“Zines run the gamut in both quality and subject matter, but they all share a common and salient thread — they speak for their time, they are unedited, they are personal, and they deal with things you would never read about in major publications, from the personal to the political and beyond.
— Sara Century, writing for The Establishment
Quoted here: https://www.lgbtculturalheritage.com/zines
The artists gathered for this co-created zine are four very curious people.
Art, natural patterns, and words intertwine in a collaboration between them.
Lee Moore Crawford, a floral designer and artist, once struck up a conversation about the Japanese art of ikebana when DK happened upon her arranging flowers at a coffee shop in Durham, NC, circa 2011. We never forgot it.
So when DK collaborated with another creative person who takes inspiration from nature to make the cover image of this issue (Dipika Kohli took the original photograph in Huế, then forwarded it to digital processing artist Nils don Sihvola in Finland), we wanted to ask Crawford what her feelings would be. Lots came of this interaction, including a short piece, ‘Bloom.’
To give the collection continuity, we then circled back to former culture editor Michael Bridgett, Jr., whose article, ‘Why I Art,’ opens yet another fresh perspective.
Order it here.
Thanks ;)
Lots of conversations. Lots of back and forth. Lots of email, discussion, redirection.
All of it goes into the current week’s issue, S P A C E | Rovaniemi, ‘Blank Sky Checklist.’
Cover photo by BOSS.
This week, we publish Issue #44.
It’s a cocreation between Alexis Jokela in Finland and Dipika Kohli, our creative director and editor of Autumn 2019’s S P A C E collection, ‘Trust the Process.’
DK had spent three months in the north of Finland in summer 2018. ‘The whole thing is getting kind of interesting now that the conversations are weaving over themselves and inviting new people to join them, too. That’s because, I think, it’s because, mostly, I love to keep things moving, keep things in progression, because it’s more fun than starting from zero. Art, like I wrote in A Place Called Home, art takes time.’ For DK, the best part is that things are starting to place themselves in such wonderful ways that people are meeting each other now. In person, even. This is beautiful. Connexion, at its best.
This week, the lead story is ‘Ch_cklist,’ by Alexis Jokela, who also is the author of ‘A Summer Love Story’. That was published in S P A C E’ | Oulu. Following similar threads, ‘Ch_cklist’ touches on the things we all go through when we manage to learn how to master our feelings, let things move and shift, and find flow.
S P A C E | Rovaniemi, ‘Blank Sky Checklist’ is published exclusively here in S P A C E. Download it all this here.
http://gum.co/space-rovaniemi-blankskychecklist
A very special issue.
A true co-creation.
A collaboration in the cloud.
I will share more late late tonight, on this blog, around midnight USEST.
Meantime there are simultaneous papers in digital spaces where half-finished issues lay awaiting editing, contribution, connection-making, and the magic moment where it all sort of just goes, ‘Click!’
Et, voilà.
‘L’art pour l’art’ publishes tomorrow.
HT MD, PH.
‘Lucky number! You should take a screen shot.’
‘Didit.’
‘That’s a lot of tweets.’
‘Yes.’
‘What does it do for you, though?’
‘Um.’
‘Do you like twitter?’
‘It’s changed. A lot. Since the good ol’ days when it was flat and you could talk to anybody anywhere and it was cool.’
‘And now?’
‘Stupid algorithms. Fake accounts. Promoted tweets, that makes it feel like garbage is everywhere and it’s hard to find the gems.’
‘Are there any?’
‘Sure. But there isn’t much discernment now between this which matters, and that which doesn’t, because…’
‘Because?’
‘A lot of things. I don’t want to go into it, here. This is public space. But I’ll write about it, in Tuesday’s issue.’
‘Which is?
‘Which is Art 4 Art’s Sake.’
‘Are you going to keep tweeting?’
‘…’
‘…’
‘I don’t know. It’s… where I used to find people and we could talk about things that really felt like things that count. Over time. And built something, ambiently. Some people who I consider friends are people I met on twitter but never met met.’
‘…’
‘Makes you question the point of it, really.’
‘…’
I’m Dipika Kohli. I started Design Kompany, or ‘DK’, in Seattle in 2006.
Ever since it started, even doing client work, Design Kompany has been a sandbox. It’s where we explore, together with others who are looking to discover new ways of trying things.
This is the heart of it, for us. DK explores roundly, in the sphere of the creative process.
—DK
Photo OMNI Studiophotos, Durham NC 2012
Today’s in S P A C E we publish the new zine, S P A C E | Dubai, ‘Heart to Heart.’
A special issue co-created with Sinxloud‘s Saqib Jan, who is based in Dubai.
Honesty, connection, discovery and trusting the process led to the writing, design and layout of this 16-page PDF.
The lead story, ‘A Shift of Phase,’ centers on an intimate, refreshingly blunt conversation between two childhood friends.
The issue also contains quotes, like this one:
The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks. The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative, and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little. —Banksy, quoted in ‘Today’s Dystopia: They Live’, by Joe Sparrow in Montag, a Berlin magazine
DK enjoyed working on this layout, getting a chance to place fresh photography with a piece of writing that might surprise you.
Like all our zines, this was a work of many iterations and forms, which came into shape through varying degrees of amplitude, reach, and serendipitous encounters, in S P A C E.
A good collaboration, all around.
