20x20 magazine Issue One - 2008

20x20

magazine issue one | 2008

20x20 magazine issue one | 2008

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Cover image by Michela Bettuzzi, Reflections II (2008) 20x20 magazine issue one

All rights reserved.

London, 2008

Copyright Š 20x20 magazine, 2008

ISSN 1757-9007

and all contributors.

Editors | Giovanna Paternò, Francesca Ricci

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Many thanks to Julian Throssell for his

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20x20 magazine issue one | contents

visions | Al Palmer, Anonymous Spaces

4

words | Ingrid Stigsdotter, Confinement in crimson

6

blender | Graham Day, The Two Kings and Their Two Labyrinths (Borges) visions | Julian Throssell, El Dia De Los Muertos,

and cinnabar

44

45

blender | Maia Sambonet, Minute Revolutionaries

9

Dancers, Poker Faceless

visions | Tony Rickaby, Beria’s Hat

10

words | Paco Araujo, Montecristo

48

words | Paul Salamone, Filter

11

blender | George Hardy, Ready For Work

50

visions | María Kjartansdóttir, Shared Future

12

words | Kat Wojcik, The Time Is Out Of Joint?

51

words | Kiril Bozhinov, Deconstruction of a Failure

16

visions | Jennifer Camilleri, Golden Rain

55

visions | Ulrich Hakel, Frankie Yale

20

blender | Maia Sambonet, Blind Walk

56

words | Martin Slidel, Game Over

21

visions | Helen Nodding, Ivy and Railings, Cambridge

57

blender | Sebastian Craig, Notional Architectures

22

visions | Tony Rickaby, Retracing Face

25

visions | Giovanna Paternò, Dark Mountains (end)

58

words | Alexandria Clark, To put a brake on Time’s

26

words | Francesca Ricci, A Worrying Report

59

visions | Rahel Nicole Eisenring, Twins

60

winged chariot

Heath Road, E2

visions | Stephen Conning, Corners

30

blender | Nick Thurston, Self Portrait

61

words | Francesca Ricci, Once

38

words | Giles Goodland, A Raft of Measures

62

visions | Tristan Stevens, From a Series: Stick to me

40

visions | Katherine Skeldon, The Music Stand

64

42

contributors | biographies

65

like glue words | Carole Hamilton, Ripples

_filter words

by Paul Salamone

Only love will break your heart. _ADD COLOR:

The band Radcamal 77 played a set at Mightbreak

‘82, wherein they sang their hit song “Graandog” a

total of five times.

Only red love will break your green heart. _COMPRESS:

_ADD ADVERBS:

Only red love will really break your green heart.

_FIRST PERSON:

Only red love will really break my green heart.

Radcamal played “Graandog” during a set at

Mightbreak.

_CRITIQUE:

Radcamal played a horrible version of “Graandog”

during an otherwise amazing set at Mightbreak.

_REMOVE ODD-NUMBERED WORDS:

Red will break green.

_ADD ANIMALS:

Red camel will break green dog.

_ADD INDETERMINACY:

Red camel might break green dog.

_POP:

Britney Spears sang a horrible version of “Hit Me

Baby One More Time” during an otherwise amazing

set at the Pepsi Center.

_REDUCE TO PROPER NOUNS:

Britney Spears Pepsi Center.

_CONVERT ‘E’ TO ‘A’:

_POSSESSIVE:

Rad camal might braak graan dog.

Britney Spears’ Pepsi Center.

_COMBINE:

_ABSURDIFY:

Radcamal mightbraak graandog.

_ADD NUMBERS:

Radcamal 77 mightbraak 82 graandog 5.

He drank from Britney Spears’ Pepsi Center.

