Runway x un Projects: A Detour Through and Within

The sixth Runway Journal x All Conference Conversation comes from un Projects, based on the unceded sovereign land and waters of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation

Naarm-based artist and writer Jeremy Eaton takes us on a historical detour through un Magazine’s editorials, charting the evolution of un Projects and the role they’ve played in Australia’s arts publishing landscape.

Going back to the very first un Magazine (Issue 1.1), published in 2004, I was struck at once by both the startling differences and strong similarities that resonate between that inaugural publication and where un is now. For example, in Issue 1.1’s editorial, written by un’s founder Lily Hibberd, she remarks that un Magazine will not ‘suffer the imposition of thematic editions; because art is not like fashion and we don’t need to forecast trends’ (un Magazine is now heavily thematic). Hibberd highlights that un is to give voice and visibility to the ‘critical undercurrent in the artist-run scene’ (a facet of un that still remains at the forefront of its mission). Hibberd also states that un Magazine is intended to be an ‘archive of our time’. Despite shifting form and approach, whether by intention or incident, un invariably remains an ‘archive of our time’, one that engages with voices at the forefront of art and broader cultural discourse, and that prompts the question: what does this archive tell us?

In order to take stock of where un is at right now and to speculate on where it is going, I thought it would be helpful to take a detour through some of the past editorials of the magazine, to see what has been captured by this temporal archive, and what it tells us about the changing landscape of art and arts publishing in Australia. 

Across the early issues of un there is a sense of artists’ and the art world’s (at least locally) belief and desire in art’s capacity to provoke change, whether that be through a global feedback network or resisting ‘commodification’ by maintaining stark divisions between art proper and ‘meaningless’ pop music, and the ‘vacuities’ of fashion. There is a forthright articulation of the need to hold onto critical autonomy and to platform divergent critical opinions that are more than clandestine, ‘merely descriptive writings’ about contemporary practice. And there is an evident belief that art has the capacity to contribute to and change the way we think about the world. These early issues were all published during a period when Australia was on a path toward intense globalisation, when the internet had begun to infiltrate our lives in significant ways, practice-led research degrees were in their infancy, and art was more maligned and niche than it appears today. Going back to these early issues there is a refreshing belief (whether this belief is naïve or not, I don’t know) that art and its discourse, as a practice and discipline, has the capacity to critique and stimulate change, especially when operating outside of institutionally sanctioned spaces.

un had a slight hiatus for several years before the publication of its next issue, and after this three year period we can see the magazine’s focus begin to shift, as Rosemary Forde highlights in her editorial for Issue 2.1 (2008), that the magazine offers ‘an experiment of sorts’ with ‘familiar and some fresh voices, making variously critical, personal, academic, political, and lyrical responses to contemporary art.’ un Magazine in its new incarnation was not purely about critical engagements with artistic practices—it had expanded its remit to include multiple other forms of writing. In the next un, Issue 2.2, the tone of Forde’s editorial seems to shift remarkably. Whilst the early issues have a manifesto-forthright edge, there appears in 2.2 an emphasis on the good that un is doing through mentoring, platforming conversation and a softening of the critical in lieu of writers who provide ‘commentary and opinion on current trends and developments in contemporary practice’.

We begin to see a pattern emerge, one that highlights the communal focus of the magazine, which is perhaps best articulated in the editorial by Din Heagney from Issue 4.1 (2010), that states ‘mentoring is back in vogue as an inexpensive and effective technique for genuine shared learning’. The altruism of un had shifted from its belief in the discretionary role of art’s un-instrumental and nascently critical potential to one whereby an arts organisation needs to ‘provide opportunities’, and provide practical support outside of its core literary engagement to justify its position. This is perhaps aligned with funding and the use of arts organisations as branches of council or government to do ad-hoc community work that, in comparison to their own cumbersome bureaucratic processes, is an incredibly cheap option. 

A little after this time we begin to see the privileging of ‘art’ erode with editorials that draw in thematics that look at the relationship between art and writing (Issue 5.1), art and architecture (Issue 5.2), and art and design (Issue 6.1). This is intended to contend with the fallacy of arts autonomy and entwine it with various fields. In this vein, if we jump back to Din Heagney’s editorial, during this period un also aimed to address an apparent criticism that the magazine relies too heavily on philosophy and theoretical criticism as the issue ‘makes an attempt to reduce the level of theoretical reliance’. Here I would say the communal drive for un manifested as a desire to dilute arts specialisation as a way to challenge the language developed around the discipline, for centuries,  from a particularly Western and highly educated perspective.

