You already know the quest for the emporium of zines ends at Printed Matter, an extremely picky guild whose selection ranges from a $1,000 box of found objects, lyrics, sewing patterns, essays, recordings, drawings, and gay coloring book illustrations to publications small enough to fit up a Smurf's ass. Their application process is so tough they even rejected Swiss-based zine publisher Nieves' first batch of submissions. Publisher Benjamin Sommerhalder still vividly remembers how heartbreaking that was for him back in the days but now, after eight years and shitloads of zines he's published, he put together his first exhibiton there. We called him up and talked to him about ghosts, marriages, and pockets.
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Benjamin Sommerhalder: Ahem, nope. I don't really read the paper.What?Well, all this news stuff is pretty boring because nothing lasts and it feels like the same things are happening over and over again.That sounds almost kind of philosophical… So you think with zines that's different?Definitely! Newspapers end up as something you'd pick up dogshit with. Zines are rare. Some are worth hundreds of dollars and they are always something very special because the artist/photographers/etc. put so many thoughts and work into every little detail.Tell us a little about Nieves.In the early days, around 2001, a friend of mine and I started our own magazine called Zoo. I probably don't need to tell you how tough this magazine business is, and as we had a pretty small circulation we were broke pretty soon. Then we thought, What's next? Maybe we should start to publish zines of photographers, artists, and all those people who are doing their zines on their desks at home. When Nieves started out, everything was pretty chaotic because none of us had an idea of how to run a publishing house. In 2004 there were almost no independent publishing houses like that around anymore.Right, but that was nothing totally new…Sure, I picked up the idea when I was visiting a friend in Tokyo. I went to the store of a self-publishing house and bought my first zine there. Somehow I fell for that. Please don't ask me which artist did this zine or what it was about. I just remember that it was some kind of art zIne. I still have it somewhere in my collection. The new thing was that it was not the artist itself who published it, it was a small publishing house.
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Dr. Roland Korg / P.A.M., They're Already Here
Stella 3
Zoo magazineMARTINA KIX
