Helena Julian, zweikommasieben
For the past 15 years, Swiss music magazine zweikommasieben has covered the fringes of contemporary music, its interest in experimental sounds mirrored by its ever-changing physical form and design.
The new 31st issue marks this anniversary, and adopts the appearance and scale of a cigarette packet—‘Directly referencing a passé object as a vehicle with ambiguous meanings’—to reflect the theme ‘Where there is smoke, there is fire.’
Co-editor-in-chief Helena Julian is an independent writer and curator based in Amsterdam. With a background in art history and critical theory, she focuses on interdisciplinary and performative artistic practices. As well as her work on zweikommasieben she writes for other magazines including Metropolis M and Frieze. Here, she discusses the magazine’s development as she shares her week ahead.
What are you doing this Monday morning?
Monday mornings are meant for emails. If I reach two full hours, I usually feel content. It's combined with either black coffee from home, or coffee from a shop around my corner. It's a new place. Three people work there, and we're at the stage where I know who works which days and which music they play during their shifts. In return, they know my regular coffee order. But we don't know each other's names yet…
I’m still big on the NTS Breakfast Show with Flo because I trust her selection fully, and it allows me to think about one less thing in my Monday morning logistics. I'm also returning to a preview link of Phantom Wizard’s second album ‘One of Many’, out in November, that was kindly sent to the zweikommasieben team. I have it open in a tab at all times. Burning incense works too, something earthy to ground the new week.
Describe your work environment.
I'd rather have only things that I am working with or on at the moment on my desk. All other books and notes get placed in stacks. I look out onto the cityscape of Amsterdam, with sky and trees, which are better indicators of time passing than a clock. I use all sorts of accoutrements. Different teas and coffees when they're needed, different lights, soft or harsh, music on iPods or speakers, scents on my wrists or throughout the air, extra layers of wool on my feet or around my body. I like having options.
Which magazine do you first remember?
That must be the legendary magazine called Joepie, a Belgian magazine dedicated to youth culture. It ceased publication in 2015, I recently read. It makes me hope that teenagers these days have something physical to flip through too, something that feels like their own, something they don't have to share with anyone other than their peers. Joepie, which is a joyous exclamation in the Dutch language, covered all things pop culture, mostly music, but also film, TV series, a bit of gossip, but also all sorts of questions and opinions about bodies, relationships and feelings. It had a zodiac and style section too. I remember that it would sometimes come with little extras, such as stick-on tattoos, a fruity tasting lip balm, stickers of pop singers. I think I even had a wonky pair of sunglasses from Joepie.
Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine?
Any visit to a specialised magazine and art book store anywhere in the world will show that there are so, so many beautiful, thoughtfully conceived and labour-intensive magazines circulating, no matter the interest or niche. Personally, I appreciate magazines with a distinct tone of voice and clear authorship, and a publication like Real Review comes to mind here. I will also always love The New Yorker and think they are doing a great job of keeping a legacy magazine relevant and fit for the contemporary world.
I’m very inspired by publications that have found their particular niche and turned it into a strength, such as Apartamento, Butt, The Wire, MacGuffin, Interview and Fantastic Man. Closer to home in the Netherlands, I have much admiration for the art magazine Metropolis M, which has been around since 1979, a legacy in its own right.
What other piece of media would you recommend?
zweikommasieben is published by Präsens Edition, a publishing platform involved in many other projects, from vinyl records to books and zines. This places the magazine within a broader cultural and artistic practice, alongside publications and projects by people we work closely with.
One example is the recent monograph ‘Entre l’espace’ by photographer Flavio Karrer, who is the photo editor of zweikommasieben, but who has now also published a substantial body of work under his own name. His works are often portrait-based, making connections between individuals, environments and the connotations that they or we as viewers might have with them.
A great book to have on hand is the recent poetry collection ‘Paces the Cage’ by S*an D. Henry-Smith, a visual and performance artist currently at Amsterdam’s Rijksakademie. I've seen them perform passages from it multiple times now, but I also tend to keep the book close by while working. The best kind of distraction, and a companion throughout the day. We've featured the exquisite music duo Space Afrika before, and they are currently also on tour, presenting incredibly intricate, large-scale live performances in the UK, Spain and Germany later this year. Highly recommended.
I’ve been impressed by the recent release on hala namer’s label lowercase discourse, ‘Happy Birthday’ by Theo Alexander & Qow. My personal album of the month has been Soulstice's ‘Illusion’, a 2001 trip-hop record that I was too young for when it came out, but it's reaching me now.
Describe zweikommasieben in three words
Independent, curious, thorough.
Congratulations on 15 years of publishing! When you look back at that time, how do you view the magazine?
