Phaidon’s new book Do It Yourself brings together fun and easy projects from some of the most exciting artists and designers working today. In this excerpt, Maurizio Cattelan and Paola Manfrin show us how to create our very own publication comprised of recontextualized, aggregated magazine pages designed to fuel our brains.
PERMANENT FOOD
An invented publication by Maurizio Cattelan and Paola Manfrin
Time: 45 min
Cost: US $20/£13/€17
Becoming a publisher and having your own glossy magazine can be easily done at home, according to the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. For his project, just grab a stack of magazines and start the skimming process. To get a better result, invite a bunch of friends to do the same. Rip out your favorite pages and carry out your own act of appropriation. Reassemble the pages and bind them in a second-generation magazine that says whatever you want it to say. “You can sell it, browse it, touch it, leave it open on the table. Once you get tired of it, feel free to throw it away. Others may use your waste as the beginning of a third-generation magazine.”
WHAT YOU NEED
Magazines. Gauze strip. Four clothespins. Cutter. Scissors. Glue. Two rulers. Photocopier/printer. Cardstock.
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Collect some magazines with the same page sizes.
2. Select and rip out 192 pages.
3. Align the pages on the long side and glue the spine with paper glue.
4. Put the gauze strip on the glued part.
5. Press the spine with two rulers and four clothes pins and allow to dry.
6. Print (scale to size) and cut out the two Permanent Food logos. Download the template here.
7. Choose an image for the cover and glue both logos on it, one across the top and one vertically along the left side.
8. Photocopy the cover with the pasted logos onto a piece of cardstock.
9. Glue the spine covered with the gauze strip to the inner side of the card cover with spine logo on it.
10. Fold and allow to dry.
Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian artist, born in Padua. He started his career making wooden furniture in the 1980s, and is now well known for his satirical sculptures. His work has been exhibited at many leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate in London. The appropriated magazine project Permanent Food has been conceived and realized since 1995 by Maurizio Cattelan, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and Paola Manfrin. To learn more about the history of the magazine, visit permanentfood.tumblr.com