And with this issue, #41, our two-year roving atelier project, Atelier S P A C E, has concluded. Today DK’s Dipika Kohli and BOSS had a lengthy sit-down post-mortem, discussing the ups and downs of what one learns when working to connect, and interconnect, meaningfully and not trivially, new and different others to make space for remarkable connexion.
Did it work? Was it useful? Did it matter?
Questions.
Questioning the questions: that’s what DK learned from SJ.
*Thank you*.
Watch this space.
A throwback.
To 2014.
Phnom Penh. DK had just arrived to Cambodia.
‘Never imagined we’d stay five years:’ DK.
Design. Making meaning out of vague and abstract collections of thought. Streamling and clarifying…
I still remember when we did this, for the NUK Cafe, which we named and branded back in 2014.
That was DK’s first gig in Cambodia.
Things have evolved for them quite a bit at NUK, I think they’ve moved on from our original design, but the ‘N’ is still there on the cups that DK’s Dipika Kohli drew.
Which is this:
I really like this story. Of how you start with ‘…’ and get to this design. It’s not a straight line. The creative process moves around and changes a lot, in the middle. It’s how it goes. It’s how we learn, and how we grow, too. Since DK had been doing branding work for more than a decade, it wasn’t hard. (These days we’re not doing branding work, by the way. More consulting. More experiential programs. Like these.)
Of DK’s founders hitting the road in 2013, going in search of ‘I don’t know what it even is yet’, and discovering the first team in Phnom Penh to give DK an open hand to design the way we know how to design. By asking questions. Listening. Learning. Gathering. Percolating. Generally: trusting the process. Why not? It’s worked for us for so many clients in the past.
It makes me happy.
Funny, all that drawing of the ‘N’ and exploring it led to the birth of something completely different.
Things. Turn into things. Don’t they?
#trusttheprocess
This issue. Has taken me more than a year to wrap my heart around. It’s centered around a brief exchange that I had in a blustering white night all-night escapade that began as a foray to Haapavesi.
‘You go to peculiar places!’ said a writer in Oulu.
Despite my usual antisocial nature, I went. To… Haapavesi.
What I found is wrapped into a short story, which is the lead story for this collection. It, and the issue itself, are called ‘Proprioception.’
It’s a mashup of conversations from Finland over the summer in 2018, as well as more recently, in the cloud. Internet and real clouds… mixing and sharing and discovering and writing. Stories and poems. People give me so much to think about, and, I’m told, I do the same for them. What we discover when we make space to converse is, of course, the whole entire point of S P A C E. So I decided to share that very sweet, summer and lighthearted story today. Starry constellations and jazzy connections, but over karaoke, rounds in bars and ‘filled croissants’ at home.
And who is Soile? Well.
Let me think how to describe this… well, okay, it’s difficult.
Some things are for sharing.
Some things are for folding into art, and publishing, as zines.
Those who are used to my writing and creative nonfiction will not be surprised, but it’s pretty much a combination of three people. Soile… Whom I met on the bus, whom I met at a bar, and whom I met at somewhere I can’t say because this is a public post and not one of the protected ones. [Long stories deleted]
Today’s release has a bunch.
In Saigon, soon.
To gather just six, and their guests. And talk about learning. And share from this new book.
Discover the journey, in S P A C E.
A very special evening.
Quiet. Low-key. No loud yelling, no spilling of drinks, or fakery, or drunken mobbery.
Just… art.
Light, simple. Experience it.
Specially hosted by both Dipika Kohli and BOSS.
Afternoon meet up for those interested in writing, design, editing and self-publishing. I’ll share the zine ‘A Westlake Story.’
First four people to book will get a free printed copy. I’m jazzed.
This is our last Hanoi event for 2019…
Limited seats (six).
Advance bookings only. USD $15.
These are the details.
Book here.
The 12-volume set S P A C E | Winter 2018-19, ‘A Philosophy of the Moment’ is now available in our online shop.
It’s also available for just $4/week, a very special rate, for a limited time, at our crowdfunding page.
A lot of great co-creations, inside this set.
Become part of our community when you subscribe through our crowdfunding page. This coming set will be curated and designed by DK’s Dipika Kohli.
Very happy to be able to say that we got to work with some very talented people, and will be discovering more, I hope, in the Autumn set of things to come, with ‘Trust the Process,’ says DK.As friends in Finland say, katsotaan.
A great conversation set led to the creation of this issue of S P A C E.
Many thanks to Nils don Sihvola, whose cover art is featured here. The story is by Dipika Kohli.
‘DIGITAL VISUAL arts-digital SLR and image processing-is my thing. In 2013 a friend sold me his Canon 500d digital camera. Instinctively and instantly, I knew that the digital camera would be my tool to make art. Art: something I’ve known since I was a child I wanted to make. Every year I practiced, and in 2017, went to study photography at Kymenlaakson opisto in Inkeroinen, Finland.
‘Ever since, I’ve wanted to investigate questions like, ‘How does form support content? What’s “balance” in a composition? What can an image say, in complement to, for example, a spoken message?’
‘In a world that relies on the flat 2d spectacle, rotating the axis to discover a fresh perspective can mean the difference between “love” and “pain.”’
Instagram: @nils_don_sihvola
‘Art, to me, is a great conversation. I design space for that.’ [website | instagram: @dipikakohli]
Almost ready to share the first piece in S P C that has a cover design by one of my new friends, who makes digital artworks.
I’ll have a lot more to say when it goes live, but you can see the softly launched work, ‘This is This,’ in our store.
It’ll be the last one for 2019 from our series in Latvia.
HT NDS.
