IdeaMe is an online platform, which helps creators, be they inventors, artists, or designers, among others, to finance their projects through crowd funding. In a new series, the Indy will be featuring and promoting one project every week, with the aim of helping the creators finance and achieve their dreams.

This week we have a look at Wicked Mag, an established magazine publication that is an “innovative and multicultural perspective” on Buenos Aires, supporting local artists and pushing boundaries.

With our instant media age it is becoming more obscure to hold something in your hand, revisit it a thousand times, step back and look at a page of art, a photograph, even a format of an article, in a way that is absent from staring a glossy internet page. This is a philosophy that magazine publications, especially small ones, like Wicked Mag stand by and need support for.

They say: “Our pages reflect new trends and anti-trends in the city. In other words, shows those who are new and interesting regarding music, film, visual art, literature, theatre, events, nightlife, fashion, and design.” They aim to be “primarily directed at people at people with interest in new branches of art, innovation and creativity.”

Incorporating interviews, features, artwork, and an annual calendar of what is going on in the city, Wicked Mag intends to be cutting-edge culturally. They consider themselves unique, as “not only are the words that fill the pages fresh and innovative, the format and distribution models break new ground among Argentine magazines.” Articles are in both English and Spanish, opening up the readership to include expats and tourists, giving them a key to a scene that might not be accessible when only skimming the surface of a city.

The magazine is to be published annually, in two volumes and if the project goes ahead be ready to see it in the flesh mid-April. The format is an A4-sized magazine which is FSC certified. Produced using eco-friendly paper and inks, they aim for a circulation of 5,000 copies.

With publishing there are hurdles which crowd-sourcing projects like Idea.me can help jump. It truly renders a publication unique and organic when those with the ideas can put exactly what they want on the page. Paradoxically, this dying art, which is being transformed by the accessibility of the internet, can be produced through a new and innovative approach to publishing via the exact same source. Through Idea.me you can contribute to this exciting new direction of publishing and be part of the movement.

As this venture is crowd-sourced, Wicked mag emphasises the independence that this brings – it is truly created in an un-restricted environment showcasing art which might not get published elsewhere and allows them “to use new journalistic concepts”. Yet, with the benefit of independence comes the burden of independent funding. Magazine lovers should jump at being part of a publication, even if it’s just behind the scenes, think of yourself as an anti-Murdoch, if needs be.

They stress: “Consumerism is not the goal. We have no political sign and believe in the values ​​of the people. We don’t point to the mainstream, but point to alternative individual culture that is born of every person, emphasising on extraordinary cases.”

Through Idea.me, those who are interested can donate any chosen sum, with which there come ‘rewards’ for generosity. According to the amount you donate, you will receive a copy of the magazine and extras.

For those of you who are thinking “Lucas Campodonico - that name rings a bell”, we interviewed the incessant entrepreneur last year about his project ‘Greca’. But this is not the subject of today’s chat. Lucas was one of ten Argentines and Uruguayans chosen last year as part of the British Council’s Climate Generation project, awarding a group of young people the title of ‘Climate Champion’ on an annual basis and providing logistical and financial support to help them get their project off the ground.

Lucas Campodonico (Photo: Lucas Campodonico)

In Lucas’ case, the project is environmental magazine: Ecomanía. He had had the idea for a while, but proposing the project to the Council and then being awarded gave him the push he needed to get it off the ground. The first edition came out at the start of this month, and is packed full of useful information for those wanting to green up their lives.

The contents are a mixture of interviews, featuring cult chef Narda Lepes in the first edition, a focus on biking in Buenos Aires, tips and advice, and reviews of eco-friendly and sustainable products. Central to the publication’s philosophy is that is goes against anything that comes close to ‘greenwashing’ and also the accessibility of the contents: it does not get bogged down in science, and is backed up by a fresh, young design, heavy on images and graphics. It is on the pulse, and cool. And even better: free!

Lucas explains the concept as a “publication whose objective is to give information that allows readers to make decisions and adopt sustainable habits.”

