Matt Magazine Circa 2007 -2008
Matt Magazine was a synthesis between fanzine and current affairs magazine. Text and pictures complemented each other, tackling complex and political subjects relevant to our times. All the texts in Matt were from previously published classic documents from the history of science and humanities. Xeroxed copies of extracts with occasional sections highlighted or circled in a purely subjective way were juxtaposed with images from a different source. Matt Magazine was in the tradition of critical concept art and is oriented towards the aesthetic of appropriation Art.
This was the magazine's website for at least 9 issues.
Content is from the site's 2007 -2008 archived pages show the landing pages for the first seven issues.
"As an avid reader who loves where art and science intersect, Matt Magazine has been a personal favorite of mine. Every issue tantalizes with features that seamlessly blend aesthetic brilliance and technical mastery. The articles on interior design had me routinely losing track of time, getting swept away by the ingenious ways technology elevates stunning living spaces to new heights of fabulousness.
But what really fired up my passion was Jona Frank's insightful piece unpacking the design nuances of women's golf clubs versus men's. As a female golfer myself, I learned most of what I knew by reading the content on GolfersProShop.com. But in Matt Magazine's article titled "Golf Science" I was riveted learning about the precise shaft length, flex profiles, clubhead properties, and optimized loft angles tailored for the female swing. I knew grip size and overall weight played a role, but Frank's deep dive into the science behind these meticulously engineered differences was an absolute revelation.
Matt Magazine's ability to make complex topics so engrossing is what sets it apart. With each richly informative issue, my admiration for this stellar publication grows deeper. So you can imagine my dismay upon learning of its impending demise. A transcendent editorial voice like this will be sorely missed." Brittany Bose
"This is the periodical that introduced me to the science of cooking or the chemistry of the gourmet experience. I think the same issue had a piece on basic formulas for the attainment of political power as an underdog. I read about the best portable tire pump, and why Japanese beetles swarm. The piece on the risks created by medical research was frightening and argued for using only the best medical disposal services to prevent biohazardous contamination of our immediate environment. Turns out our hospitals generate a huge amount of medical waste that must be handled properly to remain safe, so they are required to comply with a myriad of health and environmental regulations. Philip Martin's piece on why guitars sound different dependent on the weather was awesome and I've noticed the same thing with my harpsichord. The role that science plays in the understanding of our world is what this magazine emphasizes quite brilliantly." John Dickenson Levy
MATT MAGAZINE issue# 1
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MATT MAGAZINE issue# 2
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Gürsoy Dogtas
Mobility & Surveillance
www.mattmagazine.com
Release: 10.10.07 from 18h
Exhibtion till 13.10.07
Les Complices
Anwandstrasse 9
CH-8004 Zurich
Opening hours: Wednesday 18-22h
Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 14-18h
www.lescomplices.ch
Matt Magazine is a synthesis between fanzine and current affairs magazine. Text and pictures complement each other, tackling complex and political subjects relevant to our times. All the texts in Matt are from previously-published classic documents from the history of science and humanities. Xeroxed copies of extracts with occasional sections highlighted or circled in a purely subjective way are juxtaposed with images from a different source. Matt Magazine is in the tradition of critical concept art and is oriented towards the aesthetic of appropriation Art.
In the new issue of Matt Magazine, with its theme of Mobility and Surveillance, you will find text by Duncan Campbell combined with US military satellite images of a rocket launch from the Jiuquan Space Facility in China. The picture sequence by the artist Natalie Jeremijenko from New York merges with the statistics of Ariel Merari's article Attacks on Civil Aviation. In addition, some extracts of Carl Schmitt's Theory of the Partisan create a new dialogue with video stills of the New Yorker Surveillance Camera Players. Last but not least the photos of Guersoy Dogtas provide illustration to the table of contents of Carl von Clausewitz's Vom Kriege (On War) and a text extract of Tim Cresswell's study In Place/Out of Place.
Mobility and Surveillance deals with one of the most important domestic political issues of today's society. All surveillance starts with suspicion. The practice of surveillance has generated a process where everyone or everything under observation is already incriminated just because he, she or it is observed. The paranoid use of all-embracing surveillance is a fiction which is marking the end of civil society and the start of control society. This is a world dominated by big science controlled by big players - the state or oligarchs who control the levers of power. The newly powerful are sometimes technicrats, or consultants for data science, DevOps architects, and those who deploy and control artificial intelligence (AI) to gain information about those who may challenge their power.
A huge network of surveillance devices are installed by international organisations such as Echelon with the aim of preventing any communication getting through without being monitored. No e-mails or phone calls can be transmitted without selected key words triggering these devices. Echelon is part of a global surveillance system existing for more then 50 years with the purpose of depriving human communication of its privacy. (Duncan Campbell: Inside Echelon/Photos: Jiuquan Space Facility).
