While chipping away at bits of McSweeney's I thought I would post about another quarterly I discovered recently that I like very much. It's called mono-kultur, and it's a interview magazine that comes from Berlin. Very small format, beautifully printed, simply done. I bought no. 20, on Belgian fashion designer Dries van Noten. It has text on pale-pink paper,
interspersed with shiny glossy photo-pages showing the clothes. I had a quick look through some back issues in the shop, and liked that they were all roughly the same small size, but each one designed differently using different paper stocks and print finishes.
They say
mono.kultur deals with art and culture – or rather with the people
who make them happen. In the foreground is music, film, literature. And
image. And architecture. And media. But behind them is a creative mind.
mono.kultur
features one interview per issue, no more no less. Carefully selected
and designed. No distractions, no gossip, no trendscouting. Instead we
offer opinions, experiences, lives.
I like the end of the Dries van Noten interview. I'm not sure I ever came across an olive until I went to university, though, so I can't say how I would have felt about them when I was little.
…I also love to learn from inspecting certain things that I can't appreciate or just don't understand, like art sometimes. I try to find out why people say, 'Oh this is fantastic!' while I have to declare, 'It doesn't do anything for me!'. The same with music: I really want to understand all types of music and why people enjoy, let's say, jazz music, which for me is confusing and sometimes not controlled enough. I prefer having a system, but I also like to hear the beauty in that. I think it's like a child not liking olives. As a child you have to learn to appreciate olives. The first time you eat an olive you think, 'What is this!?'. Little by little you start to taste the subtleties and like them in the end.
They have a great blog, too. I just watched this amazing video they posted ('from Menomena’s [I have no idea who 'Menomena' are, but the link is worth clicking through for quite the weirdest website I've seen in a while] Brent Knopf’s solo project Ramona Falls'). Have a look.