Intermedia
Los Angeles and San Francisco, 1974–1979 (1–7). Editor: Harley Lond.
Intermedia, “an Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts, Resources & Communications, by and for the Communicator/Artist,” was started by Harley Lond as a kind of yellow pages for artists, writers, and musicians in the Los Angeles area and beyond. Lond wrote in the first issue:
The vacuum in which artists have struggled for years is now being filled by a host of political and economic organizations striving to create a stronger representationand voice for artists everywhere. There is almost a grassroots movement amongst artist to take control over their destinies in the econo/political facets of capitalist society. … One of the goals of Intermedia is to link the new art movement with these other alternative movements—to create a unified alternative force of artists, writers, workers, and radicals. … We want Intermedia to be by and for artists, to be a forum for artists’ concerns and needs, to be a mode of interdisciplinary communications between the artist and the alternative learning people, radicals, communicators, and especially a mode of communication between artists of different media.
Inspired by Dick Higgins’s Something Else Press, Lond borrowed the magazine’s title from Higgins’s “Statement on Intermedia” (he got the artist’s permission first). Lond, who started the magazine with his savings and donations from family and friends, did all of the layout and typesetting himself, financing the magazine largely through small grants. After moving to San Francisco in 1977, he worked at the counter of an auto supply store, saving money, and then periodically taking time off to publish the magazine. The first three issues were 8½-by-11-inch magazines that included artists’ contributions and writings plus a listing of art services, organizations, small presses, and free artists’ classifieds. The magazine expanded as Lond began to realize the magazine’s potential as an artistic medium: issue 4 was a “Special Literary Issue,” printed as a tabloid newspaper (48 newsprint pages) of experimental art and literature; issue 5 was a tabloid compendium of 17-by-22-inch posters by artists; and issue 6 was a box containing artist-designed postcards, broadsides, folders, and posters. Among its contributors were Martha Rosler, Clemente Padin, Richard Kostelanetz, Opal Nations, Dick Higgins, Anna Banana, and Lew Thomas.
From: Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art
Gwen Allen
The MIT Press; 1 edition (March 4, 2011)
From:
Experiments in Print: A Survey of Los Angeles Artists’ Magazines from 1955 to 1986 (Feb. 6, 2012, East of Borneo, published by the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts)
… However, the attempt to forge a regional identity became more self-conscious and pronounced in the artists’ magazines of the 1970s and ‘80s. Los Angeles was an especially fertile region for artists’ magazines at this time, giving rise to publications, including the L.A. Artists’ Publication, LAICA Journal, Intermedia, Straight Turkey, The Dumb Ox, Choke, Criss Cross Double Cross, Chrysalis, The Performance Art Journal, and Spectacle. These magazines played a vital role in the experimental practices that defined Los Angeles art during this period, nurturing a local artistic community by fostering dialogue both within and beyond it.
Intermedia exemplifies how artists’ magazines participated in the ideological and practical goals of alternative space, by fostering solidarity and information sharing among artists and other kinds of cultural workers, and supporting artists’ moral and legal rights. Billed as “an Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts, Resources & Communications, by and for the Communicator/Artist,” the magazine was published and edited by Harley Lond, who conceived of it as a kind of Yellow Pages for artists, writers, and musicians in the Los Angeles area and beyond. Intermedia included a listing of art services, organizations, small presses, and free artists’ classifieds. As suggested by its title, the magazine also supported conceptual and intermedia practices, which it showcased in different formats, ranging from an 8½-by-11-inch magazine to a tabloid newspaper; a compendium of posters; and a box containing unbound artist-designed postcards, broadsides, folders, and posters. Among its contributors were Martha Rosler, Clemente Padin, Richard Kostelanetz, Opal Nations, Dick Higgins, Anna Banana, and Lew Thomas.
And also see What We Need Are These Early Experimental Art Magazines From the West at the Poetry Foundation’s website.