X Magazine by William Young

SPRNG 2012

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THE 24th

The letter X is 24th in the alphabet and is thus, for lexicographers trudging through all 26, a welcome sign of pre-penultimacy: only two to go until the end. But X is not just any old letter, no mundane B, overextended S or unavoidable E. X holds a mystique. It smacks of the strange, the alien and the exotic - and of the forbidden. It may be simply that this reflects its relative invisibility in the dictionary. Times have changed since, in his own great work, Dr Johnson was able to dismiss X as "a letter which, though found in Saxon words, begins no word in the English language", and allowed no entry other than that. But initial X is still hardly a major linguistic player. My own slang database reports a mere 30 terms at this letter, whereas the monstrous S offers 12,000, and B scores 9,850. Such proportions will be found in the standard English lexica, too. Or is it the sheer unpronounceability? X-words tend to the tongue-twisting, and we steer clear. But the letter serves a purpose. Whether implying exoticism, taboo, or technological progress, X is still capable of giving us pause. Hard-wired to acknowledge the letter as an exception, we experience it as a small but arresting exclamation. So rare in "average" words, other than in the prefix ex- (itself implying an absence, a vanishing), its appearance makes us jump, however briefly. The start of X

itself, like others of our letters, lies in Greek, in this case in Western Greek; that is, Greek as spoken in Naples, whence it moved up the Italian coast to Etruscan and thereafter to Latin, where it was the 21st and last letter of the Roman alphabet. In all cases, it represented the sound "ks" with a hard and noticeable "k", typically in such proper names as Xantippe, Xerxes and Xenephon. The idea that X didn't work at the start of words was already in place. While Greeks might well have had words beginning in ks, the Etruscans and their Roman successors did not. In Latin, and in English words that developed from Latin roots, X requires a vowel. Only X meaning 10 stands out, and that was pronounced "decem". (In the United States in around 1890, X and XX meant $10 and $20 respectively, and thus the slang "sawbuck", properly an X-shaped frame or sawhorse, also means $10. The States also offers the mysterious "Ped Xing".) Such words as do start with the letter, such as xenophobia or xylophone, are from Greek, and the X is pronounced more as a Z. It is Greek, none the less, that brought the use of X as an abbreviation for Christ. In this case, the character is not the "ks" sound but "chai", and pronounced "ch", as in Christ. As an initial letter it is less than easy for English-speaking tongues to get around. It may be coincidence that xenophobia, fear of foreigners, is one of English's few X-words, but it is also

conveniently symbolic. For X, until relatively recently, has almost invariably been allied to difference, even danger. X is the scrawled signature of the illiterate, and if - scrawled on a mysterious map - it "marks the spot", who was to say what else lurked there? For 18thcentury and Victorian criminals, X equalled "the cross", and the cross meant anything - and anyone dishonest; is he "square" or "on the X"? In 1860 or so, the police secured a violent arrestee "on the letter X". A contemporary explained that "two constables firmly grasp the collar with one hand, the captive's arm being drawn down and the hand forced backwards over the holding arms. In this position, the prisoner's arm is more easily broken than extricated." In the world of Nancy Mitford, if not of Irving Welsh, X can mean another type of cross: angry. Though, in a gentler mode, X remains the only shorthand for kiss. Trawling the online movie databases, one finds eight films titled simply X. One is publicised: "Suddenly he could see through clothes, flesh... and walls!", the X being X-rays; another explains how, "unable to support himself as a writer, failed author Dong-shik starts working as a male prostitute"; yet another determines the fate of the earth when the characters "cross over into the X Manga". None of it is exactly family fodder. Neither was Brand X, the hapless alternative to whatever product was being peddled

by the TV hucksters of the commercial break. That said, at least in mid-19th century slang, "double-X" could mean superlatively good, playing not as one might have thought, on excellent, but on the racetrack jargon double-X; the horse most likely to win, and thus the optimum bet. America's V and X store offered a positively classical take on such corner emporia better known as the "five and dime", the V and X meaning five and 10 in Latin. Slang being slang, one cannot avoid drugs, vitamin X being yet another name for MDMA and playing on the best known of its nicknames, Ecstasy. Liquid X can be gamma hydroxybutyrate (usually GHB). X, 50 years ago, meant a narcotic injection. Still, in the States, to have the X on someone is to place them at a disadvantage, while here the rhyming slang X-Files means piles. X has always played an important part in maths and science. To quote the Oxford English Dictionary: "In Algebra and Higher Mathematics, used as the symbol for an unknown or variable quantity (or for the first of such quantities, the others being denoted by y, z, etc); . In analytical geometry, the sign for an abscissa, or quantity measured along the principal axis of co-ordinates." The usage was pioneered in 1637 by Descartes in La Géometrie. He pondered Y and Z for a similar role, but X won that day and all that have followed.

