Buffalo Zine, Issue 12

Buffalo Zine is a timeless and placeless expression of art, aesthetics, youth and self expression. The design and format changes with each issue, allowing the form to be as free as the content. Buffalo Zine is as homemade as good bread – created with joy, love and devotion, like a personal diary or an orchard.

In this issue:

In 1993, Buffalo Zine’s Arts Editor-at-Large Hans Ulrich Obrist, sat down with artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lazier at Café Select in Paris, where they began discussing an imaginary exhibition. Titled ‘Do It’, the exhibition would be built through sets of instructions given by contemporary artists, and freely available for anyone to interpret.

A few years later, after this new exhibition model had travelled the globe and the list of contributors had expanded, it became a book, titled ‘Do It’: a public how-to guide for creating art that was part manual, part creative cookbook, and part do-it-yourself kit.

Under the restrictions and limitations imposed by the circumstances of the past months, the spirit of the ‘Do It’ project has never felt more relevant. So for this issue of Buffalo, Hans Ulrich asked six artists to give us an instructions each that we have followed in the making of the magazine:

1. Avoid the straight line (Caroline Polachek)
2. Try the same idea in different ways (Shayne Oliver aka Leech)
3. Use only one typeface: Univers Black (Matthew M. Williams)
4. Do it through the lens of your best friend (FKA Twigs)
5. And as if nobody was going to buy the magazine (Miranda July)
6. Tell the truth. And a little lie. (Philippe Parreno)