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VOL.II — IMAGE BANK

ISSUE Nº 6 — To consume/To waste

December 2024/January 2025. The ICONOMIST Issue 6 presents itself as a visual and textual essay examining the scars of a society sickened by late capitalism. Inspired by the seminal texts Junkspace by Rem Koolhaas and Infraordinary by Georges Perec, this edition not only observes but dissects neglected spaces, accumulated waste, and the traces of a world collapsing under the weight of its own excesses. On the cover, a clown mask closes the edition with a tragic smile, exposing the grotesque nature of humanity in a world saturated with paradoxes. On the back cover, a wig—symbolizing vanity and theatricality—introduces a universe of simulacra and disguises that will be unveiled throughout the pages. Through a curated selection of images oscillating between the documentary and the interpretative, readers are led through scenarios ranging from the dazzling and hyper-artificial universe of fast food, or “junk food,” to landfills and waste dumps, where the shine of consumption is replaced by neglect. Abandoned commercial spaces and vacant lots emerge as silent symbols of the failure of an infinite progress promise. The pages also portray human vulnerability: houses destroyed by natural disasters, waste pickers scavenging for what remains, and devastated landscapes that denounce systemic indifference to the environment and marginalized populations. Among the selected texts, authors such as Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Jean-Paul Fargier, Stanley Brouwn, Byung-Chul Han, Walter de Maria, Siri Hustvedt and others, help build the conceptual framework of this edition. In the interplay of combinations proposed by the edition, the concept of “still life” is subverted. Here, it is not about representing the silent order of inanimate objects but revealing urban chaos and the desacralization of the everyday. It is a still life that lives—and decays—in territories contaminated by ambition, inequality, and neglect. This edition is a call to see what is invisible or too uncomfortable to be noticed. It is a portrait not only of a world in decline but of a civilization that insists on ignoring the signs of collapse while indulging in excess—even of images.

To consume/To waste, Issue 6. 21x28cm, 56 pages.
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Nº 5. Inaugurating its new volume of publications, THE-ICONOMIST presents an unusual thematic dossier built around the verbs “To watch” and “To speculate”. Inspired by excerpts from Michel Foucault’s book “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The Prison” and William Shakespeare’s poem “All The World’s A Stage”, we explore the complex issues of surveillance in the digital age and the role of security cameras in contemporary society. Instead of creating images generated by artificial intelligence, we decided to delve into the vast banks of digital images available on servers around the world. This method seeks to give new meaning to an often forgotten arsenal of imagery, visually composing this issue with authentic and historically charged material.

Through this volume, we address crucial themes such as privacy and power, violence and social behavior, technology and ethics. In addition, we have enriched our analysis with selected texts by renowned authors such as Octavia Butler, Don DeLillo, Jean Baudrillard, Thomas Elsaesser, Anne Carson, Guy Debord, Marshall McLuhan and Barbara Kruger, among others. This new phase of THE-ICONOMIST is inspired by the curator Scott Watson, who in 1977 noted that “we are all image banks, we all live in an image bank, we carry an image bank, and we have the power to intervene in that image bank”.

58 pages, 21x28cm, saddle-stitch binding, with shipping worldwide. Published by zero-Editions.

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VOL.I — ULTRAPROCESSED

Nº 4 — To ask/To Answer/To refuse. Introducing THE ICONOMIST’s latest thematic dossier. For the edition that closes the first of four editions of the magazine, we embarked on the world of interviews and questionnaires. What is a photograph? What is photography? What is an image? In addition to these questions, we also took inspiration from Proust’s questionnaire and JG Ballard’s short story “Answers to a Questionnaire”, a list made up only of answers to unknown questions. In addition, we also present selected texts by Lucas Samaras and his 1978 Auto-Interview, Marlene Dumas, Thomas Hirschhorn and others.

48 pages, 21x28cm, saddle-stitch binding, with shipping worldwide.

