20 (PARA) Seconds, Issue 7 – The Medium

20 Seconds is a print-only magazine for experimental music and art. It’s built by and for designers, writers and photographers who feel they’re not being challenged enough by what they’re reading and seeing.

But more importantly, 20 Seconds is about engaging with what’s relevant to us. As a community, we’re intrinsically wired to discuss, debate and share. Inspired by other publications proving that print is not dead and neither are honesty or independence, 20 Seconds Magazine is about documenting those expressions.

It’s also a dialogue, founded on fluidity. And the conversation is something we feel can last as long as the ink on the pages.

In response to the mundane programming, sponsored-content-dependent, stock-photo-generated presentations to which we all suffer, we propose a solution. Published twice annually, 20 Seconds will be a collection of original photography, longform journalism, poetry, interviews and more.

20 Seconds is not interested in stories for stories’ sake. Or in the same headshot flooding your devices in involuntarily advertised form. It is interested in bold art, fearless music and the real people behind it.

As a publication, we’re independent of major advertising corporations and click-bait titles, but not of our readers. Without the financial support of our community, we cannot produce the type of quality, independent journalism and design that we want to contribute to our cultural landscape.

Adventurous music and art take risk; they can be wonderfully inclusive. That’s why we’re collaborating with our favourite photographers, poets, musicians, DJs and artists of all dispositions to articulate our perspective.

Together, we can succeed in exploring work that continues to intrigue and resist.

As a collection it will last a while, individually a lifetime. But definitely more than 20 Seconds.

In this issue:

Issue 7 presents a collection of work by politically motivated artists consciously conjuring new narratives and new worlds through their own medium-specific renegotiations. These are not narratives capable of healing trauma, but they are efforts to contextualize it in the face of attempts to ignore the terror that continues to dominate the present.