Modern Matter #19
Earlier this year Modern Matter’s Instagram account was hacked, causing founder Olu Odukoya to question who owns our data. The new issue of his magazine, subtitled ‘Rage Against The Machine’, is a printed response to that digital breakdown.
Olu presented the issue at last week’s magCulture Live, describing it as ‘a rebuke to the idea that everything about us should be easily accessible—the magazine, partly shredded as if to obscure important information, is a challenge to the reader, asking them to reassemble its various parts in order to see the full picture’
Olu’s daughter reads his description of the new issue of Modern Matter; the cover text was handwritten by his son.
Our latest Page 23 comes from the issue, showing the result of that shredding on a fashion story shot by Olu that runs through the issue. The pages have horizontal cuts across them, so parts of the page become interchangeable, like a game of exquisite corpse.
In the gif above, the static, lower half of the page is Page 23, with the top parts of the pages being turned. There’s one point where you can see the whole ‘real’ page 23 but otherwise the collage effect emphasises the time-based nature of the visual magazine. Most pages in this story are split in half, but watch closely and you’ll see some in smaller pieces.
Later in the issue, text pages are remixed in the same way, a far more disconcerting and challanging experience that reminds me of William Burroughs’ cut-up experiments with texts.
The issue is an extraordinary piece of print, manufactured in Germany after much research by Olu, who proves once again how his desire to stretch the magazine format pays off.