condition: good, minor edge wear, binding intact.

A social documentary. An appropriation of distinctions between elements. Grey area. An essay in images that repeat themselves. An apparent way to dilute the importance of one over another. Black and white photographs, hand written texts, and xeroxed pages.

This issue of Condiment has reminded us of the simple truth that we are living with food, not living for food. In this context, the aim shifts from accomplishment to a need for further exploration. Ideas and approaches to food have never seemed so evolved and exaggerated. Yet, as the focus on the meal continues to increase, we risk forgetting about all the hours of living that exist in between. Rather than only being an object of desire, food needs also to be a subject of discussion—approached not as a statement about politics, provenance or proficiency, but as an open-ended question mark. In some form or another, we hope that each page of this issue raises questions —not just about what food is, but about what it can be. After all, each meal is both an outcome and a new beginning.

Produced in collaboration with BLESS. Images from their collection BLESS N° 42, Plädoyer der Jetztzeit appear on each page of the publication.

“A year ago, I visited Aichi prefecture in the end of summer. It was to reflect on the work of Nobuya Hitsuda, as well as to see the exhibition “In the Little Playground: Hitsuda Nobuya and his surrounding students” that reflects on the time, in his 40 years of teaching experience, he spent with his students, such as Yoshitomo Nara, Hiroshi Sugito, Kyoko Murase, Mika Kato and many more.

Although having visited on an assignment, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Even for people who are actively recognized, there are still moments, numerous times in your life, where one needs to spend those blue hours alone. The process, to be alone, to suffer with unsettled emotion, is necessary to move forward.

Around the same time, I was asked by chance to write an essay, and decided to write on raising children. Raising children is also about continuous time that cannot be controlled. In the end of that summer, those were the two things that were on my mind, so I decided to put together an issue for Here and There, focusing on the blue hour that can make our lives colorful, as well as the color blue itself.

I looked up at the blue sky. Blue is a color that represents the beauty of nature, but at the same time, it exists in many things manmade. Blue can be found in clothing you wear against your skin, somewhere near you, and far away. The aim is to seek for a blue in personal emotions and in the growing process of people and to find it scattered in the world. This, hoping that it will be an attempt to sprout something in people’s hearts.”

—Nakako Hayashi

Heralded as one of fashion’s most innovative designers, the Paris and Berlin-based duo BLESS (Désirée Heiss and Ines Kaag) refuse to capitalize on any one milieu, and instead explore the differences between and the mixing of the systems of art, fashion, and design. This book brings together visual and written documentation of BLESS’s last twelve collections (N° 30-N° 41), continually prompting and challenging the question of where a product begins and ends. Their latest project, N° 41 Retroperspective Home, culminates in an exhibition / intervention of the same title at the Kunsthaus.” The hybrid nature of [BLESS’s] output cries out to be tackled by an institution like ours,” state the curators of the exhibition,” but at the same time makes it very difficult to do so … This is precisely where the challenge of our exhibition lies, seeing art as design and fashion as architecture.”

Contemporary culture is witnessing one of the most significant shifts of recent times. The old dividing lines between artists and designers appear to be dissolving into one another. Indeed the breadth and range of investigation and inspiration they share is possibly the widest to date. This publication Wouldn’t it be nice hopes to present a series of projects emerging from these lines of dissolution, which reflect the current spirit of cultural production internationally.

The publication includes interviews with Jurgen Bey, Bless, Dexter Sinister, Dunne & Raby and Michael Anastassiades, Alicia Framis, Martino Gamper, Ryan Gander, Martí Guixé, Tobias Rehberger, and Superflex. Fully illustrated, the book presents a number of projects that have been specially commissioned for the exhibition. Quoting the aesthetic of the glossy magazine, the publication is designed by London-based group Graphic Thought Facility, and has attached to each cover a Bless N°14–2000, Shopping Supports Stickerbags self-adhesive purse/multiple.

Bless came to fame in the winter of 97/98, when the models of a Martin Margiela fashion show wore Bless wigs made out of fur. Heralded as one of fashion’s most innovative designers, the Paris and Berlin-based duo (Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag) quickly refused to capitalize on one milieu. Constantly investigating the boundaries of style, Bless slides from fashion to beauty, interior decoration to art exhibition, collaboration with other brands to stylized advertising. Their production, which sits on the fine line between art object and design, high function and high fashion, is always unique and marked by the recycling and adaptation of unexpected items put to use in a totally new way.

Designed by Manuel Raeder, this fully illustrated book features for the first time the wide range of Bless’ activity and documents a unique mode of cultural production.

Bless have exhibited internationally at the 1st berlin biennale (1998/99), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1999), Centre Pompidou (2000), Manifesta 4 (2002), Palais de Tokyo (2003), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2004), and most recently at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2006). Their collaborations with other brands range from Adidas to Levi’s, Nike, Mikli and Droog over to the jewellery designer Bucherer.

Here and There comes back, after two years of absence from the independent magazine scene, with Unexpected Travelling Issue, a sixth issue which counts already familiar but also new illustrious collaborations.

In Nakako’s own words, the vision behind the Unexpected Travelling Issue was: “One day, someone told me her ideal garden is what looks like no one is taking care of, and have so many different pretty flowers in springtime. The other day my friend told me she has an ideal image of bringing up kids even though in reality she has to deal with daily life living in crowded Tokyo. I am into those stories, and new issue must be something related to this ‘ideal’ world. in each people’s minds. Maybe you can talk about ideal books making”

Elein Fleiss, Purple Journal’s editor-in-chief, speaks of Nakako Hayashi and her magazine Here and There: When I met Nakako Hayashi, she was still working for Hanatsubaki magazine. Then, in 2001 she decided to go on her own and started Here and There in the spring of 2002. The first issue came out in March of that year, and the moment I first saw it remains in my memory as an important event in the world of independent magazines.

Here and There is the magazine of one person. The fact that Nakako’s name is credited as the author on the cover is not an egocentric statement but reveals the spirit in which she makes it. Some people make films, others write books or make artworks, and Nakako makes a magazine. It is her personal work and in that sense she makes it in her own way, unlike most magazines on the planet. It also means she is free from capitalistic rules, from imposed trends, from the industry of fashion. Instead, she is free to follow her desire and to link the magazine with her personal life.