20x20 magazine Issue Two - 2009

magazine

20x20 issue two | 2009

20x20 magazine issue one | 2008

HUNGER

FOR DIST RACTION

20x20 magazine issue two | contents

visual | Francesca Ricci, Design your own confetti

1

visions | Terese Storey, Lágrimas

40

words | Paul Rooney, Letters that rot into mulch

5

visions | Alex Mirutziu, Tears are precious

41

visions | Stephen Conning, Carbonate

7

words | Matthew Thomas, Not working

42

visions | Jasmine Pradissitto, Brownian and Cloud chamber

8

visions | Craig Griffin, Mirror Mirror

45

blender | Graham Day, Yantras

10

blender | Giovanna Paternò, Tita’s project

46

visions | Craig Griffin, To leave there is no way

13

words | Paul Salamone, Whiskey

48

words | Gemma Sharpe, Desperate meditation

14

visions | Mario Sughi, Dinner

49

visions | Philip John Jones, Vel, GR, KW

16

blender | Frances Kiernan, Carving wood to ration water

50

words | Aquila Dunford Wood, Tauton. Riga.

19

blender | Jennifer Camilleri, You blow my brain away

52

blender | Helen Nodding, Supernova

20

visions | Helen Coburn, Carousel

53

blender | Krzysztof Szmigielski, Palindromes

22

words | Mercedel Lawry, Inception

54

words | Simon Fuller, The Cinema

26

visions | Carlos Manns, Courtyards

55

visions | Matt Black, Hunger for distraction

29

visions | Atalya Laufer, Walking on eggshells

56

blender | Adam Lee, Jungle boats

30

contributors | biographies

58

visions | Elizabeth Gordon, Untitled 2007

38

visions | Michela Bettuzzi, Soho 2009

61

words | Ivana Rados-Zurowski, St Stephen’s Avenue

39

visions | Reena Makwana, Again

64

Left, Design your own confetti: colour in the Smileys first, then cut them out. You may use a hole-puncher to speed up the operation and to achieve a slicker effect.

This game stands as an alternative to the Soduku to keep one busy during prolonged periods of inactivity and slow business. It also carries a cathartic purpose.

Welcome to issue two of 20x20 magazine, a square platform for writings, visuals and crossbred projects. The works in this issue have been assembled around the meta-words HUNGER FOR DISTRACTION, to which the artists and authors have responded in very different ways . The aim is to bring together interesting contributions and create a collection of pieces with no expiry date. We would like to thank all contributors for their work that inspire us to put together and publish this magazine.

Francesca and Giovanna

Cover image: Coin of the realm

by Christopher Clack (www.modernreligiousart.com)

20x20 magazine issue two

All rights reserved

London, 2009

Copyright Š 20x20 magazine and all contributors (2009)

ISSN 1757-9007

Editors | Giovanna Paternò, Francesca Ricci

We believe in good faith that all content published in this

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issue has been authorised for, however if you think that your

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page 9 | 20x20 magazine

yantras Graham Day

20x20 magazine | page 10

words

Yantras are non-figurative usually monochrome linear drawings or diagrams often incorporating text. They can be inscribed on paper, engraved onto metals such as copper, white metal even gold, and rock crystal. They can also be stacked up into architectural forms. There are two main types, one group serve as charms or talismans

blender

either for beneficent or malefic intent. Another group function as repositories for particular deities that are summoned to enable the devotee to worship them or intervene on their behalf. They are skeletal images reduced to basic linear forms – triangle, circle, square and other polygons with the addition of text at relevant points. Of great antiquity, they are employed as a part of ritual involving recitation, music, dance and hand

visions

gestures. The majority are Hindu although they are part of Buddhist and Jain religious practice.

My interest in collecting them began as an art student in the1960’s. Later, between 1970 and 1977, I made a thorough geometric analysis of the most renown Sri Cakra yantra of which there are several examples illustrated here. In those days there were few actual examples in Europe, illustrations and explanations only began to surface after the important exhibition TANTRA at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1971. As part of the cultural activities surrounding the exhibition I met Ajit Mookerjee (a large part of the show was from his collection) and corresponded with him on the finer points of the symbolism and construction. An internet search today for Sri yantra throws up over 123,000 results.

