BigMag - Other magazines in the Czech Republic after 1989

The BigMag exhibition at the DOX center for Contemporary Art presents
a selection of Czech "alternative" magazines after  1989.

BigMag is a showcase of magazines which are otherwise not easy to find as they have never been displayed at eye level on newsstands. Each of them is testimonial to passion. From zines to the inaugural issuesof the now tired long distance runners, they operate at the margins of the publishing mainstream and beyond, always in that territory where the motivation is not profit but self-expression. Although they are part of popular culture, they do cast a vote for being different and often stand, at least partly, in opposition, even if only on aesthetics terms. In the times of coolhunters the terms "alternative", "independent" and "noncommercial" become so problematic that the curators´selection from the user-generated database at www.bigmag.cz is more characterized by an attempt to capture the rare thrill of crossing conventions of genre.

In the Czech milieu a survey of "other" magazines and their involvement in dialogue over time and ideology necessarily brings to light attempts to come to terms with the new definitions brought by the adoption of late capitalism. Magazine is always a snapshot of ideals, policies and trends, and as opposed to the graphically prim newspapers or deceptive photographs, it conjures up the time and place of its origin. Before you have read a single line you will have learned as much about the past twenty-two years in the Czech Republic from BigMag as if you had been browsing through the country's family album.

Curators: Aleš Najbrt, Bohumil Vašák, Michal Nanoru