21st Dec 07

What:
WON

Where:
Selected spots around the city or go to www.wonmagazine.com.au

When:
Issue #1 out now

How much:
Free

There are so many things you can do with A3 newsprint. For examples see: Beat, that News Limited rag, ANP Quarterly and ACNE Paper. Let’s say, though, when the four horsemen of the apocalypse finally arrive and divide us into two groups according to what we printed on affordable stock, the makers of WON don’t intend to be rubbing shoulders with the Herald Sun classifieds team.

WON (rhymes with ‘is Don is good’, not ‘is that my gun?’) is made in Melbourne. Volume 1, issue 1 draws on a creative team and a bunch of obsessions assembled through NowNow.

It contains interviews with Ray Potes (of San Francisco’s Hamburger Eyes), Mimmo Cozzolino (Australian artist, designer, photographer and cultural historian), Aaron Warren (of Black Dice), Robert Cook (if you don’t know, look him up) and Kim Jones. There is a feature on the Atlantis Marine Park in WA; a discussion between Nathan Gray and Dylan Martorell; fiction by Jon Bauer, Danielle Freakley and Amanda Maxwell. Work by various local and international photographers previously featured on NowNow Gallery makes a satisfying transition to print.

Questions arising and some attempts to answer them:
Q: Is this an international magazine?
A: Yes
Q: But it’s so… Australian
A: Why shouldn’t people in other countries be as obsessed with our cultural output as everyone else is by America’s?
Q: Should the centrefold pull-out zine by Christopher Day and Stefan Marx be turning me on?
A: That is up to you

By Penny Modra