Jumping forward a number of years to Issue 8.1 from 2014 by Robert Cook, Benjamin Forster and Suzette Wearne, we can see an evolution in un as the publication itself becomes a conceptual object, one that reflects the burgeoning of technology and data as an omnipresent manifestation that structures our life. This particular issue, from my point of view, is rendered practically illegible as it decidedly negates any traditional structure of reading, authorship and content in lieu of a bespoke, experimental, highly editorialised conceptual object. Whilst this is perhaps one of the most extreme iterations of the heavy hand of the editor, it is a trend we see emerge in un with more complicated and niche thematics (embodied subjectivity, material co-working, The Throng) that as a total object creates an expanded essay that reflects the editor’s intent rather than individual author’s contributions. This shift is most markedly reflected by the preclusion of reviews and artist profiles in lieu of experimental writing and socio-critical elaborations that sometimes touch on art but frequently don’t. I can only speculatively account for this and wonder if it is indicative of contemporary art fatigue? Or the rise in administrative professionalism at the artist-run level? Perhaps the privileging of the curator as the communicable arbiter with an assumed public? Whatever the reason, I find its apotheosis in Bobuq Sayed and Hugh Childer’s startlingly engaging yet conceptually challenging issues (13.1 and 13.2), whereby art is present as one aspect of the broader thematic demands of ‘security threats, alternative histories, terrorist subjectivities, paranoid infidels, treason, experimental detonations and contemporary art practice’. And as the editors acknowledge in 13.2, ‘[W]ith a similar valence to our previous issue, not all the works here consider art production and its reception.’ 

This sidelining of art talks to who has been editor—people who have a writing background and focus rather than an artistic practice, which positions them at a once remove from the artist-run milieu. Furthermore, I think it reflects a scepticism towards the rapid growth in university art degrees, the independent critical role of artist-run spaces, and by extension a perception that art is indivisible from capitalism and the state.  A sort of despair enters art (and perhaps the global consciousness more broadly), from rhetoric surrounding class and racial inequality, political failings of democracy, the economic unsustainability of an outdated structural model of art and the forebodings of an imminent and already occurring ecological crisis. It is difficult with all these latent catastrophic occurrences, which course through our everyday with a sense of urgency, to conceptualise art’s capacity to effectively respond and challenge the narratives of our time, especially when the discipline is so easily co-opted by the institutional and commercial mechanisms that underpin its survival. 

Perhaps one of the most integral issues of recent years, Neika Lehman and Maddee Clark’s Issue 12.1 (2018). In the editorial they discuss The Unbearable Hotness of Decolonisation and take to task the decolonial ‘fad’ of white institutions, people and organisations (I would say this critique at the time extended to un itself). This issue prefaced Sayed and Childer’s issues by bringing a bold, self-reflexive institutional critique into the magazine. These issues of unchallenge the myopic and systemic racial bias underpinning Australian culture and reflect a conversation that had been mounting since 2013 with the criticism that surrounded Perks and Mini’s inclusion in Melbourne Now at NGV. The hot and intense public criticism hosted by Gertrude Contemporary challenged the fashion label’s cultural mash-up-fashion-hybrids, signalling one of the first major local public furores over cultural appropriation. It created an abrupt turn in the then prevailing discourses of post-colonialism, mash-up culture, DIY and an optimistically tinted globalism. Lehman and Clark’s issue emerged from this shifting cultural landscape and whilst their issue redresses the failings of un, it also pre-empts and reflects a broader cultural redress that was taking place in the art world at the time. ACCA’s exhibition Sovereignty (2016/2017) spectacularly tackled the lack of First Nations representation by the previous director Juliana Engberg. In 2020, Runway Journal’s Issue 42: Archive highlighted the problematic material published by the magazine in the past, with chairperson Nanette Orly stating that the ‘artist-run community is not exempt from the same slow cultural movement we criticise in major arts institutions’. Clark and Lehman’s perspective, approach and publication has had a lasting effect on un Projects as the organisation looks to ensure it retains a diversity of perspectives and remains conscious of the potential for racial and cultural bias to creep into any arts organisation.

Moving through and from all these iterations of un Magazine, un Projects has had to reconcile the various difficulties of ascertaining funding for its operations when it does not want to fall into the common organisational trap of undertaking more community oriented labour outside of its core mission. We have been discussing how un has strayed from art, yet still operates under an aegis of an art-based publishing body that wants to continue to support, platform and distribute under-represented voices in the field of art. It is an important time in the organisation’s history to take stock, as the un board is conscious of the dearth of good quality arts publishing in Australia, especially print publishing, and looks to maintain this aspect of its operations. The print magazine brings with it something online publishing does not—a different attention economy, a different approach to archiving, and the capacity to present artistic works in ways not afforded by online spaces. That is not intended to undermine the importance of online publishing, as online publishing also allows for a vast array of things that cannot be achieved in print, and so a hybrid form of the two will further be developed by the organisation. 

In recent years un’s heavy editorial focus appears to reflect an Australian art world that is trying to catch up to the ethical, social and political realities of the technocratic contemporary. A confusion and recalibration with this rapidly shifting landscape that was first captured in the highly conceptual issue by Robert Cook, Benjamin Forster and Suzette Wearne, followed by complex issues unpacking the social and structural issues that had been ignored for too long in the arts. After this period whereby un and its editors and contributors have worked to unpack the complicated series of contexts that art falls in, we want to recognise that the urgency of these discussions are happening through and within art and not just around it. And thus in coming years, by developing un’s online publishing and continuing our guest-edited print magazine, we look to focus on writing and discourse that emerges from artistic practice, a practice that is now already plural, interdisciplinary, politically and socially charged, and conscious of the conflicts that abound through the mechanisms that distribute its content to the public.