loud paper

on method: laura hanna and ted smith

Filmmaker Laura Hanna brought the work of architect Ted Smith to the loud paper broadsheet. She hadn't heard of San Diego's Ted Smith when she was commissioned to make short video about him for the US Pavilion at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. And little wonder: the reclusive Southern Californian architect doesn't have a website or any publications to advertise his work, and often shies away from public appearances. This unorthodox and self-described "developer-architect" states, "Where the industry is complex, I hope to eliminate voice by acting as many industry players as possible. I want to be the architect and the developer and contractor. Architects are well- trained to make good buildings and cities, and need to know that perhaps they are the main players that will advance alternative goals." Smith’s reticence to engage with the media does not stem from lack of opinion; his GoHomes are as much about social activism as they are about personal history.

View Hanna’s full Biennale profile video of Ted Smith.

buy the loud paper broadsheet

Get your very own loud paper broadsheet. Hot off the press.

Four bucks includes shipping.

Or stop by the show at Studio-X to get it for free.

increasing the volume

Last night was friggin awesome. My endless gratitude goes out to Gavin and everyone at Studio-X who helped put together the show, including the C-Lab interns; the panelists: Felix, Stephen, Luke, and Mark; our moderator, Kazys; and finally, to all the friends, colleagues, and publishing enthusiasts who showed up. The discussion ranged from the democratic nature of the historic zine subculture to the role of self-publishing in the online mainstream and what this means for architecture, place, and community. The turn out was great and I couldn't have asked for more. Thank you.

Also, Interview magazine just published an online piece about the show, a typically loopy interview with me.

The opening of A Few Zines coincided with the release of a new loud paper broadsheet designed by Chris Grimley at over,under. One side is loud paper, one side is the catalog of the show. In the next few days I'll figure out a Paypal method for sending out the issue to people. I'm also working to get a podcast of the panel pulled together. I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, here's a PDF of the broadsheet.
Download Broadsheet_final_44

sneak preview

From the over,under offices.

cool your jets

Sam over at Strange Harvest just blew my mind with a link to Jet Junk. Man oh man, I wish I had found this fanzine in time to include it in the show. Perhaps they'll send a copy of issue number two on speculative architectures, over in time to sneak it in later in the month.

UPDATE: Junk Jets editors FedExed a copy last night. Yes, it will make the show in time for the opening!

Here's their statement. I not only love their trashy gif aesthetic, but also the collaborative ethos and cross-platform format.

Junk Jet is a fanzine, a collaborative format set up to discuss speculative works on topics of electronic media, aesthetics, and on architectures. It is interested in counter works (and counter counter works) of counter aesthetics, tunneling mainstream (above all architects', designers', and artists' stream) practices that show lack of any irony or fiction. It is about wild forms and found objects, about weird theories and (small) narratives, anti-fashions and non-styles, about exploring do-it-yourself works, accidental outcomes, deviant and normal aesthetic forms that result from jammed common practices, misused media, and subverted customary tools. It is about cultivating an anti heart by “introducing noise to signal”. Whereas n°1 °.° was focused on the topic of music, or better: noise, n°2 °.° is especially into architectural and spatial works. Of course it is not reduced to this.

Junk Jet will again be both an online publication (including movies, images, software, and pdfs), exploiting all possibilities of multimedia, and an extravagant lo-fi paper publication (including special gifts) on a non-commercial scale, challenging the online version.

the begining, the end

Rockefeller Center: election night glow

Basking in the glow of Obama's historic victory, I am sickened by the passage of Prop 8 in California. While the country embraces the promise of civil rights, the state adopts a bigoted view of marriage. It colors our bright new future with Bush-era duplicity and fundamentalism.  My dear friend Bryan Jackson sums up the rage that this hypocritical proposition invokes. I am heartened by the protests (Jack gives a good description of one such rally in West Hollywood) in the last couple days and I can only hope that lawsuits will halt the adoption of Prop 8.

Also sobering is the huge economic crisis still with us after the confetti, balloons, and hangovers. Job losses and unemployment claims are at a six year high. The layoffs remind me of my own time on the dole when Architecture magazine closed. I wrote about that experience for John Southern's pamphlet, Sumoscraper: A Cultural Content Container. The PDF is now online.

The End of Architecture

In the Fall of 2006 I found myself unemployed. The shock was less a full body blow than “Okay, what now?” I had just moved from San Francisco to Brooklyn and since July had commuted from that borough to the editorial headquarters of the now-defunct Architecture magazine located in the Wanamaker Building in Manhattan, former home of the Wanamaker Department Store—its 1,100,000 square feet designed by Daniel Burnham.

The building on Astor Place had a giant K-Mart on its ground floor and the fact that you could enter the store from the downtown 6 subway line was the only artifact left that tied the historic commercial structure to the underground network. But I didn’t catch the 6. I took the C, got off at West 4th, and wandered over to security entrance on Wanamaker Place (otherwise known as 9th Street, but changes for just the one block), I would then flash my ID badge, take the elevator to the 4th floor, and then be among a sea of beige cubicles. Some of which housed the magazine’s staff. Billboard magazine was (and still is) on the 11th floor. I heard tales of how they had a recording studio on their floor and multicolored carpet in the offices. Little luxuries like a café and not just a line-up of vending machines.

But I digress into snacks and interior design.

dusted

It’s snowing in Brooklyn today. Apparently I missed the first snow of the season while I was in California. Hence the radio silence. I spent some of my time in Berkeley organizing the loud paper archives. Otherwise known as cleaning up boxes in my parent’s basement. The amazing thing about a print publication is all the stuff that goes along with it: layouts, proofs, back issues, postcards, t-shirts, letters, posters, etc. People, if any grad student wants to do Clip/Stamp/Fold-like research on loud paper, it is all there, tucked under a house located near the Hayward Fault.

Submissions for the Not Nice issue are trickling in, but I want a flood. Please, spill forth your bile. I should clarify that it will be published digitally, right here on the loud paper blog, which opens up what can be submitted. Visuals like video and color photographs are now all fair game.

the revolution begins at home

Punk House, Interiors in Anarchy (yes, that is really the title) landed in my mailbox last week. A thick, photographic tome featuring images by Abby Banks and a rather awkward introduction by Thurston “I never lived in a punk house, I never even heard of them until the mid-1980s.” Moore, makes me wonder if some coffee table books should be left unpublished. Banks traveled the country to some fifty squats, warehouses, and communal houses. Her photographs reveal what you would expect: crusty couches, milk crates stacked with mix tapes, compost bins, stenciled grafitti, a few pierced and patched-together denizens (the guy in the Jawbreaker t-shirt wins my heart), and scrawled flyers tacked to the walls in the spirit on one of my favorite books, Fucked Up and Photocopied, from which this volume certainly draws inspiration, if not market share.

Like Thurston, I’ve never lived in a “punk house,” and since my participation punk culture in generally is more about the zines and the music, rather than full blown peacocking or lifestyle, I am not sure I have much right to feel any indignation about the packaging of said subculture. In fact, I am not sure I even feel any indignation, this kind of commodification goes back to punks roots, like it or not. So why are my panties in a twist? I guess it is because I feel like Aaron Cometbus definitively captured punk houses with Double Duce. Meticulously handwritten, the pages spark with punk rock ethos, caffeine-fueled mishaps, and love-live-loss introspection as Cometbus tells his fictionalized biography of a flop in Berkeley. The narrative offers a better glimpse of these “anarchist interiors” than any shot of a dirty bathroom stained with hair dye.