Place: Studio-X
Time: Thursday, 7.30
Raison de fête: “A Few Zines: Dispatches from the Edge of Architectural Production”, on view through February 28th
Catering: Fair/Middling

The Very Merry Mimi Zeiger, Ms. Mimi if you’re nasty, who was recently accused of being the only living “outstanding architecture critic” by Columbia’s resident network theoryhead Kazys Varnelis (“but I respect her too much to call her an architecture critic…” WHAT?) had a chance to face her assailant Thursday night. Varnelis moderated the opening panel for Zeiger’s exhibition of small architecture publications at Studio-X’s roomy room in the Varick Street Ghetto.

Mimi (rhymes with Shimmy) was accompanied on the panel by Thumb’s Luke Bulman,
Felix Burrichter of Pin-Up, NYU media maven Stephen Duncombe, and Situated Technologist Mark Shepard. Highlights included Duncombe’s qualified assertion that print zines were effectively dead, as well as Bulman’s answer, on being asked what current print publications he thought worthwhile, “None”. Approbation and golf claps also go to Burrichter, publisher maximus and all around human dynamo, for Old World poise and cavalier style.

Question of the night: What is the fate of DIY writing, thinking, and publishing in the age of digital media? Responses ran the gamut from good to very good. The blog being ascendant, Duncombe observed that blogs originally took their individualist cues from the zine scene. The paper zine, suggested the panelists, might be the once and future medium; if only punk could win out over snark, then a thousand spirited, alternative publish-on-demand outfits might bloom midst the current field of self-regarding design blogs (present company excluded, of course). Mimi, no stranger to blogs herself, objected to their innate verticality, and as evidence of the print zine’s formal versatility and overall vitality she presented the latest issue of her long-lived, much-loved Loud Paper, a broadsheet this time, fold after fold of quality writing. Critical estimate: Print is Undead.

Among the attendees, Volume’s Jeffrey Inaba, Benedict Clouette (lately returned to Columbia), and gin provided by Bulldog, “The Brazen Breed”: the inevitable colonization by boutique branding of one of the few remaining free spirits. Next up, designer everclear.