TER

“The usage was pioneered in 1637 by Descartes in La Géometrie. He pondered Y and Z for a similar role, but X won that day and all that have followed.”

URANIUM CITY: SMALL TOWN CANADA TAKEN TO THE

Northern Saskatchewan’s Uranium City may be a life too isolated for the likes of most city dwellers, but as photographer Ian Brewster and anthropologist Justin Armstrong discovered on their trip to the ghost town, the city’s sense of community has kept its remaining 70 inhabitants going strong.

“I have this idea of writing a place into existence,” says the 35-year-old Armstrong, “So how do you take it from being just a sad, abandoned place to having a really rich narrative and history that might otherwise have been evacuated?” While Armstrong focused on speaking with the remaining townspeople, Brewster documented the surrounding community with his Kodak film camera, focusing on the people left behind rather than the deteriorating remains of Saskatchewan’s most northerly settlement. Ian Brewster “It’s an interesting context and I think it’s interesting to look at that abandonment style of photography for a little bit, but I feel you could get carried away with the sadness of it and looking backwards to what was lost and sort of see what wasn’t lost and what was gained by having people leave, and for the people who are up there, I think what was gained from having people leave was a bit more privacy, a bit more freedom.” Once a booming industry town of 10,000, Uranium City was abandoned in the 1980s after the

EXTRE

closure of the surrounding mines, and quickly became a haunting reminder of the flourishing community that once was. (This year marks the 30th anniversary of the mine’s closure.) What is left of the city is threatened by the discontinuation of water and hydro services but, the remaining residents are committed to keeping the area alive.

“It’s a tough life up there but that’s the way they want it and that’s the way they like “The idea of the abandonment it,” Brewster says. “If my wasn’t as interesting as the photos accomplish what I’m people who stayed,” Brewster trying to, it ends up looking says. “You know, I don’t really like determination and view this as a story about the resourcefulness in their faces and not stubbornness, or sadness town and all the people that left, about the state of the town.” I view the story more about the people that have stayed and why they stayed and that was sort of the more interesting aspect of it for us.” While documenting and recording the remaining community, Brewster and Armstrong discovered the strong bonds that lingered among the inhabitants who, without a grocery store, would hunt for wildlife and gather vegetation, sharing it among fellow residents. Ian Brewster

“I HAVE THIS IDEA OF WRITING A PLACE INTO EXISTENCE.”

EME “I had never been in a place that had so much life and character in it with so few people that was so far away from everything,” Armstrong says. “The characters that we met, they’re just one in a billion.”

The new project also marks the continuing efforts of Armstrong and Brewster to focus on the people — not just the buildings — of towns left to the dust, with the pair having previously travelled to isolated communites in Maine and West Virginia.

STICKERS: OF RADNESS AND ART New York, NY – Streaming Museum opened its summer exhibition, “STICKERS: From Punk Rock to Contemporary Art”, on July 14, 7 – 9pm with a party at the Big Screen Plaza on 6th Avenue between 29th and 30th Streets, NYC. (Party video here). The exhibition has been produced and curated by DB Burkeman, Monica LoCascio and Katya Fisher Yoffe and edited by Benjamin Abrams and David Bates, Jr.. Developed for Streaming Museum, it will tour throughout the museum’s international network of screens in public spaces, and will be on view at streamingmuseum.org. (Summer schedule at BigScreenPlaza.org) The exhibition features stickers by over 1600 artists and music by Radiohead, The White Stripes, UNKLE, Moby, Fujiya & Miyagi, Nite Club, Ror-Shak. The collection is culled from the pages of STICKERS: From Punk Rock to Contemporary Art by DB Burkeman and Monica LoCascio which documents sticker culture – spanning the genres of art and music – starting in 1966 with Andy Warhol’s Banana sticker for the Velvet Underground and the evolution of stickers from early Californian skate culture, the punk rock pioneers, early hip hop, techno / rave culture, graffiti, sociopolitical / activism, to contemporary street and fine art. The project technically spanned over three years, but started decades before with the expansive personal collections of the authors.

