MICROSTORY OF ART

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Dedicated to Old Magazines

The most beautiful cultural magazine that I remember and that I am still celebrating as my ideal of a cultural magazine was the issue of the magazine du which was dedicated to French writer Claude Simon (central picture: Binant; Claude Simon on the right; small picture: du-magazin.com)

Old Magazines

(10.7.2023) I am browsing old magazines to find out whether to get rid of them or not, and what do I find?
I am finding a magazine issue that still has the sample of a hand creme glued in it. But this is not the only thing that I am finding. While browsing old magazines I have realized that, having always been a fan of magazines, I am still a fan of magazines, and also of old magazines, perhaps: now also of old magazines. But this is raising many questions. Practical questions of where to store the stacks of old magazines. But also philosophical questions. For example: Is it better to open the sample with the hand creme, or to leave everything as it is? I’ll try to develop an answer to that further below.

Old Magazines – First Issue)

In my youth I have particularly been a fan of film magazines, and based on reading film magazines I had developed a passion for film. Only to find out that many films (or: movies) do not keep up to the promises made by film magazines. But is it correct to say that these magazines made actually promises? Perhaps not, but in my mind I created visions of what one might get to see, only to realize much later – now – that film magazines are actually not necessarily film magazines. The film magazine is rather a genre of literature in its own right, and one might enjoy film magazines without ever watching a film. It is the combination of text and image, which is promising, inspiring, thrilling. And the film – to see the film – is actually not even necessary. So it is only consequential that my passion for literature has, over the years, outshadowed my earlier, youthful passion for the movies, and I am seeing that early passion now as an early passion for literature, for reading and looking, and not actually or mainly, exclusively for film. And I am noticing that a few writers, in contemporary literature or even philosophy, are actually working with combinations of text and images (which I am also practicing, here on this website). W. G. Sebald for example (for whose works I have not developed a particular passion), or Peter Sloterdijk (whom I am appreciating rather as a writer of journals, respectively diaries; and whom I am admiring as someone able to celebrate language, and rather the spoken languange, and not the written one). Most stacks of film magazines, by the way, have disappeared, but a few are still left. As witnesses of an early passion for one cultural segment, which turned into, or was now recognized as always having being a passion for the combination of word and image, for literature in the larger sense (which might turn into the medium of film, but not necessarily has to do so).

Old Magazines – Second Issue)

An old magazine issue – it is a couple of years old – is inviting me to do my final school exam (the Matura, as it is called in Switzerland) again, not with the questions of then (1990/91), but with questions as it is done now (or was done, a couple of years ago). Let’s look at what they have the pupils do, in, let’s say the subject matter of German. What German essay do they have the pupils write, or better: on what do they have the pupils write.
And to my surprise I am finding that they have the pupils write a German essay on a quote by Confucius. They give them a quote by Confucius on the subject matter of happiness, asking them, among other things, whether Confucius is right to say (I am paraphrasing): to always be happy, there is constant change and adaption needed.
Well, this is tough. Is Confucius right (I did write, I believe, on Kafka’s axe then, and on the frozen sea in us, about the function of literature that is). My first sentence would be: Confucius is only right, if he is understood correctly… Upon which I would develop my understanding of Confucius (with a sarcastic aside on the role of Confucious institutes, and on how they are taking over the education in parts of the German speaking world), to come up in the end with a philosophy of which the teacher of German perhaps has never heard of. And I would write about the question of how to be, and to remain happy among many stacks of old magazines. In one issue of which I am finding…

Old Magazines Third Issue)

The still sealed sample of a hand creme for men. And this is tough as well. To answer the question of whether to open that still sealed sample of a hand creme. Is it about change and adaption here? But perhaps the question is answering itself, while I am trying to pull off the still sealed sample from the magazine. Realizing that there is old glue underneath. Which is disgusting, and resulting with the pages being glued. This is not what I am going to do. I decide that the question has answered itself, and I am leaving everything as it is, by glueing the sample back into the magazine. One of many that I am still keeping. And enjoying. Even if there are no printed magazines anymore (with samples of hand creme glued into them).

MICROSTORY OF ART
ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM
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