Public Illumination Magazine
Encyclopedia
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
s’ periodical published since 1979, notable for its tiny size (11 x 7 cm). Each issue features a given topic. The general flavor of the contents ranges from parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
to the absurd
Surreal humour
Surreal humour is a form of humour based on violations of causal reasoning with events and behaviours that are logically incongruent. Constructions of surreal humour involve bizarre juxtapositions, non-sequiturs, irrational situations, and/or expressions of nonsense.The humour arises from a...
, with brevity a constant.
Public Illumination Magazine mocks the traditions of mainstream magazines. The pocket-size of the magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
, its use of pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s, and its irreverent tone tweak the expectations produced by the large format glossy magazines. Long-time writers include: Sophie D. Lux Fitty Sense, Rank Cologne, mr Basho and the King of France. The use of such pseudonyms is intended to mock contemporary mainstream magazines' obsession with celebrity.
Founded in underground
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
art
Underground art
Underground art, as with underground music and underground film, is a term that seeks to describe art forms that are aloof to the mainstream art world, are illegal, taboo, unconventional, rebellious or revolutionary...
and literary circles
Social circle
Social circles are groups of socially interconnected people. A Social circle is distinguished from a social pyramid in that there are two perspectives that can be used to describe a social circle: the perspective of an individual who is the locus of a particular group of socially interconnected...
in downtown New York by Zagreus Bowery; originally “non-weekly”, later “non-monthly”, then “non-biannual”, it is now “non-occasional” and published in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
.
Writers and artists who have contributed include: Kathy Acker, John Ashbery, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ken Brown, Steve Dalachinsky, Keith Haring, Michael Madore, David Sandlin, Hal Sirowitz, Sparrow, David Wojnarowicz, and Thomas Zummer.
Complete series of the magazine are held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Pompidou Center in Paris.