It’s weird, I am in a café in Paris, the CD is on the blink, “Purple Haze” comes on, two notes at a time, with 30 second segues. Then the song kicks in for real—full-throttle. And everybody has their “Hendrix” memory/moment. Mine is driving to Boulder to buy some sombreros for a Mexican party I was giving for graduation from High School, with like 12 other people. The party was, inspiringly, called “La Fiesta Grande.” Now that’s loaded.

La Fiesta Grande: Bush has got his “fiesta grande” going, big guns, big war, no matter the consequence. I am aghast that the American administration has brought us to the unifyingly terrible forefront of, to paraphrase Rumsfeld, the Nuclear Option. As an American, concerned about my personal safety, I have never felt more compromised. My/Our government is doing nothing to communicate on the world diplomacy table, thus making our safety questionable. My/our economic future, one we are blindly acquiescing to, through the policies of a government questionably elected, is based on the machinations of the same crew that has re-established the national deficit, much less world economic depression. Word to the Democrats, Yo, “The economy, stupid.”

I’m watching German MTV. Every time there is a commercial break, two intermittent things alternate the viewing waves. First: A number of, man on the street type, public service announcements. My German language skills are pretty bad, but you can’t help but miss the anti-war/American sentiment they exude. Then in English, black typeface floating on white ground, and a silent soundtrack, the message, “War is not the answer.” Then the second fecund series of images, the regular commercials begin, not having anything to do with MTV, except the pay roll. What’s being hawked, graphic logos, it seems, that you can buy for your cell phone—instant message logo 2D art work. I can’t help but think of some low tech secret picture messages the FBI will soon find themselves decoding. Another public service announcement, again a fortuitous group of young people, all different ethnicities. All again in certain agreement, pleading their case to their contemporaries in America. Through the German a few broken English words, most significantly among them, “George Bush.” Somehow another Hendrix moment.

Though the Vietnam War is a memory distant for some, what I do remember, does seem eerily reminiscent of current political crises. Then billed as a US policing mission, the tactical military operation was based on the spread of Communism. The current police mission—to remove the “Axis of Evil” is moving, not so coincidentally, into the position of colonizing, and we’ve done an excellent job of that in Afghanistan. In Vietnam we faced a guerrilla enemy with minimal knowledge of their history, culture, language, and religion, and ultimately, we were not able to make the world safe, or safer for Democracy. Now we face the same prospect of war against an equally intangible enemy: the terrorist. Let’s not unlearn the hard truths that symbolically are measured only by the names engraved on the Vietnam Memorial (concept and design by Maya Lin). Rather, let us engage and communicate within the more mature statelike stance known as diplomacy, historically a better tool for colonization.

Another Hendrix moment, back on the German MTV. Justin Timberlake, the uber boy icon of mass youth culture and Pop media manipulation proselytizing, dubbed in German, and not unlike those ’60s icons, “War is not the answer.” Unlike the Vietnam War Memorial of Lin, let us embrace the universal wall of the Libeskind proposal for the WTC site, the wall that held back the Hudson and protected lower New York from colossal flooding. Purple Haze (Hendrix), Purple Rain (Prince), Purple Hearts (Victims of the WTC) but not the Purple Cloud of war destroy the prism known as the Bill of Rights, a rainbow of color where all people are created equal.

Devon Dikeou
New York, New York
2003

Ana Finel Honigman is currently reading for a Masters in the History of Art and Visual Culture at Oxford University. She still can’t understand why a hamburger that tastes like petrified silly putty can cost 12 quid or why a country so smug as to resist being associated with Italy and France can’t develop the technology to merge their hot and cold taps.

To say that Zac Posen‘s clothes are “Vampy, witty, and above all glamorous,” is an unabashed plagiarism of the powers that be at London’s major contemporary retailer, Harvey Nichols. In their opinion, “…Posen’s first collection instantly made him the toast of the New York fashion scene. All razor-sharp angles, frill and plunging necklines, his beautifully cut dresses take us back to an era of screen idol sophistication, and are adored by modern day Hollywood starlets.” We couldn’t agree more. For this issue of zing, Zac presents work from his archive. Cut along the lines.

Zac Posen studied fashion at Central St. Martins in London. He lives and works in New York City. For the past 12 years, Mary Barone has lived between London and New York working in art, design, and fashion.

Andrew Coulter Enright sent us his book, How to be Fashionable or Consume Like Me, on a lark. We liked it, and asked him to do a piece based on it.

Andy lives in Brooklyn, and until he was recently laid off, he worked as the bitch to the graphic design department at Martha Stewart. He recently graduated from MICA, an art school in Baltimore, after studying printmaking for four years. He makes the now all-too-common array of things: clothes, beats, photographs, logos, etc. However, his ideas always stem from his years of making textual Conceptual art and his love of fashion.

Valentin Vallhonrat lives in Madrid. He is represented by Galeria Elba Benitez, Madrid and Galeria Visor, Valencia. His most recent show was at Sputnik PAD, Aoyama, Tokyo, March, 2003.