A short list of the over 1,600 exhibiting artists includes: AIKO, Andy Howell, Andy Warhol, Anthony Lister, Banksy, Barry McGee – TWIST, Beastie Boys, Bill McMullen, The Buzzcocks, Cey Adams, Daft Punk, Damien Hirst, Dan Witz, Daniel Joseph, Dave Denis, Dave Kinsey, Delta, Designers Republic / Warp Records, Destroy All Monsters, eBoy, Ed Templeton, Faile, FUTURA, Geoff McFetridge, Greg Lamarche, Gorillaz, HAZE, Hubert Kretzschmar, THE INKHEADS, Invader, Jenny Holzer, Jeroen INFLUENZA Jongeleen, Jim Phillips, José Parlá, KAWS, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Kenzo Minami, Kostas Seremetis, KR, The London Police, Marilyn Minter, M.I.A., Mark Gonzales, Martha Cooper, Maya Hayuk, MCA, Miss Van, Moby, Neckface, Peter Saville, Radiohead, Raymond Pettibon, The Ramones, Robert Lazzarini, Ron English, The Rolling Stones, Rostar, Ryan McGinness, Shepard Fairey, Site God? Tony Arcasascio, Skullphone, Sonic Youth, Stanley Donwood, Steven ESPO Powers, Suitman / Young Kim, Swoon, Tess One & DJ NO of XMEN, Thundercut, Tom Sachs, Underworld / Tomato Design Group, UNKLE / Mo Wax, The Velvet Underground, The White Stripes, Yoshitomo Nara, ZEVS. About the STICKERS team: DB Burkeman, best known as DJ DB , is a British, New York-based author, producer,

STREAMING MUSEUM LAUNCHES GLOBAL TOUR OF ”STICKERS: FROM PUNK ROCK

TO CONTEMPORARY ART” AT BIG SCREEN PLAZA, NYC

creative consultant and an early pioneer in United States rave culture. DB is credited with being somewhat responsible in the early 90’s for bringing Jungle/Drum & Bass from his London hometown to America.In 2010 DB expanded into another creative field by publishing the first ever book on the history of stickers & the artists who created them. DB and his partner, Monica LoCascio, Designer/Production Director for PAPER Magazine and independent curator, created “Stickers- from Punk Rock to Contemporary Art” AKA Stuck-Up Piece Of Crap (for Rizzoli Publishing). The book has become a massive success, being carried by both small independent sellers, big corporate chains and museums such as MoMA, Tate Modern and Centre Pompidou and others, as well as being brought into universities in the U.K and U.S. as the definitive document on the culture and history of stickers. DB can currently be heard on the publicly funded online radio station, Art International Radio via his bi-weekly show called BLURRINGradio – a “mix-tape” of music, past & present that has, or is inspiring him. The concept is that of a non genre, non decade specific show and was inspired by the fond memory of DB growing up listing to the late John Peel in London. http://www. djdb.com

THE 24th

start with the letter, such as xenophobia or xylophone, are from Greek, and the X is pronounced more as a Z. It is Greek, none the less, that brought the use of X as an abbreviation for Christ. In this case, the character is not the “ks” sound but “chai”, and pronounced “ch”, as in Christ. As an initial letter it is less than easy for Englishspeaking tongues to get around. It may be coincidence that xenophobia, fear of foreigners, is one of English’s few X-words, but it is also conveniently symbolic. For X, until relatively recently, has almost invariably been allied to difference, even danger. X is the scrawled signature of the illiterate, and if - scrawled on a mysterious map - it “marks the spot”, who was to say what else lurked there? For 18th-century and Victorian criminals, X equalled “the cross”, and the cross meant anything - and anyone - dishonest; is he “square” or “on the X”? In 1860 or so, the police secured a violent arrestee “on the letter X”. A contemporary explained that “two constables firmly grasp the collar with one hand, the captive’s arm being drawn down and the hand forced backwards over the holding arms. In this position, the prisoner’s arm is more easily broken than extricated.” In the world of Nancy Mitford, if not of Irving Welsh, X can mean another type of cross: angry. Though, in a gentler mode, X remains the only shorthand for kiss. To quote the Oxford English Dictionary: “In Algebra and Higher Mathematics, used as the symbol for an unknown or variable quantity (or for the first of such quantities, the others being denoted by y, z, etc); . In analytical geometry, the sign for an abscissa, or quantity measured along the principal axis of co-ordinates.” The usage was pioneered in 1637 by Descartes in La Géometrie. He pondered Y and Z for a similar role, but X won that day and all that have followed.

LETTER The letter X is 24th in the alphabet and is thus, for lexicographers trudging through all 26, a welcome sign of pre-penultimacy: only two to go until the end. But X is not just any old letter, no mundane B, overextended S or unavoidable E. X holds a mystique. It smacks of the strange, the alien and the exotic - and of the forbidden. It may be simply that this reflects its relative invisibility in the dictionary. Times have changed since, in his own great work, Dr Johnson was able to dismiss X as “a letter which, though found in Saxon words, begins no word in the English language”, and allowed no entry other than that. The start of X itself, like others of our letters, lies in Greek, in this case in Western Greek; that is, Greek as spoken in Naples, whence it moved up the Italian coast to Etruscan and thereafter to Latin, where it was the 21st and last letter of the Roman alphabet. In all cases, it represented the sound “ks” with a hard and noticeable “k”. In Latin, and in English words that developed from Latin roots, X requires a vowel. Only X meaning 10 stands out, and that was pronounced “decem”. (In the United States in around 1890, X and XX meant $10 and $20 respectively, and thus the slang “sawbuck”, properly an X-shaped frame or sawhorse, also means $10. The States also offers the mysterious “Ped Xing”.) Such words as do

“THE USAGE WAS PIONEERED IN 1637 BY DESCARTES IN LA GÉOMETRIE. HE PONDERED Y AND Z FOR A SIMILAR ROLE, BUT X WON THAT DAY AND ALL THATHAVE FOLLOWED.”

