Established in Amsterdam, Miasma is an irregular - in time as well as in format - publishing project. Seeking to provide a platform for artists, academics, and everyone in between, Miasma will highlight current projects and practices, next to connecting these and other theoretical approaches to contemporary social issues.
The Imaginary
The artwork is supposed to be essentially ideal. If the artwork is not total imaginative experience itself the only thing it could still be is an imaginary object bringing about total imaginary experience.[1]
[The] work of art as an imaginary object[:] It may be “completely created when it has been created as a thing whose only place is in the artist’s mind.”[2]
The mass media first convinced us that the imaginary was real, and now they are convincing us that the real is imaginary; and the more reality the TV screen shows us, the more cinematic our everyday world becomes. Until, as certain philosophers have insisted, we will think that we are alone in the world, and that everything else is the film that God or some evil spirit is projecting before our eyes.[3]
open call
open call
We invite you to send us your interpretations of the Imaginary, and contribute with your essays, proposals, fiction, poetry, visual work, and interviews that approach the Imaginary in relation to art (history and theory), philosophy, sociology, critical theory, social issues, culture, and literature. There is a limit of maximum 2000 words. Submissions can be send to info@miasma.nl in .doc, docx., or .pdf. The deadline is January 15.
Wiebke Deimling, “Imaginary Works of Art and Real Emotions,” Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics 2 (2010): pp. 78-87, 82.
Ibid, 79-80.
Umberto Eco, How to Travel with a Salmon: And Other Essays (London: Vintage Digital, 2013).
the complaint project
The Complaint Project is an initiative by MIASMA Magazine, Elena Oehrlich, and Marta Pagliuca Pelacani. With this project we want to give the space for everyone to voice their concerns, annoyances, and critique in the form of complaints. All complaints will be distributed in Amsterdam in public spaces so that people can take a complaint and read it while they are waiting for the traffic light to turn green or during their commute to work or school, or on the way to the supermarket. Get in touch with us should you have any complaints, remarks, or suggestions. You can find more information on the project on this page, our Instagram, and through our manifesto.
hans lankes
houses 7 & 11
Building a house means confidence, means belief in the future. A house is protection, security. A house is a statement. Nowadays you take an old house and renovate it, remodel it to suit your needs. It's not necessary to build a new house, because there are enough old ones. There is no need to seal more ground. The ground should remain open.
My houses are not real houses. My houses are ideas of houses. I am an artist. I am free. I'm not an architect.
I don't have to stick to statics, material, client requests or anything else.
My houses are sculptures. Different perspectives are present simultaneously and in parallel. Like visions.
Visions of a world of its own. I don't build houses. I cut houses. With a scalpel.