Photo by Menelaos Prokos

Catherine Mariko Black is Hawaiian by adoption who, after moving to Buenos Aires, found herself starting off with Kung Fu and ending up as the editor of the San Telmo-based publication, El Sol de San Telmo.

Where are you from originally?

My mother is Japanese and my father is from New York. They met in Africa, where I was born, and we moved to Hawaii when I was eight years old.

I have never identified with any one place in particular. If I were to choose a place that I would call home, it would be Hawaii, because I think of it more as an adopted home. Nevertheless, when people ask me, I say I am from Hawaii because you always get this really dramatic response!

Why did you choose to move to Buenos Aires?

Around 2004 I was talking with my Argentine partner about an article that had appeared in the newspaper about what was happening in Buenos Aires, how it had opened up culturally. We were looking for an excuse to break away from the beaten track and wanted to try something different. We came to Buenos Aires with the idea of staying for a year, which is about what our savings would allow us. We ended up falling in love with Buenos Aires and one year turned into two, two to three and the next thing I knew I was an established resident of the community of San Telmo.

How did you get involved with journalism?

When I was in college, I studied religion, which indirectly got me back to Hawaii and got me involved in environmental movement work. I realised that there are a lot of things happening at the community level that should be communicated to the massive public. I started writing for the local weekly newspaper there as a freelance journalist. Then when I lived in San Francisco, I was the director of communications at a fairly large alternative media organisation.

That’s sort of my background in terms of journalism and communication. I consider myself more of a communicator than a journalist actually. My interest is in creating bridges of awareness.

Photo by Menelaos Prokos

Do you have any other passions?

When I first got here, I actually dedicated myself to my other passion, which are martial arts. For more than two years here that’s pretty much all I did. I had just arrived in Argentina, I had no job, I was financially ok for at least a year and I had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted, so I went crazy with Kung Fu.

Another small project I have is getting up on stage every once in a while and singing Hawaiian music, with a flower in my hair – no grass skirt. In an effort to feel closer to Hawaii and to share some of that culture which is so different from this one, I started practising with a friend of mine who plays the guitar so I have this one music act now.

Why start a newspaper about San Telmo?

I am very interested with anything that has to do with the concept of- ironically enough – ‘belonging to a place’. I am interested in place-based identity and sort of localism in an age of globalisation and disappearing frontiers. Mainly because of that, I can appreciate places that do have a very strong sense of local identity, like Hawaii and San Telmo actually.

This neighbourhood is very beautiful and was very inspiring to me. San Telmo keeps changing on all levels and I feel it is at a crossroad of its history because it’s going through these changes at such a rapid pace.

If there were one thing you could swap between Hawaii and Argentina, what would it be?

The air! It is so special in Hawaii. Hawaii is in the middle of the pacific, so it’s the most isolated archipelago on earth. So the air that reaches the islands is so pure, cleaned, swept by wind and rain over the oceans for thousands of miles before it reaches. When it does reach you, it is like the caress of an angel. I cannot describe it in any other way. The air here is too polluted and I miss the cleanliness, softness and purity of Hawaiian air.

Sometimes when you walk into a museum, a gallery, a library, it feels like you’ve entered some serene, patrician vault. The impulsive rhythm of the outside world seems immediately transmuted into a space of burnished surfaces, cautious whispers and good posture. Immediately filled with awareness of your own behaviours, your attention seems slightly diverted from any natural engagement with the works you come to see.

Image courtesy of 2 Obras

 

It seems ironic that in these particular repositories which house numerous manifestations of ideas, knowledge and expression, we (the few who actually enter) have been conditioned to limit our responses to the forms of hushed tones and big words.

Also mystifying is the oft-emphasised separation between the literary world and the world of visual arts. John Cage, William Burroughs and Pablo Picasso are testaments to expression emerging in various shapes and sizes. Their creativeness ran the gamut between writing, visual creation and music.

But for whatever reason, artistic manifestation has become an overly defined, at times pigeonholed, entity rather than an elusive part of our culture which is meant to evoke a response in its spectator.

