You’ve been going nine years now. Can you tell me a little about the early days of 032c?

My friend and I were interested in the excitement about Berlin outside Germany at that moment. We wanted to serve that blaze of enthusiasm whilst also deconstruct it and say ‘actually, it’s not that great.

JOERG KOCH, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, EDITOR AND CO-FOUNDER OF 032C

EDITED TRANSCRIPT FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES PALLISTER ON 14/03/09, APPROX 1400
COLOPHON FESTIVAL 2009
ON A BENCH OVERLOOKING THE VALLEE DE LA PETRUSE, LUXEMBOURG CITY
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You’ve been going nine years now. Can you tell me a little about the early days of 032c?

My friend and I were interested in the excitement about Berlin outside Germany at that moment. We wanted to serve that blaze of enthusiasm whilst also deconstruct it and say ‘actually, it’s not that great.’ The funny thing is that the magazine was meant to be a Trojan horse for something else like a website. The idea was to produce a fanzine,  the press to feature it and then at some point reveal a url that is the actual big project.

So there was always a bigger project…

Yes my talk is about the rise of 032c being a coming of age story. The magazine was meant to be a means to do other things – like do exhibitions or get commercial jobs. The first issues started out of a complete anti-journalism process. We started out with 2000 DM – about a 1000 euro now – and a DIY attitude.

What the early issues like?

Looking back we defined an attitude. Practically, it was anti-authorship, anti-journalism, totally opaque in who wrote it and with an obscure name that referred to 1960s modernism (032c is a pantone colour reference). The first issue was meant to look like Dieter Rams had designed a punk fanzine.

Because there wasn’t a focus on making the magazine super-commercial or super-productive economically speaking it did actually become really successful- that’s the paradox. We did everything wrong in a sense but in a way it pays off because it gives us a sense of depth and of history. If you work first on the editorial credibility and then on the commercial credibility your position is much stronger.

Can you explain the different stages of 032c? You mentioned that you only took it seriously as a magazine in the last few years.

We always cared about it but it always had something subdued about it. When we did the relaunch with Mike (Meire) we had the feeling that everything was in place. That was the period when we said ok let’s stop being in denial about publishing a magazine. We do it and we do it properly and we do it in a commercial arena.

So the Trojan horse has gone. How has the magazine changed with that acceptance?

Now we do serious journalism! We have really well written features, the writer (Pierre Alexandre de Looz) spoke to 10-12 people for the Steven Meisel feature (’Who is Steven Meisel?’, an interview with the acclaimed fashion photographer). It’s like the New Yorker- with pornography! Or Vanity Fayre on crack. We even have a fact checker! Imagine a small magazine employing a fact checker?! It’s like playing at being journalists, a hilarious situation really.

Back to the early days in Berlin, what was providing the income that meant you didn’t have to be commercially serious from the beginning?

We had a consultancy. Actually it was more playing with the idea of a consultancy. It wasn’t a proper consultancy in the  sense that Self Service operate where they really have big clients. It was basically an umbrella to do other things – writing for other magazines, consulting etc…

And that provided revenue?

A little bit but you have to remember that a project like 032C could happen back then in Berlin because the living expenses were so low. It couldn’t have happened somewhere like London or Paris.

Do you think that environment that enabled its production no longer exists?

Yes, it’s changed a lot. The magazine was incredibly influenced by the urban condition of Berlin. Like the vast emptiness of the city, the anything-is-possible atmosphere of the 1990s before all the construction sites were finished. With all those vast empty spaces there was a very concrete utopia of what could be possible. The magazine, both in structure and content, was incredibly influenced by that. Graphic designers were running music clubs, architects were running art galleries- that kind of thing. So it made perfect sense to use these crossovers because that’s how the city was.

How important is it for it to stay in Berlin?

I think now it could easily be located from a bourgeois lakeside office in Zurich. Or in London or New York. In the crisis it’s good to be in Berlin because we are used to crisis. The city has always been bankrupt so it’s fine.

In terms of content, though, is Berlin still important?

In terms of content we are completely independent. I think in many ways it may make things easier if we were now based outside of Berlin. If we moved to London we would have access to different ad accounts we can’t get in Berlin.

We do still have the Berlin Review section. The magazine is such a global product – we are distributed in 26 countries – it’s good to have that grounding to where it has been produced.

If you think of all the magazines on display here, you often wonder where they come from. A Swedish magazine could have been produced in England, a French one in the US etc. So that was something that interested us – on the one hand it’s a very ambitious global product but its also apparent where its come from. But if – hypothetically speaking – we were to move to London we would not keep the Berlin Review.