Rainer Judd acts and works in film. She makes photos and poems, and continues to be active in the defense of the natural world. She is also President of the Judd Foundation. Next stop, The White House! Madeleine Hoffmann: Lives in Los Angeles and works for the Judd Foundation in New York and Marfa, Texas. She also curates independent projects.

Faile is a constantly evolving idea and interpretation through art and design, a creative group of three young heads from the USA, Canada, and Japan, who celebrate this exploration as a team. Faile can be contacted through faile.net.

We made these drawings a couple of years ago. We feel differently about Christmas now. We would like to wish everyone the best for all possible holidays.
Love,
The Royal Art Lodge

Drazen Bosnjak:
Adapt to rapidly changing environments in style.
Q DEPARTMENT is a thrill seeking initiative dedicated to the stealth adaptation of technology and information to perform noteworthy missions through entertainment.
Balkan Radar: sustained vinyl mutation.

Simon Watson/Scenic
Simon Watson is a 24 year veteran in New York’s art scene. In the ’80s he owned an art gallery; since the early ’90s he has operated Downtown Arts Projects (a non-profit that produces the annual Downtown Arts Festival). Most recently, Watson and Festival director Craig Hensala have formed Scenic, a cultural event marketing group that creates unique art events and cultural programs for individuals, corporate brands and non-profits such as Amnesty International, Chanel, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Planned Parenthood, and USA Networks.

Paul Ramìrez Jonas was born in 1965. He was raised in Honduras and now lives in New York City. He has been exhibiting nationally and internationally since 1990. A traveling survey show of his work is being organized by Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England for 2004.

Maria Antelman and George Drivas worked separately in different fields in the media sector before the decided to collaborate, and exclusively make video products. Antelman/Drivas have been working together since 2001 on a visual concept, which combines photography and video.

Oneil Edwards said:
We’d be sitting at the little kitchen table at 3:00 AM, one moment engaged in fervent exercises of veracity, and the next planning to introduce a National “Go to Work as your Favorite Animal Day” to the calendar. Satoru’s compulsion for the absurd and the beautiful, and my straight arrow perspicacity seemed a perfect match, so we proposed a joint venture. We got right down to work doing what we both do best; he bought a ticket and left the country and I went straight o sleep. A month later “Off-ramp” began taking form.

Satoru Eguchi said:
At first, I was trying to convince him that there are two of him. I was a bit serious about this. I said to him, “You’ll find yourself when you open the door one day, possibly soon.” Then I left the country. I meant to give him some thoughts before the year ended. The “Off-ramp” was near completion. He finished the project while I was away. I don’t know which one of him did it.

Matt Murphy was born and raised in Southern California. He’s been shaking up the design world since the early ’90s, when he founded MATT MURPHY DESIGN and has put his mark on everything from architecturally motivated furniture designs, graphics, techno lighting, to one-off projects for Universal Studios. In the mid ’90s, Matt re-focused his energies, concentrating solely on developing a line of handbags, seeing it as a sort of portable architecture. His handbag and leather goods collection was launched in 1995 and sold to Henri Bendel’s, Takashimaya, Fred Segal as well as receiving acclaim in numerous publications and by the LA County Museum of Art. Matt moved his business to New York in 1997, and since has collaborated with art and fashion icons including: Karl Lagerfeld, MAC Cosmetics, Richard Tyler, and The Donald Judd Estate, as well as being a guest professor at The Art Center in Pasadena, where he is currently collaborating with the Prada Studio project. His most recent collaboration with zingmagzine, a limited edition denim tote designed exclusively for the magazine, is in short supply. Buyer be-AWARE.

Jovi Schnell is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn. She has been exhibiting with the Derek Eller Gallery in New York.
Q: “So, any departing words?”
A: “Just Add Water to the PHYSICAL PLANT upon the first DRIP-SPLIT, there’ll be a pitched wiggle in MAGNET-TWOED. Once you hear this, the feedings complete.” With these instructions, she tipped her bidding FAREWELL to the REPORTER, climbed inside the hue-craft, fastened the hatch and throttled upwards once again adventuring headlong to QUEST N’ THE EMPIRE.
To be continued…

Eric Pryor is a graphic designer who lives and works in New York and has worked as a senior associate art director for American Vogue for five years, and was also the creative director for I’uomo Vogue. He is currently working on catalogues for Sebastiaan Bremer and Robert Greene besides working on many other projects, and recently collaborated with Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.

Sebastiaan Bremer is an artist working and living in New York. Working on photographs he takes himself, Bremer layers each print with a laborious, complex pattern of Pointillist dots in inks, of various colors constituting an interconnecting, all-over surface. Largely following or working against the grain of the photographic image, and also by use of superimpostion, Bremer arrives at a species of personal bestiary: one which includes full blown figures, text, personal symbols, and ghostly shapes, that when integrated with their grounds, vanish in a sea of suspended dots. His work can be seen at Roebling Hall, Brooklyn, in March/April, and at the Armory show, New York, in March. He has previously done the 3D project for zingmagazine with Pieter Woudt, and worked on part of Volume with Serge Onnen and Eric Pryor. He loves collaborating with Eric Pryor who is amazingly sweet and good.