20 Seconds #9
165 x 235 mm, 204 pages
Berlin, Germany (English-language)
Biannual
First published in 2020
Editor-in-chief: Daniel Melfi
Graphic Design: Daniel Melfi and Matthew Liegghio
‘Magazine for experimental Music and Art’
Berlin-based experimental music and arts mag 20 Seconds sees itself as a ‘response to the mundane programming’ and ‘sponsored-content-dependent, stock-photo-generated’ material that surrounds us, bringing together artists, DJs, poets, photographers and more.
For the ninth issue, the team shift their focus towards ‘The Archive’, identifying archives as partisan and ‘contentious places, worthy of our attention and action.’ Adopting a decentralised and anti-canonical approach, the issue uses a microhistorical framework to shed light on ‘smaller anomalous characters and the lives they lived’, with the goal of affirming their stories and painting a broader picture of archives from around the globe.
Inside, you’ll find conversations with the Polish archivist and photographer Marcela Paniak; Irish filmmaker Dónal Foreman; as well as, Ariel William Orah and Bilawa Ade Respati, the creative minds behind the experimental “concert-lecture” Guang; and Pwani Tapes founders Nassoro Mwinyi and Alina Oswald.
Alongside interviews, you’ll also find an essay on the preservationist poetry of John Giorno, a series of translated poems, plus, film stills from A Fidai Film, Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari’s haunting reclamation of footage pillaged by members of the Israeli army in 1982.