Beyond the Showcase: When a Fanzine Becomes a Journey and a Destination

We are now at the third issue, and the third public open call for The Journey, the fanzine created to make space not for artistic production alone, but for everything that happens behind the work: artists’ lives, behind the scenes, failures, invisible details, unexpected turns.

With the previous issues, we were moving within a relatively contained territory, shaped by the small circle of applications typical of a precious niche dimension. With this third open call, which will close in a month, we have witnessed a genuine turning point: a 230% increase in applications compared to the beginning. Looking at the blog traffic, since July, when the new call was launched, visits have increased by 900%, with thousands of visitors from nearly 50 different countries, led in particular by the United States, Italy, and Russia.

Significant numbers and percentages, certainly. But they are only there to mark the beginning of the map.

The real political and poetic significance lies elsewhere: this surge in participation shows that The Journey responds to a real and profound need that many artists have been feeling. Not yet another polished showcase, but a meeting point that is human before it is aesthetic. And the proof that the fanzine is a living platform, one from which spontaneous, generous, and unpredictable things can emerge, lies in everything that has moved around it and through it since the very first issue.

Already with the debut issue, focused on Ukrainian artists on the front line, unexpected reflections began to unfold, bringing the project to public attention in surprising ways, including interest from the prominent American think tank the Wilson Center. But the horizon continued to expand unpredictably, leading me to meet Vilgeniy Melnikov, a Russian artist featured in the second issue. Together, we developed a performance entitled Ponte (Most), conceived precisely to shorten the forced distance—not only geographical—between Europe and Russia. What began as a remote artistic connection is now taking on a physical and tangible form: in November, I will spend several weeks in Russia to continue creating together on the ground.

It will also be an opportunity to meet in person other artists featured in the second issue, the duo Mediumslab, and to weave new connections with unexpected presences, such as Gleb Makrushin, an artist I met just a few days ago precisely through the submissions for this third issue. There is something extraordinarily coincidental, both geographically and humanly, about the way all these paths seem to be converging in Saint Petersburg, where I will remain until December.

This third issue therefore takes shape as a kind of issue zero, a threshold from which the fanzine will embark on a new path. It will continue to serve as a pretext for triggering spontaneous and unpredictable events, exactly as this lies at the heart of the project—and of my own artistic practice: to make art not merely describe life, but inhabit it, shape it, and transform it.

Still from the documentary video of the performance "Ponte (Most)."