Interview with Manya Scheps, Editor-in-Chief of “New Asshole” magazine.
When I got to Philadelphia for the Philly Zine Fest, I sat down at The Bean Café on South Street to rest my feet and read some local news. While reading through the Philadelphia Weekly, I noticed an interview with a woman named Manya Scheps, the picture of her holding a book with the headline that read “Zine Queen.” I came to learn Manya was editor in chief of a magazine focusing on DIY art criticism, particularly in Philadelphia. I have to admit, my first reaction was anger: Who the fuck was this girl right out of art school criticizing local artists? Somehow, my opinion went from “She’s got some balls,” to “Damn, she’s got balls!” I knew I had to interview her and find out what makes her tick.
Please state your full name and age, please.
Manya Sofia Spieczny Scheps, 22 and 3/4ths years old
What are you currently working on besides New Asshole magazine?
I am still working on the continuation of my senior thesis, The Poached Pack (see below for a description). I also make my own visual art that is free of multi-layered self-conscious criticism (can you believe it?) I studied printmaking primarily, but worked a lot in drawing and painting (and sculpture and photo and video...) I've been working on a series of drawings and paintings about language as aesthetics. Since I'm in Georgia right now, I am trying to figure out some stuff that I can do here. Augusta is really really weird in so many ways. I want to figure out how to document during my time here or interact with the city in a way that's slightly more intelligent than making a Facebook album about it. Maybe I'll try to start a 2-month long art gallery here.
For an outsider, can you explain what PIFAS and the Poached Pack collective are?
Well, PIFAS is the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study, which is a very fancy name for 30-some people working in a huge warehouse in a bombed out part of North Philly. Everyone built their own studios, and there's a woodshop and a darkroom and screenprinting area, an art gallery, a computer lab, two basements for shows....it's a little village of DIY love. It's not just a space for visual artists--there are people in PIFAS who practice music, who build bikes, who write essays, etc. As the title suggests, it's intended as a space of study. Faculty members are encouraged to do research, which can take the form of organizing public classes and lectures, or starting a department, or creating a collaborative project with other members. The Poached Pack is a fictitious seven-member art collective that I invented for my senior thesis. Over the course of the past academic year, I have created and maintained a fictitious seven-member Philadelphia art collective called The Poached Pack. The Poached Pack is modeled after a number of art collectives that grew out of the hip DIY warehouse scene that emerged on the East Coast in the late 90s. The Pack features young artists working quickly in a unified aesthetic that draws heavily from pop culture iconography, vibrant uses of color, and kitsch. I made art by the Pack: lots of ephemera (posters for fake events, t-shirts, buttons, zines), an installation, and a (false) collaboration with Yoko Ono. I also made a lot of work about the Pack: a video podcast with a curator (actor) from MOCA Detroit, a fancy art book about them including essays by famous art historians like Jeffrey Dietch (all fabricated), a fake transcript from a talk at the Whitney with other art collectives, a curated show at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design....
You grew up in California. Having never been to the West Coast, I’m curious to hear about the differences that you see between the two coasts?
All the stereotypes are true. Southern California is way more relaxed, way more superficial, total surf culture. It's very spread out. I grew up in San Diego, which I think technically is the seventh largest city in America or something like that. In fact, the actual city of San Diego is teeny tiny, and what is defined as 'San Diego' is actually just a string of suburbs and urban areas that are loosely connected through interstates and big wide streets. Philadelphia is way more uptight, way more centralized, way more ugly and fat, and way more eventful. San Diego is culturally dead. There, I said it. Nothing worthwhile has happened there since Rocket from the Crypt broke up. There is also a griminess to the East Coast which simply doesn't exist in southern California. Of course, San Diego and LA have barrios and bloods and crips and things like that, but the projects still have palm trees and it's 75 degrees all year round. Philadelphia is busted, and has been so for 200+ years. There's just no way that the west coast can compete with that.
Can you explain what the purpose of New Asshole is and why you feel the need for another print magazine to be in circulation?
I'll paraphrase the mission statement of the magazine: the purpose is to create critical dialogue surrounding the production of DIY art. Articles, which range from pure abstract theory to gallery reviews to interviews with artists, attempt to contextualize, theorize, and document contemporary basement aesthetics and practices. The second part of your question is something I ask myself constantly, perhaps because I studied art and the central struggle with any particular piece is why does another painting (or drawing or sculpture or whatever) need to exist in the world? I think that technically it doesn't need to exist physically (or even digitally). But it provides a forum for contemporary DIY art, which I see as very much lacking right now in any medium.
You said you wanted to make this a blog first, and then switched to a print version to make it as an art object. With the lack of funding that you mentioned later, what do you feel now about the choice of moving to print?
Despite the fact that printing is much more expensive, I still feel like it is the best option for a publication like New Asshole. Though by no means do I claim that the magazine should be taken as any sort of authority, I do want it to be taken somewhat seriously, or at least have the intention taken seriously. Blogs can be taken seriously and respected and cited--artblog, for example--but I felt that the easiest way to make a big statement was to make a tangible one. Additionally, as an artist who studied graphic design and printmaking, I felt a lot more satisfied to spend a lot of time with the arrangement of words and images on a page. The layout very much impacts the way that someone reads an article, and long semi-academic essays aren't really meant to be read on the internet. We don't have time to read blog posts that are 2000 words long. We do have time to read those articles when they sit on our shelves, waiting to be read again and again whenever. So really it was an aesthetic choice and one that I felt better suited the content, though it certainly wasn't the most economical choice.