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Nº 3 — To catalogue. Introducing THE ICONOMIST’s latest thematic dossier. This edition takes inspiration from art magazines and catalogues to curate a collection of images that provoke and question our relationship with artwork documentation in the age of artificial intelligence. All the clichés of the art world are represented, the artist’s studio, the the gallery, the white walls, the compositions, the descriptions. We are excited to present a selection of proposals of artworks that are now part of the #theiconomist collection, with complete descriptions and speculations on their materiality. As a complement to this visual content, we have also included selected (and inspiring) texts from authors such as Boris Groys, Hito Steyerl, Georges Didi-Huberman, Man Ray, and more. The film Concrete Lache (2010), which Mark Leckey created about the Milton Keynes Gallery, will be on view in our website in the STREAMING section, which will be updated weekly with new videos and films.

44 pages, 21x28cm, saddle-stitch binding, with shipping worldwide.

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Nº2 — To wear. THE ICONOMIST’s new thematic dossier is out. At first glance, a fashion magazine, or something other than a style magazine, with models and their looks made of improbable mixtures, speculations around accumulation and consumption. How to wear images? How to wear what’s left of an exhausted world? Artificial armor, mountains of plastic and synthetic fabric. It is impossible to dive, it is impossible to find anything. Use what you have, that’s it. After collecting, it’s time to wear. To assemble a body of materials. To turn the material into an extension of the body and to rely on a possibility of protection. Change everything at any moment. It may look like a fashion magazine, but it is a survival manual. The issue also includes selected excerpts by authors such as Judith Butler, Emanuelle Coccia, and Georges Bataille as well as collages of text made from reviews of fashion shows and news. A process of rethinking the verb to wear in a world in the process of depletion, in terms of image and environment.

44 pages, 21x28cm, saddle-stitch binding, with shipping worldwide.

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Nº1 — To collect. We are happy to present the first thematic dossier of THE ICONOMIST. We explore the world of collecting and the people who do it. We look at the phenomenon of collecting from a variety of perspectives. All images in the issue were generated through artificial intelligence, as well as some texts, interviews, and short stories. The issue also includes selected texts by Susan Sontag, Emmanuel Levinas and Sergei Eisenstein. What are the limits of a collection? From garbage collectors to art collectors, from compulsive hoarders to collectors of weapons of mass destruction, the accumulators of power. The informal collectors, the professional collectors.

48 pages, 21x28cm, saddle-stitch binding, with shipping worldwide.

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"The World as a Stage" is an experimental film based on images from public security cameras. Evoking William Shakespeare's famous phrase, the title suggests that everyday life is constantly under observation, turning us all into actors who play our parts in front of an invisible audience. Just as in the poem "All the World's a Stage", where each person plays their part in the great play of life, modern surveillance puts us on a global stage, where our every move is recorded and monitored. This film explores this dynamic, revealing how the constant presence of cameras alters our perception of privacy and behavior. This film is an extension of #issue5 of THE ICONOMIST released in July conceived as a multi-channel digital installation, in which four cameras in different locations are observed simultaneously, with the commentary coming from this control room. "The World as a Stage" also features voiceover fragments of Shakespeare's poem, the text that opens the magazine issue and a collection of headlines from news websites forming a poem about digital everyday life.


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"EXTRAS" "SPIN-OFFS" "SPECIAL PROJECTS"

They say that the face is the mirror of the soul. They say that images generated by artificial intelligence have no soul, they are like mirages. MIRROR:MIRAGES presents forty-three mysterious artificially generated faces accompanied by excerpts from the short story “The Mirror”, written by Guimarães Rosa, one of the greatest authors of Brazilian literature. In this short story, Rosa explores the relationship between the reflected image and the true essence of the individual, between the visible exterior and the hidden interior. Her narrative invites us to reflect on the human soul, identity and self-perception at a time when technology is constantly redefining these concepts. These faces, although without a soul of their own, evoke a range of emotions and reflections, provoking us to look beyond superficiality.

STAYNONSTOP is a photobook consisting of a selection of 130 images generated by artificial intelligence. The images are accompanied by fragments of artists’ texts from different sources. The name of the book comes from a reflection on how addictive these image production processes through artificial intelligence can be, like everything these days. By placing these images in confrontation with the text fragments, we try to force new readings and the creation of new contexts different from the ones used to generate the images.

138 pages, 19×19 cm, softcover and perfect-bound. Shipping worldwide.

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THE-ICONOMIST is an ongoing research project, an artist’s magazine and an observatory founded in 2021.

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@THE.ICONOMIST

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