s. Discussed in terms of a ‘throwaway aesthetic’ for architecture, or ‘planned obsolescence,’ as Cook articulated in the Archigram 3 editorial, expendability in architecture meant an appropriation of the logic of consumer culture, as visualized in a collage of images of detergent, geodesic domes, cereal and mobile homes, punctuated by the message ‘It’s all the same.’” (4)

Whole Earth Catalog (1969 – 1972). “The subtitle of the Whole Earth Catalog, founded by Stewart Brand, was ‘access to tools.’ Brand’s vision was to create a catalog along the lines of an advertisement or a telephone book, which would be an all-expansive, comprehensive and visually stimulating information database that people from different locations could plug into. This concept of a continuous intangible connective data tissue was largely inspired by the icon of the globe that would become the symbol of the Whole Earth Catalog’s covers. In this sense, Whole Earth Catalog, which ended in 1972, was the first publication that aspired to function as a whole earth system, and has been cited as a conceptual forerunner of a Web search engine. Its original aims were to function ‘as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting. An item is listed in the KATALOG if it is deemed: 1) Useful as a tool, 2) Relevant to independent education, 3) High quality or low cost, 4) Easily available by mail.’ The Whole Earth Catalog was specifically geared towards the development of a counterculture promoting alternative ecological products, technologies, methods, communities, and publications, eventually aiming to establish a consciousness for the emerging counterculture network. In fact, as Brand was specifically interested in a ‘commune-based readership,’ the Whole Earth Catalog was originally conceived of as a manual for communal living, providing communitarians with the ‘know-how’ to set up their living experiments.” (5)

Room East 128 Chronicle (from 1962 on). “In the early sixties Ettore Sottsass Jr. was already a prominent figure of the design world, consulting and designing for companies such as Olivetti and Poltronova. In June 1962, while he was being treated in the Medical Center of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, he launched an independent publication with his wife Fernanda Pivano. Room East 128 Chronicle began as an open letter to various friends in Italy. Sottsass and Pivano used a manual printing machine and cutouts from newspapers and magazines. The first three issues of Room East 128 Chronicle narrated a fictional version of their routine and the health misadventures of Sottsass Jr., as well as weather predictions, surreal crossword puzzles, and comments on American pop culture. Room East 128 Chronicle was more than a letter; it had the character of a cultural zine pregnant with the couple’s fascination with the American Myth. When Sottsass Jr. and Pivano moved back to Milan the magazine’s title became East 128 and it took on various forms, from a Christmas greeting card to an exhibition catalog to a collection of texts. In 1967 East 128 became the publishing house of Pianeta Fresco, another homemade publication produced by Sottsass Jr. and Pivano.” (6)

Pianeta Fresco (1967 – 1968, 3 issues). “Pianeta Fresco (Fresh Planet) came out from the living room of Ettore Sottsass Jr. and Fernanda Pivano, the literary critic who translated and promoted the Beat Generation in Italy. Pivano was Pianeta Fresco’s ‘Editor Responsible,’ with Allen Ginsberg as ‘Editor Irresponsible,’ and Sottsass Jr. as ‘Keeper of the Gardens.’ Employing a large format and a unique multicolor layout for each page, this self-published magazine covered a wide range of topics from poetry to psychedelia and from pacifism to emerging art practices. Pianeta Fresco can be read as an autonomous art project as well as an original intellectual platform. It was promoting ‘paths of pleasure,’ and its contributors were fighting creatively for ‘nonviolence.’ Every day at six o’clock in the afternoon young people would gather in Pivano and Sottsass Jr.’s apartment, and Pianeta Fresco would grow out of the words and the smoke of this countercommunity. It was a collaborative project of artists, architects, and workers, all friends of the couple. This first issue features Allen Ginsberg’s account of a 1965 episode between the Hell’s Angels and the Vietnam Day Committee in Berkeley, California, works by Christo, Allan Kaprow, Philip Lamantia as well as Archizoom’s ‘Gazebo’s Inc.,’ a meditation on the rational construction of architecture via a series of ‘elementary’ compositional acts, or ‘cruel operations of Reason itself.’ For the 1968 winter equinox, a double issue, number 2/3, titled ‘Technology of De-conditioning’ was published, signaling the premature death of Pianeta Fresco.” (7)

Those are my supplementary footnotes. I have written all this, however, to say that Johannes Wohnseifer’s painting always and in no small measure centers around the question of the relationship between supposed footnote (reference) and supposed main text (painting). None of his paintings answer the question but rather merely take it up again and again in order to see what happens. While others cling to hierarchies, yap away about painting and the writing of its history, and want to be, like children, the center of the action. It has all long since been a question of the footnote.

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(1)
Christoph Keller, Michael Lailach, eds., Kiosk – Modes of Multiplication: A Sourcebook on Independent Art Publishing Activities 1998 – 2008 / Ein Handbuch der alternativen Publikationsprojekte 1998 – 2008 (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2009).

(2)
See the article at http://www.primaryinformation.org/index.php?/project/press/ (accessed August 4, 2009) or Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer, eds., 0 To 9: The Complete Magazine: 1967–1969 (Brooklyn, New York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006).

(3)
http://www.infibeam.com/Books/info/Vito-Acconci/ 0-to-9-The-Complete-Maga-zine-1967/1933254203.html

(4)
Irene Sunwoo, “Archigram No. 3,” from the timeline accompanying the exhibition Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X – 197X, March 13 – May 17, 2009, Disseny Hub / Barcelona, http://www.climpstampfold.com (accessed August 8, 2009)

(5)
Lydia Kallipoliti, “Whole Earth Catalog No. 1,” from the timeline accompanying the exhibition Clip/Stamp/Fold, loc.cit.

(6)
Olympia Kazi, “Room East 128 Chronicle,” from the timeline accompanying the exhibition Clip/Stamp/Fold, loc.cit.

(7)
Olympia Kazi, “Pianeta Fresco,” from the timeline accompanying the exhibition Clip/Stamp/Fold, loc.cit.