You mentioned trying to get every university library to subscribe to it. How have those efforts been so far?
Ah, I am still working on my powerpoint pitch conversation. I am making a little press kit for New Asshole to try to get subscribers on some big league levels.
I understand the next issue of New Asshole will have an essay by you on Rick Ross and authenticity. Are you going to talk about the Freeway Rick Ross versus the rapper Rick Ross and the fact that the rapper was in fact, at one point a correctional officer?
Yes! I love that people get mad about that, that they get personally offended at the notion that someone is 'just playing a role' and that he isn't real or honest or something like that. When did we start demanding honesty out of hip hop artists, or, to that point, any media celebrity ever? Hip hop as a genre is built around a totally spectacular fictionalization of thugs and gangsters. Does anyone actually believe that the Ying Yang Twins act like that in real life? Does anyone actually believe that they knock the walls off a broad till she scawls? The Ying Yang Twins probably cry in the shower every morning. Rick Ross maybe slipped up with his persona or, maybe (as is my opinion) he's turned everything on its head, ripped the spectacle open and has in fact made himself a satirization of the entire culture. I especially love the story of his fake Louis Vuitton sunglasses that he wore on the cover of XXL, which he claimed weren't fake but he actually paid a jeweler one million dollars to make them 'unique'.
When speaking about DIY art in Philadelphia, you said in an interview with the Philadelphia Weekly “Most everything is mediocre and unmemorable.” Do you think that applies to DIY spaces outside of Philadelphia at the present time as well?
To qualify that statement, I think that the actual impetus of all DIY art making (setting up an alternative gallery, making art in a studio in a warehouse, whatever) is a very valid, extraordinary, and remarkable endeavor. However, the detritus of such impulses--the artwork that gets produced and shown--is often unexceptional. It's as if the conceptual and laborious efforts goes into the environment in which the artifacts and artists live, as opposed to the actual product. Of course this is a sweeping generalization. All art-making is very much about the environment and the setting. But artists who make fruit bowl paintings in Old City or Chelsea hotshots are ultimately held responsible for their products--the still life middle-aged men are very much trying to sell to their old lady patrons, and the hotshots are trying to get a good Roberta Smith review. In the DIY art world, there is a lack of both funding and public awareness or criticism. So the art that gets produced is more folk art than anything else--it's the stuff, the accessory, to the lifestyle. I think things like New Asshole and artblog and artist talks at places like Vox Populi are all efforts to hold artists more accountable for the things they produce.
With you on hiatus in Georgia at the moment, how much has a different location changed the production of New Asshole?
I have people 'on the ground' in Philadelphia who are helping me with distribution of issue 2. Navigating the production of issue 3 is going to be a challenge, but I am excited about it. There will probably be lots of phone conferences and emails and video chats. With so many fall openings and events, I am hoping that I will be able to find enough writers to cover all the new exciting shows that are happening there. I am going to be visiting Philadelphia during the fall a few times hopefully, so I can also coordinate things while I'm there.
In your honest opinion, do you think the magazine is gaining momentum in terms of public interest?
I'm not really sure. I think that Roberta's Philly Weekly interview helped a bit as well as her publication of the full-length interview on artblog. There's an upcoming review of issue 2 on artnet which should hopefully pick up some more interest on a broader scale. I think that in Philadelphia there is a plateau that happens in the DIY scene. Because the art world there is relatively small and close-knit, when something happens people find out about it, and it is hard to break the glass ceiling into other larger circles of awareness. I think because right now it has a pretty narrow scope (the Philadelphia DIY scene) it isn't really going to become a household name anytime soon. Ultimately, I would like for it to become a more general or universal academic journal about DIY art as a whole with specific reviews of artists and shows in different alternative spaces across the country. Until then, there is the (hopeful) slow and steady trickle of new readers.
What have been some reactions in the Philly DIY art community?
People have generally been very receptive to the concept of the magazine. I don't think anyone in Philadelphia really disagrees with the notion that DIY art needs more criticism--be it by our fellow artists, or writers like Libby and Roberta, or curators, or whomever. What has been really great is that people are taking issue with some of the articles and talking to me about their concerns and their own criticisms. That's awesome. New Asshole isn't supposed to be some sort of authority, and any sort of critical article is ultimately just some opinion by someone who probably works as a barista or a housecleaner. Not to dismiss the writers but to point out that everything has to be taken with a tablespoon of salt. So it's really great that there has been some sort of small dialogue that has been sparked by some of the articles in there.
Has this changed the way you interact with other artists there?
It's kind of my secret hope that people will quake in fear when I walk into a gallery opening, or that when an artist is hanging a show he thinks "What will New Asshole think of this?" Just kidding. Kind of. I think that might take about 30 more years. Really it hasn't changed anything yet. I am hoping more artists get involved as writers, because I am always desperately in need of contributors or volunteers.