In his essay ‘The Wall and the Books’, Borges writes: “The imminence of a revelation as yet un-produced, is perhaps the aesthetic act.”

If art does not incite a reaction—a dialogue—it seems to be an incomplete. Without realising itself through dialogue, perhaps it is truly unformed.

Veronica Romano, 37, has found an active way to confront these assiduous concerns in ‘2 Obras’—an art and literature publication that she launched just six months ago.

In order to reconcile the supposedly separate worlds of visual art and literature, she has taken on a project that not only brings the two into an open-ended dialogue without the slightest veneer of pretension, devoid of fear, to which everyone has to recourse.

In her own words, in order to ‘lessen the distance’ between art and literature, she has position them as mirror images of each other on either side of a single A4 sheet of paper. A space which by virtue of its size has been able to make its way even into the dustiest bar corners in Buenos Aires. Seemingly innocuous and nondescript, a sheet of paper has often been one of history’s most formidable fire starters.

The production of ‘2 Obras’ is fairly simple: Each month Veronica selects one literary citation from an array of submissions, photographs a piece of art, and prints them together en masse, and then uses both actual and virtual means of distribution to make its presence felt.

So far she has published six issues and has therefore given widespread exposure to six artists and six writers. Not unlike a pamphlet or any other gratuitous publication, she invites people to distribute it at their whim—to collect it, to read it without forfeiting a penny, share it and to engage with it.

“I’m trying to simply generate a space of proximity between two works in order to produce a reaction; I am interested in bringing them together to generate tension and to see what happens in the precise moment of flipping the page.”

Veronica adamantly emphasises the simplicity of ‘2 Obras’ as she talks about it, suggesting that perhaps its simplicity is the point. Perhaps art looks at its best when sheathed in plain clothes. Veronica succeeds in this by essentially turning the walls of museums, galleries and libraries inside out, inviting people to speak at normal volumes, or even [gasp] address, touch and feel the work itself without fear of setting off the alarm.

Throughout her career as an artist, Veronica has dedicated herself to crossing the barriers that the insular worlds of art and literature have been known to erect. During the late 1990s she, along with six other artists, helped form a group known as cero barrio. Using mostly public places to show their artwork, such as building facades and restaurant tables, this group became known for establishing new forms of dialogue within the artistic circuit as well as beyond it.

Since studying fine arts at La Escuela Nacional de Prilidiano Pueyrredon, Veronica’s installations have surfaced in many spaces around the city, from Malba and Galeria Belleza y Felicidad to Printed Matter Inc. in New York. Veronica’s material of choice is crushed glass, which she often installs along with sculptures constructed by using more traditional techniques. Her work has been lauded for willingly existing within unconventional dualities and for challenging prescribed mediums of communication.

According to Veronica, “2 Obras was born as a super-simple project in which I was able to work with my two passions: visual art and literature.” It seems simple enough but perhaps the way in which the idea was conceived most clearly speaks to Borges’ imminent ‘revelation’, a revelation that can only be brought about by the completion of a cycle, fulfilled only by means of a two-way dialogue. Whether this cycle is considered necessary for art or just merely for life, it is a cycle which glitters in its simplicity, and yet yields pervasive and profound results.

While reading the biography of one of her favourite authors, Virginia Woolf, Veronica discovered that Woolf and her husband had a small publishing company called the Hogart Press from which they published something known as ‘Two Stories’. Essentially the same format as ‘2 Obras’, but only prose, it became the direct inspiration for Veronica.

“I wanted to do something to put visual art and literature in contact with each other and to contribute something to revive these relationships in the present day. It seemed interesting to work from a point that manifested itself in my own production, generating tensions from bringing two separate elements together.”

‘2 Obras’ engages the city in a discourse that is both infectious and innocuous. With her publication, Veronica demonstrates that a simple dialogue between seemingly distinct factions of life is always possible and productive, even if it is conducted in silence.

For more information visit http://2obras.blogspot.com