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Web Exclusives: More
Question: Buddhism, Marilyn Monroe, using the nose
to eat, elephant art, and Swedish bingo. What do these topics have
in common? Reply: Read the first issues of Cabinet, the new quarterly
magazine edited by Sina Khajeh-Najafi '87, and the connection will
be obvious. Launched in December of 2000, Cabinet is an international
collaboration of artists from every imaginable genre - not to mention
a few unimaginable ones - brought to glossy paper. Content consists
of unique articles, photographs, interviews, illustrations, and
CDs mixed with other mind-expanding tidbits that leave the reader
asking, "How did they think that up?" In each issue there's a 16-page section in which
members of Khajeh-Najafi's "cabinet" are asked to consider
a theme. In the first issue, for example, the focus is on planned
languages. As a result, there's an article on speaking Martian,
an interview with an Esperanto speaker, a translated poem by a Mexican
leftist entitled "Marilyn Monroe y Yo," and a CD which
features chanting and sound art."The idea is to choose common
themes, but to go deeper into the interest," says Khajeh-Najafi,
a comparative literature major whose thesis was on 19th-century
French novelist Gustave Flaubert. "Cabinet is kind of a staging
ground between academia and journalism." Showing there's no sophomore slump, the second
issue includes advice on where to get the best clay to make fake
pre-Columbian artifacts, how to find a recipe for a Brecht pastry,
and how to control chimpanzees by radio. Future issues will offer their slants on weather,
animals, evil, and gift-giving. "This is a cabinet of curiosities,
the reader can find many different things that logically shouldn't
be stored in the same place, but are," says Khajeh-Najafi,
who used to live in Stockholm and was coeditor-in-chief of the Swedish
art magazine Index.Cabinet is actually a facet of a nonprofit called
Immaterial (www.immaterial.net; Cabinet issues are available there),
a New York City-based umbrella group that promotes a wide range
of artistic and cultural activities aided by grants from the Flora
and Frankel foundations. Among its more than 30 members are curators,
scientists, critics, historians, poets, architects, and philosophers,
many of whom live abroad. On a volunteer basis, this group organizes
conferences, exhibitions, and anything else that members feel is
necessary. A recent Immaterial collaboration called "War"
gathered 10 sound-artists each in Belgrade and New York City on
a Sunday. They then proceeded to create battle noise for two hours
for WBAI and Radio B-92, a renegade station banned by Yugoslavian
strongman Slobodan Milosevic. Everything the nihilistic New Yorkers
knocked out was broadcast on the left speaker, while the belligerent
Belgraders blasted from the right speaker. "A lot of the most interesting art going on
these days doesn't get covered by mainstream media. Well, we want
to explore it," says Khajeh-Najafi, a native of Iran who grew
up in England. "We also want to reflect on what artists think
about when they're making art." The American Library Association
named Cabinet the best new magazine of the year, but it is really
just getting off the ground. Khajeh-Najafi does not get paid for
his 75-hour weeks. For money, he translates documents and teaches
comparative literature as part of his Ph.D. program at New York
University. Sounds like an exhausting week. How Rob MacKay, is an editor at Timesnewsweekly, a weekly newspaper in Queens, New York. He can be reached at robertazo@hotmail.com.
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July
4, 2001: