Rocks, fashion, and the Orient. A little of some, and a lot of none, in the second, double issue of zingmagazine. The cover features two strong women who occupied different worlds with complimentary successes, Martha Graham and Vera Maxwell. Highlighting this communication between a choreographer/dancer and a fashion designer is what I, as an editor get excited about—interdisciplinary communication, and what the format zingmagazine embraces. And so we follow the first issue with an expansive determined group of curators orchestrating the presence of their sections with alacrity and intelligence, but knowing the juxtaposition of their respective field within the whole, of the magazine. We have artists writing about Manhattans and Martha Ivers, fashion occupying the same cutting board as trash. Sting-Rays being nostalgized and shit re-codified just to name a few. And then we have the reviews—which have been expanded and renamed “Reviews, Reflections, and Reactions.” Around 60 pages and as variegated in format and length as subject matter and tone.

“I’m the only one who knows what kind of blue the girl in the book’s scarf is,” wrote Marguerite Duras in a small book Practicalities. This is true for each of the curated projects in this issue, much less the reviews. Each has a very distinctive bouquet, and as an editor, I had no idea what color these “scarfs” might be. Yet within each there is change, also consistency and hopefully anything in between. Like the deliberate use of lamps in Hitchcock, or the rhythm of cutting in Richard Lester’s The Knack, zingmagazine can be as rehearsed as the film sequences referenced, or as random as the nightly T.V. guide. Duras follows her blue scarf declaration with: “That doesn’t matter—but there are other inadequacies that do. For example, I’m also the only one who can see her smile and the look in her eyes. But I know I shall never be able to describe them to you. Make you—or anyone else, ever—see them too.” And so, as much as what isn’t there in this issue is as important as what is. The vision to hold back and let mystery close the door softly and imagination play its seductive role, is the vision of this issue.

Devon Dikeou
New York, New York
1996

Mary Ellen Carroll lives, works, and eats in New York.

Rainer Ganahl is an artist based in New York.

Liz Fried is a freelance writer living in New York, currently working on a book about Schwinn Sting-Ray bikes.

Spencer Finch works in a maraschino cherry factory in Brooklyn.

Kenneth Goldsmith is tired of the warm spot on his pillow.

Brendan Quick is an artist who deals with narratives and may know someone who knows someone who knows something about “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.”

Calvin Reid is an artist and occasional curator, who also writes for Art in America, Art and Auction, and New Observations. He lives in New York City.

Marilu Knode is a curator at the Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach, California. Her most recent projects include “Llyn Foulkes: Between a Rock and a Hard Place” at the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California, and “Kim Dingle” at the Otis Gallery, Los Angeles.

Robert Antoni is an author teaching in the M.F.A. program for creative writing at the University of Miami. His book Divina Trace (Overlook) was released in ’92. His second novel, Blessed is the Fruit, will be published by Holt in the spring of ’97.

Tamas Banovich is an artist, occasional writer, and a co-founder of Postmasters Gallery in New York. His latest project is “Can You Digit?,” a show of digital art he co-curated with Ken Copland. (Postmasters Gallery, March 1996.)