This revival draws on a rich history of artists self-organizing and initiating systems of collaboration. The momentum of emerging operations form within voids of opportunity. Our editorial program supports freedom and resistance to frameworks that are easily defined. We are excited to experiment with the fun and panic of reviving an artist-run journal born of the pugnacious and provoking spirit of the early 1980s in Downtown New York City.
Artist-run organizations were thriving all around the country when I met the painter, conceptual artist and teacher Lucio Pozzi at The School Of Visual Arts and started working for him at New Observations Magazine, then already 9 years old. Diane Karp soon arrived as the second publisher and I was eventually handed the baton from then Art Director and Managing Editor Ciri Johnson. I had an amazing 10 year run. This is also the time when, through The Artists Museum, I met the intermedia artist Thanks to Joshua Selman, who, being a fierce artist advocate, introduced me to the Lance Fung Gallery, where I became one of the core artists in the community at the ambitiously experimental gallery of the 1990’s SOHO art scene.
When Lance Fung Gallery ended, in 2003, Joshua launched Artist Organized Art (AOA) as a web presence, something out of the box, for supporting artists, organizers and the public.
Today, to be a publisher is to be a virtuoso. I feel privileged to orchestrate print media, while projecting additional special sections designed specifically for networked electronic media, in an expanding array of applications, devices and form factors.
However, the mission of this limited edition print magazine, sticks closely to its source collaborating with new artists who want to explore commissioning and preparing material for publication. We consider our editorial method to be open-ended and expansive, rather than hierarchical. As a magazine, New Observations is dedicated to working closely with guest editors and contributors for each issue. Guest editors invite artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, photographers, videographers, architects, musicians, philosophers, academics, provacateurs, even their Moms to contribute through commissioned and found works of art, essays and spontaneous actions for each issue.
I am interested in publishing the widest range of voices from the artist community, in looking at the fringes of the world of working artists. In observing where art practice itself intermediates to challenge norms and categories. Its third incarnation positions New Observations at the flow between art and design, art and technology, art and science, art and healing, art and sustainability and every way that art intersects and exists in our collective cultures.
New Observations practices outside the commercial magazine paradigm by putting artists directly at its helm. For the last 20 years of the 20th Century we covered the arts, in print, from the inside out. Yet, since stopping in 2001 publishing has seen an entirely virtual work flow emerge.
By combining the interdependence of avant-garde, art in life and activism, communication and media bring about a diverse engagement in our world.
Cordially,
Erika Knerr, Executive Director, Publisher, Designer
