Length or girth. Which is getting measured. Remember this is modern day England‘s, Queen Elizabeth II’s mother, that we are talking about on our now traditionally letter adorned back cover. Racy tabloid coverage or innocent obligatory communication—either is delectable and sadly relished, especially after reading the “personal” meltdowns’ of everyone and anyone who’s ever had contact with the American prince, JFK Jr. And I was not going to write about this. Rimbaud.

ROYALTY

One fine morning, in the land of very gentle people, a superb man and woman shouted in the public square: “Friends, I want her to be queen!” “I want to be queen?” She laughed and trembled. He spoke to his friends of revelation, of ordeals terminated. They leaned on each other in ecstasy.”

Sosa and Maguire are tied at 37. Griffey Jr. is at 33. Can it be duplicated. Nike only hopes so. The season of home run royals rolls towards the fall. 10 zingmagazines. Not even a season really, rather something like four years, but it’s before the end of the millennium. Some type of marathon “curatorial crossing” cross roads . . . Nothing quite like comparing or competing, but zingmagazine is the contingent, the underground, the alternative. Fit within, barely. Any one of these three guys is my hero or the other three that are approaching the 3000 hit mark and barely remembered in the home run frenzy: Boggs, Gwynn, Ripkin.

“They were indeed sovereigns for a whole morning while all the houses were adorned with crimson hangings, and for an entire afternoon, while they made their way toward the palm gardens.”
—Rimbaud

The Dada chance game: our plastic palms, our garden. Trying to find an appropriate font choice, these words emerged as Laurel pulled Rimbaud’s Illuminations from the shelf and opened to the passage “Royalty,” however randomly. Harkening the oddity, the harlequin, the one who really enjoys the feast or fantasy because they’re just the essence of what it is of. Really, though, the sentence ends in a preposition, it speaks more to readers of zingmagazine than any editor, copy or otherwise. Length or girth. Which is getting measured.

Devon Dikeou
New York, New York
1999

Nuar Alsadir has received fellowships from Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Grand Street, The Kenyon Review, The Women’s Review of Books, and Tin House. Her section in this issue displays the range of new work being written by contemporary poets.

Olaf Nicolai is an artist who lives in Berlin and New York.

Chris Brick was born in London and grew up in South Wales. He moved to NYC in ‘98 where he now resides with his wife and two children.

Alex Gloor was born in Basel, Switzerland where he went to the Kunstgewerbschule Basel (School of Art). He moved to NYC in ‘84 where he now resides with his bad photocopier.

Juan Gomez received his BFA with honors from the School of Visual Arts in NYC in ‘98. He has exhibited at Art in General, Audiello Fine Arts, and Lombard Fried Fine Arts.

Kerry Kugelman is a symbiotic parasite feeding on an overweeningly large media company on the Left Coast. With Excrement that passes for beautiful paintings, this curator assures his place in the SoCal~LoCal art food chain.

PS1 The collaborative curatorial efforts of Alanna Heiss, PS1 Contemporary Art Center director, Klaus Biesenbach, senior curator of PS1, and director of Kunst-Werke Berlin, and Barbara Vanderlinden, Belgian freelance curator and writer, have produced a three-headed beast ready to devour. PS1 continues its patronage of the art world’s contemporary Brat Pack with the exhibition of “Generation Z”. Harboring artists from Bratislava to Kyoto “Generation Z” contrasts the positive attitudes of the current, and somewhat pre-pubescent artists to the apathy and burnout of the late ‘80s Generation X-ers. This exhibition has proven that although the Gen Z-ers are anxious and willing, none of their output is premature.

Ellen Jong is a young photographer who continues to hide and seek for what it means to sneak a peek. She lives and works out of Brooklyn, past the White Castle, and thru the sea of 99¢ stores. You may reach her at klooki@hotmail.com.

Thomas Rayfiel’s book, Colony Girl, is published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Jimi Dams is an artist and independent curator based in New York and Antwerp. His work has been shown internationally. He is founder and director of ANP, an international art agency that promotes young artists. He is currently organizing ANP’s exhibition tour which is a collaboration between international galleries and not-for-profit organizations.

Mel Mendelsohn is a father of five, and currently retired. He has just completed a novel called The Back of Beyond, which has its first chapter published in this issue of zingmagazine. Mel Mendelsohn has been a high school principal, a superintendent of schools, a drug trafficker, and a travel agent.