A phrase Jeremy Leslie mentioned in his lecture was ‘the new seriousness’. Your recent Post America Issue –had Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rem Koolhaas, John Gray as contributors, all intellectual heavyweights. Do you see yourself part of that?

Hmm, I can see what you’re getting at. What I would say is that people realise that the readers are taken seriously, that the magazine realises that the readers are more intelligent than we are. So the magazine is definitely serious but I also believe that we definitely have a bit more humour in the magazine.

This links in with our readership. For us, the main market is now in New York, and that’s because there are a lot of students. What you have in America is the separation between the high-brow magazines – New Yorker etc - and the popular culture ones, there isn’t really a crossover. And now suddenly there is 032c which bring everything together. It’s actually a lifestyle proposal. Lifestyle is a dirty word that you have to wash your mouth out with soap after you’ve used it but for me 032C is a complete aspirational world in itself. We always try and cover the best elements in the field

What do you mean by best elements? In terms of cutting-edge subjects or top writers?

Both really, for example if we do something on architecture then an architect working in a NYC firm should read it and find it as authoritative as a layman who doesn’t know the subject. Because for that architect to trust 032cs coverage of art – which he may not be a specialist in – then the architecture material has to make sense.

Do you read many magazines now?

Yes but I am pulling back on certain ones I used to read. I get Vanity Fayre, the New Yorker. But actually I probably read more newspapers. For 032C we were very influenced by newspapers. German newspapers have very good coverage of arts and culture and on those pages you will often find a mixture of radically different things. That clash of content impacted on how we put 032c together. And also the quality- the standard in the German newspapers is very high.

Who are your readers?

The readership breakdown internationally is actually quite strange. It’s a mixture of people who at the very top of their profession – Conde Naste CEOs, stuff like that- or editors of other magazines. The other section is students and young people. But the whole middle ground is not there.

For us this is quite nice because we have readers who are at the cutting edge but commercially speaking it’s not so good because the people in the middle decide to put the money to you.

One of the constant theme in discussions this weekend has been how magazines use the web. What’s your online strategy?

Well. Our online strategy is that we’ve needed a proper website for years. And now –finally- it’s materialised. It will have everything – just the text, not the visuals – online. It will be a gigantic content machine.

When will that go live?

Ha. That’s the thing with online. You always think it’s somehow easier or more affordable than print but it’s actually not. It should be online in two months. Hopefully.

Do you worry putting everything online will detract from the magazine?

No. Most of the magazines have now sold out so people don’t have access to them. Also we had a registration block on the website a few years ago and what we realised was that there wasn’t a crossover between the people who read and care about the printed magazine and those who read it on line. It’s a completely different crowd.

Also, knowing this meant it didn’t make sense for us to invest resources in a web presence. Rather, people would read about the magazine in magazines and newspapers and want to buy a copy.

And, I should ask you, what has been your favourite moment of Colophon so far?

The Kasino Bar. I should probably mention a conference or something rather than a vodka bar shouldn’t I? But for me it’s really important for magazines to be able to create a social space. It was a dense space and you went in and could immediately work out the identity of the magazine – that’s the beauty of it.

What do you think marks 032c from all the other mags in the hall?

Phew! That’s a tough question. You know – most of the things we do is a refusal of the existing situation. So all we can do is what we believe in.

Can you give specific examples?

I mean obviously there are things that make us different – I’ll talk about them in my talk tomorrow- for example the Stephen Meisel  piece. (a piece on the fashion photgrapher). I can’t think of any other publications where that story could have happened. Stephen Moseil has only given two interviews in his whole career. So that was a scoop in itself. And that was only possible because we are like pitbulls, we don’t take no for an answer.

So we featured another magazine – Vogue Italia  – which hardly happens in other commercial magazines. And then we spent a fortune on a fold out  that had to be handmade, that level of generosity or ‘we don’t give a fuck’ attitude…

It is amazing seeing all those covers in one place…

Exactly. You could never get that done in a corporate structure, or a niche publication because it simply costs too much.

But the books balance? You can you afford it because of the advertising revenue?

Yes. Or we have a long-term strategy that emphasises quality. When me and my partner – who deals with the money stuff- heard the cost of that pull-out there was no discussion- we had to do it because it’s such a fantastic historical piece.

It’s worthwhile to invest in quality because you get return in the long run. We just got PRADA to advertise in the magazine. They are very difficult to get to advertise - especially in the downturn when they are cutting back what they do spend. But after pursuing them for three years we got them.

It’s not like with other magazines where, after say 5-6 issues, there are difficulties, and they say it is not possible. We are stubborn in our belief that it will work out in the end. Not many people have that kind of stoical naivety to stick with it and just believe. You just have to hang on in there and say ‘Fuck off! We will continue.’

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