_REACTION:

She slapped him. page 11 | 20x20 magazine

visions

_RENDER COMPREHENSIBLE:

blender

_INLET:

Mar铆a Kjartansd贸ttir, Shared Future

page 31 | 20x20 magazine

page 41 | 20x20 magazine

visions

blender

words

montecristo

by Paco Araujo

Literature constantly draws from “real life”, but it is rarer when the case is the opposite. Here is a little example. Cuban cigars are the most famous in the world, and reputedly the best. The real habanos are hand-made and the manufacturing process has hardly changed for centuries. The workers are mostly women who sit at tables in front of the dried tobacco leafs. They roll them manually with precision and dexterity, giving shape to the cigars. Once these women become proficient, it is a very repetitive and mechanic task that can get really monotonous. The hours go by slowly while the precious cigars form symmetrical piles. It is for this reason that it has been common since old times in this industry the practice of hiring people to read newspapers, pamphlets and novels to these women while they are working. As well as entertaining them, this was a way of obtaining information and stories that normally would have been out of their reach.

In 1935 two Spanish entrepreneurs, Alonso Menéndez and Jose García, set up a new factory in the island called Menéndez García & Co. As in many other Cuban factories, a “reader” was hired to make the hours more bearable to the workers. Pretty soon a novel became the favourite in this company. The workers were blown away by the adventures and misfortunes of Edmond Dantès. Hours became minutes while the mesmerised women followed the encounter of the hero with Napoleon on the Isle of Elba, his homecoming to France with his lovely fiancée, and the betrayal of his colleagues, who, overcome with greed and envy, falsely accuse him of a crime that, of course, he has not committed.

Because of the treason of those he trusted and the miscarriages of justice, Dantès ends up in the island-prison of Château d’If, a place from where no prisoner ever returns. There, despair and madness lie in wait as years go by and any hope for freedom or escape fades away. After more than twelve years, something unexpected happens; a fellow prisoner reaches his cell while digging a tunnel to escape.

After years of solitude, both men find friendship and companionship with each other. The other prisoner, old and sick, reveals to Dantès the whereabouts of a fabulous treasure and dies soon after.

However, his death provides the hero with an unexpected chance for escape. Almost miraculously, he makes it, and also recovers the treasure, becoming immensely rich. He then goes back to his hometown looking for revenge against those who betrayed him and ruined his life. Edmond Dantès will be known as the Count of Monte Cristo and revenge he will have, but at what price?

20x20 magazine | page 48

The story is well known, Alexandre Dumas Sr. had published it in the mid-nineteenth century becoming one of his most famous novels, even if apparently, as many of his books, he did not write it by himself, but with the help of Auguste Maque, famous among Dumas' infamous shadow writers.

In any case, the Count of Monte Cristo is a great history of adventures full of love, treason, greed, despair, friendship and above all, revenge. Revenge poisons one’s soul and can destroy you, but is redemption possible?

The women of this cigar factory had to face this dilemma and suffer each one of the hero’s misadventures. Overtaken by the story, they asked to have it read to them again and again, till the point that the factory became associated with the novel. Allegedly, they had the initiative of asking the management of the factory to call the cigars by the name of the novel, and that is the way in which the name of the Monte Cristo brand was born. In few years time, it would become one of the most famous among the Cuban brands, and so it remains. Do not underestimate the power of a good story; literature is full of them, and so is life, sometimes they blend in curious ways.

P.S. By the way, another of the famous Cuban cigars branch is called Romeo y Julieta and how not to wonder‌

page 49 | 20x20 magazine

20x20 magazine | page 58

Giovanna Paternò, Dark Mountains (end)

visions

blender

words

a worrying report words

by Francesca Ricci

blender

erased the formula of the golden section throttled the swans in the lake to deprive them of their last song troubled the children’s playground with rust on the merry-go-round censored the pollination as an overtly indecent act dispensed metaphors for free to re-upholster discomforting novelties proclaimed an increment of taxes on luxury fantasies watercoloured sunsets for lonesome enjoyments tilted the bodily functions of functional bodies derailed trains of thought issued reminders for all outstanding inutility bills cut wires of appliances to accelerate the decay of gods enhanced the ticks of the alarm clock to create the illusion of a faster running of time tuned the instruments of solipsism to orchestrate indulgent performances of tears interrogated the Keeper of Secrets until the process reached a paroxysmic height inflated the self until it grew into an outsized ego swapped the Tables of Laws for the Seven Sealed Sins.

page 59 | 20x20 magazine

visions

The hacker of geometrical shapes has robbed the sacred tabernacles