Curatorialist

It’s funny. With advertisers leaving magazines these days, I am reminded of the Renaissance. That’s actually not funny, everything reminds me of the Renaissance. If you recall from history class, it went: Middle Ages, Black Plague, Renaissance. Some say that the plague left people thinking about their own mortality, empathetic to the human plight and that set the stage for more humanistic movements in art and patrons with the hearts to fund it. We might be in that Black Plague right now.

Nobody seems to be making this connection, but both music and magazines are both artistic expressions that have relied on some kind of business arrangement. As those arrangements and our economic structure unravel, the art just might be getting to a better place. The next stage very well could be patronage, especially if the art gets very good and reaches some kind of new height of personal expression.

This new book out, “We Make Magazines,” highlights a number of independent magazines who are doing their thing outside the mainstream. No coincidence that the sub-title of the book is “Inside the Independents” and that you could very well put that line underneath many of the new venues for music and film, as well. People are doing it on their own these days and, since the tools are all at our disposal, we simply don’t need the business to get published. And the decisions are, therefore, all our own. When you have a job working for someone else, you make what you make according to their vision. This is the draw of independent _____-making, be it film, music, magazines or whatever. We make whatever we want, according to our own vision. It’s a great time to be an artist, but what will you make? What is the new renaissance about? How will you be part of it?

More info on the book here.