White Fungus / 17

Taiwan-based independent arts magazine White Fungus returns to print for the first time since the pandemic with the release of its 17th issue. The new edition will be out in early June. Preorders are available here.

 

The new issue features in-depth articles on bats, avant-garde jazz group The Art Ensemble of Chicago, plus an exploration of the world of Taiwanese folk religion and its connection to art, politics, tourism, and the criminal underworld. 

 

There is video art from Brazil and a look back on composer Annea Lockwood’s London years in the 1960s and 1970s, during which she created her legendary Glass Concerts and Piano Burnings. The issue also features a look back on the life and work of Paul Celan, often called Europe’s greatest post-war poet.

 

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"That gesture also is a kind of gesture you make towards the reader, saying, 'I trust you,' and in a way you’re enticing people into the unknown. You’re saying, ‘Let your curiosity lead you and be perplexed by what you might find because you’re going to open this magazine at your risk...""

Paul Holdengräber, The Quarantine Tapes

 

White Fungus is a print magazine and publishing platform based in Taiwan. The publication began in 2004 as a protest zine and quasi political manifesto produced on a photocopier in Wellington, New Zealand. Now it is an international arts publication based in Taiwan that is distributed globally. Each cover of the magazine is derived from a scan of a can of "white fungus", a commercially produced pulped beverage from Taichung City.