The magazine has been a facilitator of meaningful connections of all kinds. Connections within the team, with artists, festivals, venues, radio hosts, fellow magazine makers, and beyond. Connections to the wider world, really.
During our 15th anniversary tour across Europe in September, we came to realise that zweikommasieben is a prism through which to perceive the world around us, in all its many facets. It’s also been a facilitator of learning, teaching us a lot about publishing and about how the world, culture and industry work, and how we wish they would work.
More generally, it’s been meaningful for us to experience first hand that keeping an independent publication active and attentive to the world for fifteen years is not evident. But it has given us much inspiration and tenacity in return. Reflecting on fifteen years also means confronting the questions of why we work, for whom, and why we want to continue.
How does the ever-changing physical format and layout design reflect the music you cover?
The original idea behind the magazine’s content was to capture the present moment through sound. Kaj Lehmann, who designed the first couple of issues on his own before starting to involve other designers as well, translated this idea of contemporaneity into a refusal of any fixed visual identity: there is no logo, no house font, no set design elements.
The only rule is that there are no rules. Which makes sense, because if the present moment always sounds different, how could it have a fixed look? On an operational level, the process is never quite the same. Often, the content comes first. Sometimes it’s a conceptual idea, sometimes a visual one. Sometimes it all just falls into place, magically.
The magazine name translates as ‘two point seven.’ What does that refer to?
2.7 seconds is the duration it takes for a human brain to process the present moment.
With issue 30, you announced the end of a regular publishing schedule. What’s the latest on that?
For a long time, zweikommasieben has published one issue in spring and one in autumn, but there was never a structural reason for this schedule. It gave rhythm to our workflow, but became more limiting than useful. With a flexible schedule, we can publish when the time feels right, respond to current events or artists, and fit the work into our schedules. It’s liberating and has helped us conceptualise the issues. It also reflects how publishing has changed over the past fifteen years.
As much as being an independent publication is a challenge, not having to adhere to a fixed schedule is also a great freedom. One of our main ventures recently has been redesigning our website, where we publish continuously, including more time-sensitive pieces, interviews and events. It gives us a degree of agility that larger publications don’t always have. We’re lucky to move with broader developments and stay attentive to what works best for us and the scene, now and in the future.
Highlight one story from the new issue that sums up your ambitions for the project
The conversation between Klaudia Schifferle and Manic Pixxies, who are also both featured on the cover of the most recent issue of zweikommasieben, titled ‘Where There Is Smoke There Is Fire’, comes to mind. It’s a piece by Ann-Kathrin Eickhoff, with photographs by Jiajia Zhang. Klaudia Schifferle was part of Kleenex, the first all-female punk band from Switzerland, active from the late 1970s until the early 1980s. She is also a great visual artist, still active today.
Manic Pixxies are a contemporary all-female punk band from Zurich, and we thought it would be a good idea to have one generation speak to the other. To see what the similarities and differences are, what has changed and what hasn't. Since our current issue highlights artists with ties to Switzerland, this conversation feels like a good representation of what the issue is about. And, at least that's our guess, not too many people outside Switzerland know either Kleenex or Manic Pixxies. So, for an international readership, this piece offers the possibility of new musical discoveries, which has always been at the heart of zweikommasieben.
What has publishing taught you that may be helpful to anybody else planning to make their own magazine?
Try to understand which interests genuinely drive you to publish. If publishing is understood as a platform for others, their practices, expressions and interests, our role as publishers, editors or writers is to connect artists with readers and audiences, and vice versa.
If your interest is less genuine, or geared towards solely your own gain, perhaps don’t bother, or find other ways of producing. In our contemporary context, it’s very tempting to be influenced by a culture driven by trends and the demand for constant newness. But how does your interest remain beyond that newness and initial lure? Remember that everyone you feature or interview started somewhere, somehow years ago, and will hopefully have a career for many more years to come. Try to move intentionally, accompanying artists over time, rather than only being interested in their immediate next move.
What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
I am very much looking forward to seeing performance collective and band Cold in Church perform their new album ‘Convent’ live at Amsterdam’s Museum Night this weekend. Celebrating my friends' child's fourth birthday. A call with graphic designer Yeliz Secerli, who will show the team the first design concept for an upcoming edition of zweikommasieben. Scheming zweikommasieben’s 2027. Many twos and sevens. A good place to start.
Editors-in-chief Helena Julian and Mathis Neuhaus
Design Dorothee Dähler, Kaj Lehmann, Raphael Schoen, Simon Rüegg, Laurenz Brunner and Dominik Bissem
@zweikommasieben
@helena.e.julian