Art Metropole

31 Mar. 2018

Window Project and Book Launch - Flint Magazine Issues 1 + 2

Editors

Benjamin Gaydos and Maia Asshaq

Time

3 PM - 6 PM

Please join Art Metropole and editors Maia Asshaq and Benjamin Gaydos on Saturday, March 31 for the launch of Flint Magazine issues 1+2, and to celebrate Flint’s window installation for AM, featuring work from the magazine’s contributors.

Flint is an unbound multimedia magazine in a box. The magazine was modeled after Aspen Magazine , the highly influential art journal “in a box” from late 60s. Like Aspen, Flint Magazine will examine contemporary art practice and criticism, however Flint Magazine offers a poetic antonym of sorts – where Aspen is a tree, Flint is a rock.

Taking cue from Roger Caillois’ The Writing of Stones, Issues 1 + 2 of Flint will explore the rock as a medium for art, mysticism, place, and history. Rock is a natural archive; it records history as layers of sediment, and as a sculpted form. The oldest existing representations of visual symbolism and material technology are found in the form of carved stone that date back to 250,000 BCE. They preserve time, space, and artifacts in the same way the internet accumulates information – always collecting and storing without editing itself. Rocks compact history, yet still maintain a beautiful and unique form.

Each issue of Flint Magazine aims to collect and disseminate writing, film, audio, and other documents with the themes and design determined by its editors.

Flint also facilitated an opportunity for unique collaborations between designers, craftspeople, artists, and writers. Flint’s contributors span the globe, from Brazil to Zimbabwe. This exhibition features a small portion of the works and artists featured in Issues 1 & 2 of Flint Magazine.

Benjamin Gaydos is a Detroit-based designer, filmmaker, artist, and educator. He is the founding editor and creative director of Flint Magazine. His experiments in design, sound, film and video have been exhibited internationally. Ben has presented his work at Rhode Island School of Design, Case Western, and MIT’s Media Lab, among other institutions. He is co-founder and principle of goodgood, an interdisciplinary design firm with offices in Detroit and Boston, a producer and designer for Sensate Journal at Harvard University, and co-founder and programmer at Mothlight Microcinema in Detroit.

Maia Asshaq is an Iraqi born writer and artist currently based in Los Angeles, CA. She is the editor-in-chief of Flint Magazine. She is the founder of DittoDitto Books and the Detroit Art Book Fair. In 2015 she received the first Gilda Award for emerging writers from the Kresge Foundation. She is a 2016 Salzburg Global Forum Fellow.

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