Sonic Youth noister Thurston Joseph Moore once sent 25 one minute-long guitar parts to a bunch of fellow artists — the likes of Alec Empire, Mogwai, and Stereolab — in a Hoover bag. A Hoover bag. The musicians would rework his six-string improvisations for what would become the collaborative album, Root. The whole thing struck a chord with me, and I always aspired to do some kind of project inspired by it. But I’m too fucking lazy.
Ordinary + Thomas Aangeenbrug
Fast forward 17 years, and the duo of Max Siedentopf and Yuki Kappes are putting more everyday mundane objects on the doormats of international creatives. Ordinary magazine issue one is the result of Siedentopf and Kappes dispatching plastic cutlery to art talent like Daniel Eatock, Thomas Albdorf, and Ruth van Beek who, like Thurston Moore’s recipients, ‘remix’ the contents to startling effect.
Albdorf dishes up some disturbing currywurst in the Alps scenario; Beni Bischof’s disposable utensils are escaping from a raging inferno; Bangkok-born Dutch artist Thomas Nondh Jansen needs to do some washing up. A quarterly affair, Ordinary promises to reimagine a different humdrum object in each edition; readers gifted the same prosaic pieces sent out to their artists. It’s a riot of creativity, and an admirable intent to inject much needed conceptualism into the increasingly busy waters that independent magazines navigate.
The full list of artists involved goes like this: Adrian Samson, Annegien van Doorn, Beni Bischof, Blaise Cepis, Brad Downey, Daniel Eatock, Helga Major, Jaap Scheeren, Mauricio Alejo, Maxime Guyon, Paoola Paloma, Pinar & Viola, Ruth van Beek, Simon Wald-Lasowski, Stephanie Gonot, James Goodrich, Thomas Aangeenbrug, Thomas Albdorf, Thomas Mailaender, Thomas Nondh Jansen, Vendula Knopová, We make Carpets.
Ordinary is available from select bookshops in the Netherlands, UK, Germany; and online at ordinary-magazine.com
Ordinary + Thomas Albdorf
Ordinary + Blaise Cepis
Ordinary + Beni Bischof
Ordinary + Paoola Paloma
Ordinary + Simon Wald-Lasowski
Ordinary + Thomas Mailaender
Ordinary + Thomas Nondh Jansen
Ordinary + Mauricio Alejo
