Milan, Italy

How do magazines map cities and cultures?

Geography, despite the maps, is not necessarily the red strips of surface streets or the fat black lines of highways like worms on the map. Geography, quite literally, is a measurement of the earth, in all its levels, both literal, and perceptual, experiential, poetical. What's most fascinating about urban geography is often that subtle, subterranean flavor its streets embody in their lived up display. These days, a cityscape is more metaphysical than ever. The subcultures it breeds can spread and network through the internet, so “the city” has acquired a global cultural identity and originated a postmodern lingo mixing high and low culture like Warholian scrambled egg. The explosion of guerrilla marketing and the blooming of experimental magazines – both web-based or physically published on paper or other materials – is the most commercial consequence of this process.

Signjam has been cashing in on street cultural aspects for a while now, in one of the most creatively commercial cities in Europe, Milan. This time the two-day workshop will focus on diffusion. The first day's topic is guerrilla advertising, with the international Cunning agency involving the attendants in a guerrilla campaign brainstorming. On the second day, lecool magazine editor Andrew Losowsky and shift! magazine creator Anja Lutz will discuss tendencies and new grounds in the experimental mag world, from nightlife mapping to street art and networking.