URANIUM CITY: SMALL TOWN CANADA TAKEN TO THE

Once a booming industry town of 10,000, Uranium City was abandoned in the 1980s after the closure of the surrounding mines, and quickly became a haunting reminder of the flourishing community that once was. (This year marks the 30th anniversary of the mine’s closure.) What is left of the city is threatened by the discontinuation of water and hydro services but, the remaining residents are committed to keeping the area alive. “The idea of the abandonment wasn’t as interesting as the people who stayed,” Brewster says. “You know, I don’t really view this as a story about the town and all the people that left, I view the story more about the people that have stayed and why they stayed and that was sort of the more interesting aspect of it for us.”

While documenting and recording the remaining community, Brewster and Armstrong discovered the strong bonds that lingered among the inhabitants who, without a grocery store, would hunt for wildlife and gather vegetation, sharing it among fellow residents.

Ian Brewster “I had never been in a place that had so much life and character in it with so few people that was so far away from everything,” Armstrong says. “The characters that we met, they’re just one in a billion.”

While Armstrong focused on speaking with the remaining townspeople, Brewster documented the surrounding community with his Kodak film camera, focusing on the people left behind rather than the deteriorating remains of Saskatchewan’s most northerly settlement.

Ian Brewster “It’s an interesting context and I think it’s interesting to look at that abandonment style of photography for a little bit, but I feel you could get carried away with the sadness of it and looking backwards to what was lost and sort of see what wasn’t lost and what was gained by having people leave, and for the people who are up there, I think what was gained from having people leave was a bit more privacy, a bit more freedom.”

“I HAVE THIS IDEA OF WRITING A PLACE INTO EXISTENCE”

“It’s a tough life up there but that’s the way they want it and that’s the way they like it,” Brewster says. “If my photos accomplish what I’m trying to, it ends up looking like determination and resourcefulness in their faces and not stubbornness, or sadness about the state of the town.”

EXTREME

STREAMING MUSEUM LAUNCHES GLOBAL TOUR OF “STICKERS: FROM PUNK ROCK TO CONTEMPORARY ART” AT BIG SCREEN PLAZA, NYC

A short list of the over 1,600 exhibiting artists includes: AIKO, Andy Howell, Andy Warhol, Anthony Lister, Banksy, FUTURA, Geoff McFetridge, Greg Lamarche, Gorillaz, HAZE, KAWS, The London Police, Marilyn Minter, M.I.A., Mark Gonzales, Martha Cooper, Maya Hayuk, MCA, Moby, Neckface, Peter Saville, Radiohead, Raymond Pettibon, The Ramones, Robert Lazzarini, Ron English, The Rolling Stones, Rostar, Ryan McGinness, Shepard Fairey, Site God? Tony Arcasascio, Skullphone, Sonic Youth, Stanley Donwood, Steven ESPO Powers, Suitman / Young Kim, Swoon, Tess One & DJ NO of XMEN, Thundercut, Tom Sachs, Underworld / Tomato Design Group, UNKLE / Mo Wax, The Velvet Underground, The White Stripes, Yoshitomo Nara, ZEVS. About the STICKERS team: DB Burkeman, best known as DJ DB , is a British, New York-based author, producer, creative consultant and an early pioneer in United States rave culture. DB is credited with being somewhat responsible in the early 90’s for bringing Jungle/Drum & Bass from his London hometown to America.In 2010 DB expanded into another creative field by publishing the first ever book on the history of stickers & the artists who created them. DB and his partner, Monica LoCascio, Designer/Production Director for PAPER Magazine and independent curator, created “Stickers- from Punk Rock to Contemporary Art” AKA Stuck-Up Piece Of Crap (for Rizzoli Publishing). The book has become a massive success, being carried by both small independent sellers, big corporate chains and museums such as MoMA, Tate Modern and Centre Pompidou and others, as well as being brought into universities in the U.K and U.S. as the definitive document on the culture and history of stickers. DB can currently be heard on the publicly funded online radio station, Art International Radio via his bi-weekly show called BLURRINGradio – a “mix-tape” of music, past & present that has, or is inspiring him. The concept is that of a non genre, non decade specific show and was inspired by the fond memory of DB growing up listing to the late John Peel in London. http://www. djdb.com VISIT THE EXIBITION ONLINE

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