Foreward to ASSEMBLING 13
by Karl Young
For this issue of Assembling, contributors were asked to supply 200 copies each of one, two, or three 8 1/2" x 14" sheets. Anyone could contribute, and contributors alone decided what work would be included, without advice or direction from an editor. Except for the sheet size and the number of copies, that's how Assembling has come together through its first twelve issues. In this issue, contributors were also asked to use color in some way.
The initial impulse behind Assembling was the need to create a medium in which contributors would have absolute artistic freedom. Early issues bore the subtitle "A Collection of Otherwise Unpublishable Manuscripts." Although these issues included work that could be, and often was, published elsewhere, the subtitle conveys some of the sense of urgency behind the magazine. It was founder Richard Kostelanetz's contention that the best work produced in this country was unpublishable not because it was bad, but because it was too good -- it presented too much of a challenge and a threat to established publishing houses. In many respects, he was right. However, during Assembling's first decade, small presses were active and healthy. Many had the courage to publish daring work; others had a commitment to work that may not have been all that radically new but still, for market reasons, would not be published by established houses. At the beginning of 1987, the small press movement of the 60's and 70's seems to be dying or becoming complacent. Many presses have ceased to operate for lack of funds. Many of those that are still going have become dismally predictable. Most magazines represent one clique or another and the tables of contents for magazines in any one clique are little more than rearrangements of the same lists of names. This is not to say that there is necessarily something wrong with the artists whose names appear in those lists; it is to say that there is other work, at least as good, that simply doesn't appear. I think this sort of stagnation finds its base in a curious kind of market censorship -- editors feel that by publishing recognized artists they may better be able to attract an audience and to hold on to their precarious grants.
The need for recognized artists leads us to a much deeper and more dangerous problem, the problem of the need for reassuring authority. Editors of stagnant magazines feel assured that what they do has value if they publish recognized work; readers can feel assured if they feel the works they see have been consecrated by a consensus of opinion established more than a decade ago, and given a stamp of approval by an editor, even if that editor may be as insecure as they are. It might be argued that such works aren't really read, they simply confer a type of status on editors, and assure readers that their taste is good.
Assembling constantly challenges the complacency of editors and readers, returning responsibility to artists and authority to their audiences. The artists themselves chose what to print and how to go about doing it. No production restrictions, other than page size, hamper them. Any defect -- from conception to execution -- is the artist's fault. Readers themselves have to determine what has value for them, without any reassuring authority figure validating anything. No mediator stands between artists and audience judgment. Publication in Assembling simply makes work available; it doesn't validate or consecrate anything, nor does it offer anyone any kind of assurance. These are basic tenants of any sort of freedom. They may be frightening, but the alternative is even more frightening. Look at the world around you and you'll see the results of people abdicating their responsibilities and placing their trust in authority figures.
The fact that Assembling doesn't validate or consecrate anything tends to focus attention on the work itself and away from the artist. It sometimes takes a bit of effort even to find the name of the author of a given page. I don't advocate anonymity (I label my own contributions), but I do think the way Assembling shifts attention from the artist to the work is a healthy corrective to the current overemphasis on personality.
I mentioned market censorship above. Assembling can help alleviate this problem to some extent, but not as much as we'd like. The problem that remains is the cost of printing contributions. "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own printing presses," runs an old axiom in small press circles. Most contributors don't own presses, and are faced with ever escalating printing costs. The smaller press run of this issue may help, but still a solution to this problem remains unfound. Perhaps contributions by some of the Soviet Samizdat artists, who are used to a more severe sort of censorship than we find in North America, may suggest solutions to the rest of us.
There have been several aspects of Assembling that weren't clearly thought out when the magazine was first conceived, but which have helped make it one of the best magazines around. Collage and chance processes have dominated the arts throughout this century, and Assembling, with its varied contributors sequenced in alphabetical order, seems to be the chance generated collage par excellence. Performance art has become increasingly important as we've moved closer to the end of the millennium, and Assembling is a sort of Happening done in print, an Event created by a number of people going in different directions, following a simple program, unable to see the final result until the Event has been completed.
We hope that the page size and the request for color will be creative and challenging factors in this issue. In the invitations I sent out, I suggested that contributors might think of three sheet contributions as mini-books or to work in terms of two page openings or spreads. Aside from any retinal, emotional, or symbolic qualities color may have, it allows greater complexity of information to be conveyed. For instance, by using two colors you can superimpose one text over another and still let each be legible; using color, a contributor can create an illusion of depth, so that one visual field or text can seem to appear over another, or to block out another;in a performance score, you can color code the text so that several participants can distinguish their parts by color. There are many other possibilities for constructive use of color that we may hope to see extended in this issue.
The assemblers are trying to bring in contributions from countries outside the United States and we hope to see Assembling become more of an international magazine. Assembling has always tended to cut across barriers of one sort or another, primarily those set up by cliques and users of different methods. The magazine should be a place where different points of view and opposing methods can come together, encouraging interaction, constructive debate, and, ideally, mutual tolerance. I hope that constructive diversity will continue to grow in each successive issue. This should be increased and enhanced by international participation.
One of the most interesting things to me about past issues of Assembling has been the need felt by some contributors to test the few limits placed on them by the magazine's format. I was one of the few contributors to No. 12 to follow the request that works address the notion "our place in nature, and nature's place in us." I imagine quite a few contributors will ignore the request for color, and I hope that others will find ingenious ways to work against the magazine's format. Such impulses get us started; how intelligently we use them is our own responsibility.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Assembling 13 was compiled by Charles Doria, Andrea Schwartz, Andrea Von Milbacher, and Karl Young in 1987 and published by Assemblig Press/P.O. Box 1967/Brooklyn, N.Y. 11202/U.S.A.
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