Posted on: December 7, 2007 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Afunctional #1 / June / Half-Sized / 20 Pages / [email protected] / http://afunctional.tripod.com / 2 East Franklin Ave. #11 , Minneapolis MN, 5504 /

This zine is a real-life representation of all those “independent” publication that magazines like Artnews fondly recall, although no one has ever heard of them. I hadn’t heard of Afunctional until AMC 2003, where Gerald Prokop was tabling. This issue is very carefully done, with a different cardstock for the cover, and interesting layout with windows fonts. Inside is a veritable treasure trove of art in both written and drawn form, starting off with Sanaphay Rattanavong’s “Ex Manis”, and moving into quite a varied collection of different styles. Since this is the group’s first issue, it is just absolutely necessary to have something where the group lets their opinions and desire be known, and we see this in the centerfold “Afunctionul Manfiesto: A Call to Distract”, also done by Gerald. This manifesto is nothing out of the ordinary, pretty much being a call to all the individuals in Minneapolis (more specifically their little clique of artists) to stay together and work on what makes them happy. The last piece to really get to me was Sarah Wash’s “Red”, a detail of the devouring of eir’s body by the evil ladybugs that began to attack everywhere and everyone during late summer and early autumn of this year (actually, the middle of the US must have got them later than Ohio and Indiana – this was published in June). An interesting collection of artist – I shall have to see where they go from there.

Rating: 7.5/10

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