ART FAN No. 1, 1991, Ariane Müller & Linda Bilda
/1
print on paper
25,3 × 21 cm
“ART FAN” is an art fanzine that was produced and published in Vienna between 1991 and 1997 by the artists Ariane Müller and Linda Bilda. Müller was responsible for its design and printing. This publication dates from the dawn of the desktop publishing era, and great attention was paid to its formal design. Its content was built on the theories of the Situationist International: the term “art fan” arose from an editorial attitude “that perceives only that which is found to be good and interesting, while consciously disregarding—rather than criticizing—all other things (Linda Bilda). From the very beginning, anonymity and “copyleft” were elements of this practice. “ART FAN” represents a subjective cross-section of 1990s artistic activity by placing unknown and (later on) very well-known artists alongside one another. The individual texts are characterized by an experimental style of writing, as well as by an interviewing style that always describes the artistic field as the site of political action. On this, Bilda notes: “Though at first it was simply out of friendship, Ariane Müller’s idea of starting a fanzine found in me a partner and co-publisher who immediately took up this self-empowerment to join together and quickly go wherever our interest took us—and that was any place where emancipatory changes in art and in social behavior became visible during that period. “ART FAN” met with immediate interest and was taken seriously for being a text-based production that combined theory, relevant information and art scene gossip while hitting the nerve of an era that had just begun taking up discourse and more-or-less collective forms of production as its big theme.” S.E.
25,3 × 21 cm
“ART FAN” is an art fanzine that was produced and published in Vienna between 1991 and 1997 by the artists Ariane Müller and Linda Bilda. Müller was responsible for its design and printing. This publication dates from the dawn of the desktop publishing era, and great attention was paid to its formal design. Its content was built on the theories of the Situationist International: the term “art fan” arose from an editorial attitude “that perceives only that which is found to be good and interesting, while consciously disregarding—rather than criticizing—all other things (Linda Bilda). From the very beginning, anonymity and “copyleft” were elements of this practice. “ART FAN” represents a subjective cross-section of 1990s artistic activity by placing unknown and (later on) very well-known artists alongside one another. The individual texts are characterized by an experimental style of writing, as well as by an interviewing style that always describes the artistic field as the site of political action. On this, Bilda notes: “Though at first it was simply out of friendship, Ariane Müller’s idea of starting a fanzine found in me a partner and co-publisher who immediately took up this self-empowerment to join together and quickly go wherever our interest took us—and that was any place where emancipatory changes in art and in social behavior became visible during that period. “ART FAN” met with immediate interest and was taken seriously for being a text-based production that combined theory, relevant information and art scene gossip while hitting the nerve of an era that had just begun taking up discourse and more-or-less collective forms of production as its big theme.” S.E.