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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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