Wemanage Observatory Interview #1: Saul Marcadent talks cultural sustainability
By: Wemanage Group
Tags: Sustainable Fashion, Consulting, Sustainability, Sustainable Development

A project by Wemanage Group

Wemanage Observatory is a project aimed at sharing insights and discoveries in key areas of the contemporary discourse, such as sustainability and digitalisation. The goal of this project is to activate an experimental approach, by creating new connections through interviews with experts in the field. In the first of a series of interviews with inspiring creatives of our times, we talked to IUAV Ph.D fellow researcher and curator, Saul Marcadent, discussing the meaning of cultural sustainability and the world of independent magazines.

Photo by Alan Chies

Tell us a little bit about your latest book, “Publishing as Curating”: when did the idea of writing the book come about? Was it a continuation of your doctoral program at IUAV?

More than from an idea, “Editoria come curatela” (Marsilio Editori, 2020) was born from a rather long and articulated path. At the center, a PhD at the IUAV University of Venice where I investigated the relationships between editorial and curatorial practices, focusing on some niche magazines, mainly fashion magazines.

Could you better explain the concept of publishing as curating?

In the book my work conducted over the last five years on publishing finds a systematization. At a certain point, in the fourth chapter, entitled “Two-Dimensional Three-Dimensional,” I state that magazines, like exhibitions, are designed systems, experiential in nature, in which the individual parts are interconnected. In both cases, content is negotiated on the spatial (the page space and the exhibition space), emotional, and aesthetic levels.

In your book you choose some magazines of the 90s as case studies: tell us a bit about these magazines (your two favourites) and how they have influenced your professional pathway.

“Purple” and “Self Service” are the magazines I focused on the most. Founded in Paris in the first half of the 1990s, they are still active and accredited in the fashion system today. I believe that many of the founders of the niche magazines that have emerged in the new millennium have looked closely at these two editorial histories. In addition to influencing my own professional journey — I was recently invited to write the introduction to a portfolio on contemporary publishing in the latest issue of “Self Service” (no. 53, 2020) — they have influenced the way I look at fashion publishing and, more broadly, publishing and fashion.

For some time we have been talking about environmental and economic sustainability, but recently we have been discussing what cultural sustainability is. We think that the meeting of these two themes is a hot point to be addressed today to approach a new way of conceiving culture as the engine that leads to development. In this case, magazines, created precisely as objects of curatorship, have the power to create employment, to redevelop and offer spaces allowing to work beyond large corporations and to deal with issues more freely, bringing to light local realities and areas of study otherwise snubbed by the more commercial realities. What do you think about this, and how do you think the theme of commercial sustainability can be brought forward in this area?

I think these are accurate considerations. I would add that often niche journals, which do research and experiment, are highly visible platforms for those who make them. They allow them to carve out a tailored space, to show their expertise and professionalism, to position themselves in a precise way, to be intercepted. For this reason, fashion brands, even the most powerful and global ones, are paying special attention to these forms of publishing, deciding to support them, sometimes even with ad hoc projects and advertising campaigns. Publishing situations that arise outside market rules are of interest to the system. Of course, figures capable of seeing far ahead are needed. I’m thinking, for example, of the attention of the Saint Laurent brand towards independent publishing and the consequent economic investment in terms of advertising thanks to Hedi Slimane, creative director of the brand from 2012 to 2016. But let’s also think about how Italian brands like Gucci and Valentino are doing in this sense.

Could you give us some examples of magazines that have succeeded in this?

“032c” (2000) is a very good example: Joerg and Maria Koch managed to build a success story, also by adding a clothing line to the magazine, working intelligently on both the material and immaterial design of fashion. But I’m also thinking of “Fantastic Man” (2005) and its female counterpart “The Gentlewoman” (2010), “Buffalo Zine” (2011) and magazines focused on specific areas such as interior design, travel, green culture, food: “Apartamento” (2008), “The Travel Almanac” (2010), “The Plant” (2011), “The Gourmand” (2011). In addition to the magazines, then, we must give due importance to some of the protagonists of the contemporary publishing scene: Francesca Burns, Katie Grand, Gert Jonkers, Penny Martin, Marie-Amélie Sauvé, Jop van Bennekom, Luis Venegas, just to name a few.

How do you think these magazines made a real aesthetic and intellectual statement of intent at a given moment in history?

Often these magazines are true manifestos, at least at an early stage. I’ve always been struck by Olivier Zahm’s lucidity in reading his own magazine, “Purple,” as a political and, at the same time, poetic response. These are magazines that don’t just record but participate, in an energetic way, in the design processes of fashion and visual culture.

Do you think the world of independent fashion magazines today is saturated? Do you feel that there is still room for such magazines today?

No, I don’t. I think it’s a very rich territory, and it’s inevitable that some magazines look alike. Then not all of them survive, some run out in a few issues but can leave significant traces in the collective imagination. I have always looked at the blossoming of niche, small and experimental publishing forms with deep respect and interest. It is a phenomenon that cannot be hastily dismissed.

How do you think magazines will change in the future? What will be the future of independent magazines?

The most daring teams are those that constantly question what an independent (print) magazine can be today. Those capable of challenging, bending and putting to the test this medium, obsolete at first glance. In the direction of a serene (and necessary) integration between the possibilities of digital, research on printing processes, the identification of new forms of written and visual narration and new forms of intimacy with the reader.