Random #4 - Magazine lists

Working proofs for Art South Africa, March 2010

I've long been fascinated by magazines. They are the stupid man's literature. Synoptic. Easily transportable. Essentially throwaway. Sometimes anthologised by writers who don't have the time, guts or good sense to write an original book.

1. Roots: Car and Scope, on my dad's side of the bed, Fair Lady on the other end

2. Afrikaans second language: Huis Genoot

3. Grandmother Ramona's influence: Harpers & Queen

4. Standard seven, 1983, New Romantics: Smash Hits and No.1

5. Standard eight onwards: New Musical Express - the 1984 Fleet Street strikes in the UK were strangely real in Pretoria

6. Wits, 1987: at a Wits Student seminar at some posh house in Saxonwold, a Weekly Mail journalist sent to teach us young greenhorns a thing or two about writing said we should read New Musical Express. My first ever piece of journalism was about Gary Rathbone from The Spectres

7. 1989: The Face, yes, but also Blitz. The gold Warhol cover is still gorgeous

8. i-D, Arena, Raygun, Bikini, Interview, Details... The Idler, which showcased poetry by Mickey Rourke

9. Discovering The Baffler, in 1996 or so, was a revelation. Thomas Frank, one its editors, went on to write The Conquest of Cool - it presaged Naomi Klein's No Logo by four years. Frank now writes for the likes of Harpers and is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

10. Kyoto Journal, Kansai Time Out... Relax, Burst, Tokion... Dune

11. Colors magazine, 2001. It seems liek such a long time ago being asked to fly to Los Angeles by Adam and Olly. Leisure World. What a trip. The best moment: sitting in the hot tub with two "tub" salesmen - the best along the west coats, they said. Later in Treviso, where the magazine is pieced together, I realised that a baroque, adjectivally opaque writing will get you nowhere. A steep learning curve. "Who is Tibor Kalman?"

12. Lab, Exit, Playground, Soma... early freelance gigs. Most of these magazine titles are now defunct

13. SL, being sued, hanging out with Andy Davis

14. Lewis Lapham's editorials in Harpers. A few years later author Richard Rodriguez tried to burst my admiring bubble by telling me Lapham was a boring grump. Manhattan literary wars. Boring.

15. NEST... a case study in what a magazine ought to be: eccentric, individual, unexpected. R.I.P.

16. Vanity Fair. I have about six issues. AA Gill's piece on Kate Moss was an exercise in restraint. Martin Amis would have been so much more carnivorous. A society magazine for flunkies.

17. Cabinet, Artforum, frieze... NOT ArtReview, Modern Painters, Art Monthly

18. Rouleur. A recent discovery. A British magazine which proves that a niche idea - cycling - need not be treated in the same old way. Literate, insightful, made for fans. Perfect.

19. Eye, Domus, Blueprint, Adbusters, Foam, Damn, Dazed & Confused, BBC Focus, ID... Elle Decor, Visi, House & Leisure, GQ... I guess I am a magazine hack

20. I started buying frieze magazine in 1994. I tried reading it. The features were obscure, insular commentaries on a sealed world. I kept buying it, mostly for the pieces by writers like Jon Savage and Simon Reynolds. Also the pictures. In 2007, I got my first commission. I read the magazine nowadays. I wonder if anyone found my feature on Amar Kanwar obscure and insular. Like most magazine writing, the words never speak back at you. They travel into a great silence and fall apart.

21. Art South Africa...