I consider these inscribed artefacts wonderfully precise and economical conceptual artworks, simple archetypal linear designs and text accessible to the uneducated and scholar alike. When genuinely created, activated and used in ritual they function by effecting the consciousness of the user in his/her attempt to alter or organise their imagination and desires.

For thorough coverage of the subject see the book YANTRA The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity by Madhu Khanna published

by Thames & Hudson 1979 ISBN 0-500-27234-4 The complete collection can be viewed via: info@grahamday.co.uk

20x20 magazine | page 12

taunton.

(How are you? Yes, I’m fine.)

Armageddon hit the street city with fast sharp headlines screaming screens, siren scream, you scream, I scream, and we all scream forTV morning, no morning like this morning, And parted as we were Are, Once more.

If we could just stay in the wombed circle of bitter sweet.

Sexed and over done. While the world waits from warnings – go, don’t go, walk, don’t walk.

I prefer to just go.

Leaving behind the devastated stage you standing shrouded in the station spotlight linger.

Air ignites in agreement with you.

Demons play, we are at the center of the spool, Line after line acts out in side the line.

Good-bye?

It is like that, Scream and shout where sirens shout, Aid our signal that strikes, (The money probably or the keys) Strikes the white one as well as a city.

The distance now has a title, it was fast maintained.

The war hopes to care in sequence, to work the leg, it does not walk. It does not go, ten:zero:five The branch has died.

And I have tasted only fine things.

Aquila Dunford Wood

page 19 | 20x20 magazine

visions

Back lighting the show, the play, we are centre stage tripping over the duck tape line, acting out line after line.

Sweet things we make, A supply of good-bye mornings. Fortune in the labyrinth of a sensation, I write in comfort.

blender

It lights the air in such a way.

The target tree exiled its leaf at the station, A magnificent tactile brake, an acute hush.

The assistant this morning grudges this and that. Hot chocolate sifting coffee in heavy orders.

words

White papered brambles, ornate iron leaves Touch sharp brittle brake.

Softing hot chocolate and coffee mix up in the bitter rouge, Mooring where we bid farewell to something, not so sweet On morning breath and a tide of flakes so heavy.

riga.

20x20 magazine | page 30

jungle boats

On the Eastern side of the Peruvian Andes,

Adam Lee

in the sweaty tropical jungles of the Amazon basin, slow moving, turgid waterways form the roads. Three decked cargo boats ferry people and goods between towns and isolated farms cut into the impenetrable forest.

While the hold of the boat is stocked with everything from steel girders to refrigerators to bags of cement to motor scooters, the passengers while away the hours sleeping and swinging in hammocks. Though three meals a day are provided in the ticket price, entertainment

is

scarce.

Few

Peruvians

read and many spend the hot, humid hours sleeping or watching the jungle slide silently by from bow to stern. The monotony is occasionally broken when the flat bow is driven on to the red earthed banks and cargo is unloaded. Occasionally the boat will pass one of the other ferries plying the routes between distant villages and towns and the passengers will call to one another as they hang from railings and windows.

The pictures presented here are of two boat journeys in Peru. One was a four day voyage from Pucallpa, in central Peru, to Iquitos (the largest city in the world inaccessible by road) along the busy Rio Ucayali. The other was six days from Iquitos, along the Rio Napo, to the remote, military border town of Pantoja, close to Ecuador. The boats on this route are few and far between and passengers often hang their hammocks three deep.

page 31 | 20x20 magazine

Terese Storey, Lรกgrimas

Alex Mirutziu, Tears are precious

Paul Salamone

visions

blender

words

whiskey

how Ozzy got his groove back. because every bile needs a tumbler. did I ever tell you how I met your mother? the next sip’s a felony. it will have to do. explains last week’s upset. what’s really troubling Grandma. the reason I go to soccer practice. how the van got up the hill. says the words so you don’t have to.

20x20 magazine | page 48

Mario Sughi, Dinner

20x20

magazine issue two | 2009