Back Issues: a Conversation About Art Writing and Publishing

Last night I attended a panel talk -- Back Issues: a Conversation About Art Writing and Publishing -- at the Western Front. On the bill, representatives of four visual art-related magazines past, present and intermittent -- Maxine Proctor (BlackFlash), Jacquelyn Zhong-Li Ross (The Capilano Review), Susan Gibb (Front Magazine) and Zool Suleman (Rungh).

There were maybe thirty people in attendance, some of whom were old guarders like former Western Front co-owners and long time residents Hank Bull and Eric Metcalfe (together they represent a combined occupancy of 100 years), and many more students, or likely students, given their youth. I sat alone with what I knew of these magazines, having contributed to all but Rungh, which, when it is up and running, privileges BIPOC and LGBTQ+ contributions, and I'm happy to leave it at that.

Some things I learned: that the opposite of a "thematic" issue is a "fallow" issue (Proctor); that if a magazine mandated to experiment is not publishing experimental writing, it can conduct its business through "social experimentation" (Ross); that a magazine's hard copy archive is not definitive because what is printed in advance of an event does not take into account substitutions, as was the case in an early Rungh reading, when George Elliot Clarke was caught in a snowstorm and Ashok Mathur took his place (Suleman); and that sometimes the building in which a publication is housed is in itself a form of publication, as alluded to by the ED of the centre we were in (Gibb).