SPEAKING OF WHAT WE ASPIRE TO BE AND NOT OF WHAT WE ARE
By Janka Vukmir

Publications and magazines we find on kiosks are increasingly shinier and similar. Obviously their numbers and readership ratings increase. However, their points of interest decline. Ours is era of media homogenization and perhaps of impoverished communication.
Publications which stand out by their appearance, language and format, inclining to congenial yet differing subjects, cannot be found on kiosks. They can hardly be found at all, although they are the point of our interest.
Due to this simple reason, it is necessary that publishers, editors, authors and contributors meet, get to know and recognize each other and to communicate. When we meet, it is our call and our duty to enrich our communication and to relativize our often very manifest standpoints.

In the beginning of the 90ies, while various sides of Europe have been approaching each other, the leading topic of the talks on magazines was mainly reduced to technical difficulties, primarily distributions of a whole range of already existing and a great number of then   rising periodicals. Middle of the 90ies gave birth to an apparently  universal solution to this problem,  when numerous electronic editions appeared. But then it turned out, as with every new media before, the new ones rather upgraded than replaced the older ones. This demonstrated the problems have remained the same, however, the attention focus moved from technical components to the content of contemporary art publications.

Naturally, every editor will always remain concentrated and primarily oriented at the content issue of his publication. Lately, however, we have absolved project and programme    interconnectedness on many fields. Hence, competitiveness of our magazines' content assumed forms of pleasant collaboration and growingly networked partnerships.
Geopolitical changes at European continent mainly got stabilized, together with our affiliations to both ex-worlds and new worlds. One of the political imperatives or natural consequences of such a situation is regional collaboration, suddenly everyone's new home into which all of us have -  more or less comfortably - moved in.
These matters add importance to the contents of various editions we are publishing and the targeted audience. As a group dealing with changing the visual features of the world, we often explain our content through the appearance of our publications as well. This image, besides serving to attract the potential audience, really speaks of our intentions. Whether we have inherited editorial job in an already renown magazine, or we have transformed an unknown magazine into a renown one, or maybe started a new publication ourselves, the appearance usually denotes our role.
Between maintaining the existent state and introducing changes, interpretation of our intentions will always scrape through. It is in this passage of our choice – that everything can be relative.

Long ago we got used to accelerated dynamics of the world changes, however, it is our task to define dynamics of our own movement.
The apparently banal question as why certain magazine looks the way it looks has an apparently easy answer. Along the same line, we could answer the following questions: Why do we publish what we publish? Who is a targeted reader? What does it teach us? Is it ethical? How much does it cost? These are all the content issues. As participants in this process, we have a certain responsibility. We are the ones who interpret a role of art magazine, we are the ones who interpret a role of art, we teach art, critically reflect on art, and same as we distribute information, we also distribute ethical values, ones that are immanent to artworks, artists and art today.

As promoters of the values which art provides to society, do we have to become and remain equally critical towards affirmation of all the negativities that flow from art towards society? In that context, is the negativity possible real or relative? This could depend on how, when and where we interpret something. For this reason it is of utmost importance to communicate, to get to know borders and limitations of creativity and especially of a manner it is perceived  by society.

Publication is a medium, while the business of magazines' creative protagonists is a cultural mediation. This is the reason communication plays an especially important role. Are we aware that today, museums write art history to an extent unmatched by the universities? Did we know that museums' publications mediate between art and society more often than rest of the literature, sometimes even more than the market itself?
Historical dictates and contemporaneity dictates cannot be avoided,  and we have to remain critical towards them. To this purpose we will discuss magazines and publications. Our intention is to foster and improve them, of course, so they can be read and returned to. Our intention is to speak of what we aspire to and not of what we are, because that is the path we have to take.