BigMag
In 2007, Najbrt, the curator and writer Michal Nanoru and the designer Bohumil Vašák founded a database of “alternative” magazines in the Czech Republic after 1989. Unlike the common databases, the website www.bigmag.cz enabled users to upload pictures, the most important thing for presentation of a magazine. An eponymous exhibition went on display at the Brno Biennial 2010, and in 2011 at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague, the selection of nearly 60 magazines presented in detail was complemented by a section dedicated to zines. “Magazines are always snapshots of ideals, policies and trends, and as opposed to the graphically prim newspapers or deceptive photographs, they conjure up the time and place of their origin. Before you have read a single line, you will have learned as much about the past 22 years in the Czech Republic from BigMag, as if you had been browsing through the country’s family album. The database has no limitation and perpetuates magazines in the searchable digital world, exhibitions then emphasize carefully selected issues in a fetishistic way: because a magazine needs to be touched, turned, and sometimes even smelled,” the authors wrote. Meanwhile they ceased to update the database and passed the collection on to The Archive of Fine Art.
2007–2013 Michal Nanoru, Bohumil Vašák, Aleš Najbrt
Production estimated up to 14 days, the possibility of printing sizes S to XL
price 400 CZK