This is particularly restless issue. Elephant travels to Amsterdam to find out how artists and designers - from young painter Esiri Erheriene-Essi [ 'I wanted the viewer to have such an overload of information that it became a chainsaw to the brain' ] to veteran designers Mevis & Van Deursen [ 'Underground no longer exists in this world of social media' ] - are refusing to give in to their new government's negative attitude towards the arts and continuing to produce great work regardless of government subsidies. It checks out the political climate in Cairo in the company of Egyptian video artist Jasmina Metwaly and Dutch graphic artist Bart de Baets. It crisscrosses New York at night in the company of photographer David S. Allee, and follows ever restless artists such as Hans Op de Beeck and John Baldessari as they move around their studios. It tries to summarize things, tries to make them seem simple, by analysing the work of masters of simplicity such as Noma Bar, James Joyce and Magnus Voll Mathiassen [ MVM ]. Finally, after all this frantic activity, it sits down and contemplates all the other things it could have done, and all the books it could have written about the things it could have done... Of course, it does that in the company of Harland Miller.

Part 1: Open Files
Yu Jinyoung, Jason Mclean, Zilla Leutenegger, Davide LaRocca, Beatriz Milhazes, Kevin Cosgrove, Masaharu Sato, Sophie Jodoin, Ronit Baranga, Raphaël Dallaporta

Part 2: Studio Visits
Stephanie Beck: Movement Through Space Eric White: Windows Onto Windows Onto Frith Kerr [ Studio Frith ]: Inbuilt Perfections Carolin Jörg: Drawing the Franco-German line Matt Bollinger: Kansas City Revisited Jasmina Metwaly: The Urgency of the Real Rune Guneriussen: Making Pictures

Part 3: Research
SIMPLE ? EASY - Call It Minimalism, by Ana Ibarra, featuring interviews with and work by: Noma Bar, James Joyce, James Graham, Jez Burrows, Magnus Voll Mathiassen [ MVM ], Jason Munn, Brandon Schaefer, Albert Exergian

Part 4: Meetings
Hans Op de Beeck: Enjoy the Silence, by Margherita Dessanay Harland Miller: The Future of Nostalgia, by Marc Valli David S. Allee: Mining the Light, by Katya Tylevich John Baldessari: One Guy's Laughing, by Katya Tylevich

Part 5: Destinations: Amsterdam by Marc Valli
Featuring interview with and work by: Mevis & Van Deursen: Tea in the Red Light District Jacco Olivier: Motion Painting Nik Christensen: Defining Moments Kustaa Saksi: Street Theatre Maurice van Tellingen: The Imitation of Life Kim Boske: Stories Marloes Krijnen: What's Next Esiri Erheriene-Essi: Fin de Partie Bart de Baets: Time For Something Else

Part 6: Thoughts [ not final ]
The Elephant in the Room, by Limited Language [ Colin Davies and Monika Parrinder ]

Issue 08. Autumn 2011

Country of origin: England
English text
4 issues per year
28 x 22 cm
208 pages