Kaleidoscope Magazine 39
Founded in 2009 in Milan, Kaleidoscope is an international art media company defined by its curatorial and interdisciplinary attitude towards the New. Over the years it has gained widespread recognition as a trusted and timely guide to the present. Under the visionary art direction of acclaimed Munich-based Bureau Mirko Borsche, the magazine’s signature curatorial and interdisciplinary approach combines competent authority. That means within the inner circle of art professionals with visual audacity appealing to a larger audience from all creative industries. Released twice a year, this is Kaleidoscope's latest issue, #39 (fall/winter 2021-22), entitled “Archive Continuum."
Available in five covers:
First as a DJ aka The Wizard, then as the co-founder of techno collective Underground Resistance, and finally as a solo composer and artist, over four decades Jeff Mills (photographed here by Thibaut Grevet) has positioned himself as a legend and a “living archive” of Detroit’s musical lineage. As a new generation attempts to reorganize the history of dance music and “make techno black again,” DeForrest Brown, Jr. picks his brain on the balancing act between legacy and innovation.
In the year marking the house’s 100th anniversary, Gucci Archivio inaugurates its new home in a 15th-century palace in Florence. To challenge the stillness usually associated with this kind of repository, we invited Desire Marea, a multi-disciplinary artist from South Africa (photographed here by Jim C. Nedd), to perform and activate the archive; and three new-generation designers—Collina Strada, Bianca Saunders and Cormio—to play the curator’s role, bridging the past to the contemporary.
Celebrating her 80th birthday and the 40th anniversary of her first catwalk show, Vivienne Westwood is still an influential force in fashion, and vintage pieces are all the rage among archivists. As Francesca Gavin charts the lineage of her punk, thought-provoking attitude, we invited photographer Joshua Gordon to capture Nigerian designer Mowalola and her crew modeling the British designer’s most iconic collections—clothes of protest and queer resistance, where nothing is taboo.
The subject of fervent subcultural devotion, demanding to be collected and adopted as a uniform, Stone Island exists in a near-permanent state of research and development. Through an essay by Calum Gordon and photography by Marc Asekhame, we explore the company’s legendary archives of 40,000 garments, every fabric ever created, every failed attempt, every color conjured up in the dye lab: an obsessively compiled catalogue, but no place for nostalgia.
Even if it’s impossible to separate archiving from power and control, millions of people are building their own “folk archives” in that volatile space that is the internet. In her work, Moroccan artist Meriem Bennani (photographed here by Charlie Engman) draws from this well, and especially YouTube videos, to build an alternative syntax. In conversation with Myriam Ben Salah, she calls into question the oral tradition, taxonomies of art history, and the diasporic condition.
Measures: 23 x 30 cm
Pages: 452
Binding: Soft cover
