Monday, April 29, 2013

White Fungus Kadist San Francisco Residency

White Fungus is about to release its 13th issue in San Francisco while on a magazine residency at Kadist Art Foundation. White Fungus is currently in San Francisco as the fifth magazine to take up the residency, following Fillip (Vancouver), Nero (Rome), May (Paris) and Taxi (Guadalajra, Mexico).

Beginning in Wellington in 2004, White Fungus is currently based in Taiwan but continues to feature New Zealand artists and writers. The new issue inclues an in-depth feature by Auckland writer Tessa Laird elucidating upon her love affair with bats and their remarkable qualities which have been obscured by popular misperception. The issue also includes an interview with the artist Brydee Rood by Andrew Clifford, fashion spreads by Clara Chon and Richard Orjis and a new comic by Tim Bollinger. Plus Auckland writer John Hurrell writes about the New York artist Tony Martin and Mark Amery writes about the Wellington Media Collective and the notion of media collectivism. 

The new issue of White Fungus will be released with two events. The first, at Kadist, May 4, 3-5pm, will be a reading by featured author Ron Drummond from his essay / fiction hybrid “The First Woman on Mars”, a story that proposes an original Mars settlement scenario. Following the reading, Drummond will be joined by Kim Stanley Robinson, the science fiction writer and award-winning author of the Mars Trilogy and 2312. Together they will discuss the social, economic, and political implications of the human push into space and efforts to colonize Mars, as well as the ecological and sociological sustainability of life on the red planet and elsewhere in the solar system. 

The second event will be held at the Lab on May 9, 8pm. To celebrate the release of its 13th issue, White Fungus is bringing the artists Wang Fujui (Taipei), Samin Son (Wellington / Seoul) and Betty Apple (Taipei) to the LAB in San Francisco for a night of sound, video, and performance art. Wang Fujui became one of the pioneers of the Taiwanese noise and digital art movement after attending the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1990’s. He will perform alongside the San Francisco Bay Area’s Scott Arford and Mason Jones.

The Kadist art magazine residency is unique among residency programs internationally. Located in San Francisco’s Mission district, the residency invites the magazine to extend their scope by investigating San Francisco-relevant people, subjects and histories; including local area content, the work of artists, writers and published texts broadly associated with the foundation and its networks and partners.

For White Fungus the residency comes on the heels of what was a breakout year for the magazine in 2012, in which the publication was selected for 17 exhibitions and art book fairs around the world. These included Millennium Magazines, MoMA, New York; Publish and Be Damned, the ICA, London; The London Art Book Fair, Whitechapel Gallery, The Library Project, PhotoIrealand Festival, Dublin, and Mag Dossier 01 in Cyprus. In November, White Fungus founders, the brothers Ron and Mark Hanson, gave a talk at Guangdong Times Musueum in Guangzhou, China on the history of the magazine. 
White Fungus was also commissioned by Adam Art Gallery to produce new work for an exhibition / project The Consumers of the Future, which accompanied the exhbitions We Will Work With You!
Wellington Media Collective 1978–1998
and Martha Rosler, The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems.

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