Issue #2 Release/Benefit Show!

Release party/Benefit Show for And/Or Issue #2, "Income And/Or Outcome: The Money Issue".

Featuring...

Dalia & Friends
Chris Hunnicutt (Solo set!)
Brady Perl

and...

An open freestyle jam with Carnage on beatbox! Calling all musicians, come jam out with us! We got Chris Hunnicutt from More Than Lights holding it down on the bass. We got some DRS boys comin' through on the mic. Emcees! Come by and drop some freestyles. Let's get crazy with it!


Come support And/Or! Help keep us alive!

Flyer by Jeni Kozicky (www.abstracthabitat.com)

And/Or Stop Animations!

I made a series of short stop animations using a white board and paper scraps (that i also made into cute little flipbooks!) to promote And/Or. I'd like to make an animation for every issue to help promote it on the web, and possibly even have different guest artists assist in each of the animations. If interested, send me an email. Hopefully, like everything else, this will just continue to grow...


Animations by Jeni Kozicky and Chris McCarthy.
Music by Dalia (www.myspace.com/acousticdalia)

Call for submissions! Issue #3!

The deadline for the next issue of And/Or is June 25th. Send your responses to andormagazine@gmail.com. If you're writing a story, article or poem, please keep it under 1,000 words. If you are creating a drawing, comic, illustration or design, you may submit up to three pages. Please send black and white PDFs or TIFFs at 300 dpi. Also, please include your name as you would like it to be published as well as a link to a portfolio site (if applicable).

And the concept for Issue #3 is...

Identity. The concept of culture is constantly shifting, trends and styles are constantly being recycled, and the way we define ourselves grows with us as we stumble our way through life. What does identity mean to you? How do you identify yourself?

MCAD 2009 Commencement Exhibition

May 6-17 • MCAD Gallery



And/Or as seen in the 2009 Commencement Exhibition at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. The frame cluster on the right is inspired by Barry McGee and the Mission School movement that took place in San Francisco in the early nineties. The images in the frames are made up of submissions from the first two issues of And/Or, and the juxtaposition of the frames interlocking together represents the unification of each unique individual piece coming together to create something new. Many of the views of the Mission School movement are reflected in And/Or. Learn more about the Mission School movement here. It's pretty awesome.

Issue #2: Income And/Or Outcome: The Money Issue

Introduction
Words by Jeni Kozicky

Money. To some, it's everything. To others, it's meaningless. But whether we like it or not, it governs the way we live. We sell ourselves for minimum wage, doing work we often despise, and all for what? For a piece of paper which our society has deemed valuable? And as we make the transition from stone to paper to pixels our currency is slowly becoming less and less tangible every day. In it's wake lies a trail of plastic cards, digits and data.

The house. The car. The desire to consume. What reason is there for us to gain satisfaction in such things? If we could learn to find happiness in simplicity we would never again feel the need to pacify ourselves with material lust. The society which we live in drives us to work away our lives on the nine to five grind, while they spoon feed us unnecessary things that they've convinced us we need.

I can't even imagine the painful monotony. Going to the same building every day, to the same cubicle, with the same flickering neon lights, and the same computer that slowly sucks away our souls. Now maybe I'm being a bit drastic. Some might find comfort in that monotony. It's easy to fall into routine. But me? If I could, I'd like to wake up everyday and find myself someplace new.

Our society places many expectations on us. Go to college. Get a good job. Get married. Buy a house. Have children. Raise a family. The American dream right? Well in attempts to achieve this dream so many find themselves slipping into a sea of debt, and then spending nearly the rest of the rest of their lives working to pay it off.

My solution is to live humbly and to live happily. To me happiness is not measured by financial success, but rather personal contentment with ones own life. We all have the capability to create our own reality and that individuality is what makes us all so unique and beautiful. If you surround yourself with love then money should be of no concern.

This second issue of And/Or is devoted to the subject of money, and the pages to follow contain responses to this concept by artists and writers from the Twin Cities community. Let their voices be heard.

Issue #1: The Digital Era Issue

Introduction
Words by Jeni Kozicky

There is no denying that digital technology has made a significant impact on the way we live today. Look around you, what do you see? Laptop? iPod? Cell phone? Technology has not only affected the way we create art and music, but it has also affected the way we communicate with one another.

I like to call this the evolution of convenience. It's easier to send a text to your friend than actually going to their house and talking to them, and it's easier to send out facebook invitations to an event than inviting everyone individually. Face to face interactions are slowly being replaced by more convenient means of interaction. It's bringing us closer together but at the same time it's pushing us further apart.

Obviously digital technology has it's benefits as well. It's allowed us to become more independent and self-sustatining. Digital recording has made it easier and more affordable for the average musician to record their own music. And with tools like facebook, communicating with friends and family around the world has never been easier.

But this online identity we develop for ourselves seems to be consuming our lives more and more every day. How many hours a day do you spend staring at a screen? It seems like all too often we are more concerned with taking pictures of our experiences and sharing them online than just stopping and allowing ourselves to enjoy the moments as they pass. We are losing touch with the real human moments that make our lives worth living.

My question is, how do we keep a healthy balance between the digital and the tangible? How much is too much? And how will we know when we've gone too far?