Jeremy Portal, Offal Industries
The first issue of new magazine Offal is at the printers this week. We spoke to Jeremy Portal, Chief Creative Officer and Head of Wellness at the company behind the launch, about the exciting new addition to their channels.
After a 20-year career in the fast-paced media world, where he rose through the ranks to become Assistant Head of Human Resources for Guildford’s second-best marketing agency, Jeremy grew tired of the rat-race and decided to pursue his true calling. In early 2023, he founded Offal Industries with the aim of bringing underground AI-voiced litwonk mixtapes to the masses, along with potted green tripe (the kids’ favourite) and many other great products, including the first edition of Offal.
The new magazine brings together literary and artistic offcuts to shed new light on the the leftovers, scraps and experiments of the creative process. It is edited by Rod Stanley (previously of Good Trouble) and author Mark Blacklock, and has been designed, using Microsoft Word, by Richard Turley and Julia Schäfer.
What are you doing this morning?
Every Monday is a blessed day, and this is no exception. You find me in my ashram in Godalming, sitting naked except for my hemp loincloth, taking deep breaths from the top of my crown all the way down to my tippy-toes, and dictating business communications to one of my many assistants. At all times, I am working on my spiritual upliftment, and maximising the share price of Offal Industries’ various holding companies.
Describe your work environment
In the corporeal realm around me, I note wind-chimes, dreamcatchers and ethnic artworks sourced on my travels, alongside a specially commissioned series of 24 watercolour portraits of myself, entitled ‘Tantric Entanglements’. If I look out of my ashram window, I can see my neighbour’s dog Knacker urinating into a plant pot.
Which magazine do you first remember?
My younger years were of course profoundly influenced by cyberculture publications such as Mondo 2000 and Boing Boing, science-fantasy comics such as as Metal Hurlant and 2000 AD, and visionary authors including William Gibson, JG Ballard and Philip K Dick, as well as pioneering literary science-fiction journals such as Amazing Stories magazine—which launched in 1926, and published first stories by the likes of John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin.
These days, I mostly read unpublished research on matters related to transhumanism, while sitting in the lotus position and listening to Sting.
Which magazine matters to you the most this morning?
As we speak, I find a copy of Yoga Journal to hand, which coincidentally features an opinion piece by myself about the transcendental possibilities of the side plank.
Describe Offal magazine in three words
Brutalist. Quixotic. Transmogrifying.
Where does the new magazine sit in relation to the rest of Offal Industry's activities?
We at Offal Industries resist all notions of temporal linearity, and conceive of the various formats of Offal as different but related expressions of the same cosmic energy. Offal exists in one earthbound form as a printed publication, and in another more ethereal form as an AI-voiced, episodic ‘audio zine’ of comic skits, experimental literature and underground music, available for free via the unorthodox distribution method of WhatsApp.
The AI voice in particular is a medium and aesthetic that we feel particularly captures the essence of Offal, which is funny, uncanny, disturbing and psychedelic in equal measure. Yet while the print and audio forms share some ‘connective tissue’, each is unique in its way. We hope and anticipate that Offal will express itself in strange new forms, installations, exhibitions and live performances in due course.
How did you source the offcuts published in the magazine?
The process of manifestation may sound simple, but there is much more to it than mere ‘vibes’ and positive thinking. As an advanced practitioner, I was able to construct an elaborate ‘mind palace’ and fill it with unusual, glittering cultural jewels that now shine with a beautiful inner light from the pages of this upcoming publication. We also emailed everyone we could think of.
Please highlight one story from the magazine that sums up what you're trying to do with the magazine
The thing about Offal is that while each of the assembled literary and artistic ‘offcuts and experiments’ is wonderful and of great value in itself, it is only when they are carefully prepared, placed next to each other, and designed using only tools available in the Microsoft Word program, that they truly become a thing of collective beauty and joy—a kind of ‘cultural terrine’, if you will. With all that said, ‘Recipe for Leviathan’, which was written by one of our editors, combines many of the qualities that we feel make Offal what it is—experimentation with form, satirical undercurrent and a dash of silliness. And for this reason, it leads the book. Well, that and the fact that the editor in question made a terrible whining noise and stamped his foot when it came to flatplanning.
What one piece of advice do you have for someone producing their own magazine?
The Offal Industries neural implant MagChip™ promises a 400% increase in brain processing power, and is optimised for the increased demands of today’s multi-platform publishing environment. Our beta testing has been mostly successful, with anonymous recipients secretly producing and publishing many of today’s most respected and admired independent magazines and journals. We are of course unable to reveal which.
What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
According to my calculations, the technological singularity should be upon us by Thursday afternoon. If I am wrong, though, and we haven’t yet been annihilated by an unstoppable exponential explosion of machine superintelligence, then on Friday morning I will be delighted to lead a group meditation session for owners and dogs called ‘Seeing Inside Your Pet’.
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