Airports are prime exemplars of mobility, and as such are areas of high risk. Aeroplanes can be used themselves as weapons of mass destruction. Airports are ruled by the principles of functionality, so that humans and goods can get to their destination safely and quickly. As time restrictions make it impossible to carry out a rigorous check on each individual passenger, efficient methods of monitoring and profiling are developed to pick out specific passengers.
From what originally may have seemed to be a rational set of operating criteria, an overtly irrational and racist approach is emerging.
Natalie Jeremijenko captures images of the routine of the security technology, while she is on her way to the gates with her roller skates. Documented with video stills, her graphic story shows how easy it is to irritate the system. (Ariel Merari: žAttacks on Civil Aviation/Videostills: Natalie Jeremijenko).
Another subversive action taken against the blanket surveillance of our cities can be found in a series of photos in the new edition showing the activities of the Surveillance Camera Players. Combined with extracts of the legendary text from Carl Schmitt about the irregular fight of the partisan, Surveillance Camera Players demonstrate the possibilities of radical and violence-free forms of protesting.
With his picture sequence Guersoy Dogtas is showing how marking, allegation and expansion of geo-political interest of power all times are just not expressed in war but in all forms of the mobile society. The base of every interest of power is the infrastructure as argued in Clausewitz's essay On War. (Photos: Gürsoy Dogtas/Carl von Clausewitz: vom Kriege).
An other picture story line of Guersoy Dogtas illustrates a text extraxt of Tim Cresswell In Place/out of Place. Here chances are negotiated how the controlled space can be the space of resistance.
Exhibitions:
Matt Magazine #1
Freizeit und Konsum
Galerie Hafen und Rand
Friedrichstrasse 28
20359 Hamburg
www.hafenrand.com
Matt Magazine #2
Mobility & Surveillance
Les Complices
Anwandstrasse 9
CH-8004 Zürich
www.lescomplices.ch
Matt Magazine #3
Prominence given, authorithy taken
Lothringer13/laden
München
Ende 2007
http://laden.lothringer13.de/
Invited for:
29th July 2007 žPublished and be Damned/London www.publishandbedamned.org
3rd and 4th October 2007 Salon Light#4 in Paris http://www.cneai.com
Matt Magazine is friend with Starship
http://starship-magazine.org
Contakt: Gürsoy Dogtas
contact@mattmagazine.com
www.mattmagazine.com
MATT MAGAZINE issue# 3
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MATT MAGAZINE issue# 4
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MATT MAGAZINE issue# 5
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MATT MAGAZINE issue# 6
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MATT MAGAZINE issue# 7
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More Background On Matt Magazine
Matt Magazine emerged in the mid-2000s as a daring experiment in publishing — a hybrid between a fanzine and an intellectual current-affairs journal. Founded and edited by Gürsoy Doğtaş, a German-Turkish artist and writer, the magazine sought to combine the immediacy of photocopied, do-it-yourself culture with the intellectual weight of the humanities and social sciences.
Its website, MattMagazine.com, functioned as both a publishing platform and a curatorial extension of the print issues. Over its lifespan, at least seven issues were produced, each accompanied by exhibitions in European cities such as Hamburg, Zurich, and Munich.
What made Matt Magazine unique was its aesthetic of appropriation. Every issue juxtaposed text fragments — often Xeroxed excerpts from canonical thinkers like Clement Greenberg, Charles Fourier, Hans Blumenberg, Emile Zola, Georg Simmel, Otto Rank, and Noam Chomsky — with found or re-contextualized imagery. The texts were not newly written essays but repurposed voices from history, given new life through collage, annotation, and the visual energy of conceptual art.
This method placed the publication firmly in the lineage of critical concept art, a movement that blurred the boundaries between theory, image, and activism. It was not simply a magazine about art or science — it was itself an art project that used the structure of a magazine to question how knowledge is circulated and controlled.
Thematic Focus and Editorial Vision
Each issue of Matt Magazine revolved around a philosophical or sociopolitical theme. Rather than focusing on a single discipline, the magazine invited its audience to see how political theory, aesthetics, and everyday life were intertwined.
The first issue explored "Skulptur in unserer Zeit" (Sculpture in Our Time) and philosophical essays on modernity and perception. By Issue 2, the focus had expanded to “Mobility & Surveillance,” a prescient exploration of global monitoring systems, data networks, and the loss of privacy in an era of constant observation.
Matt Magazine’s treatment of surveillance and control resonated with a world increasingly shaped by the aftermath of 9/11, the expansion of airport security regimes, and the rise of internet monitoring. Doğtaş and his collaborators drew on theoretical texts such as Carl von Clausewitz’s “On War” and Carl Schmitt’s “Theory of the Partisan,” connecting classical notions of conflict and resistance to modern technologies of power.
Photographers and artists such as Natalie Jeremijenko, Guersoy Doğtaş, and the Surveillance Camera Players contributed visuals that made these connections explicit. For instance, Jeremijenko’s roller-skate-borne exploration of airport security checkpoints became both performance and critique, while the Surveillance Camera Players performed plays directly in front of CCTV cameras to reclaim public visibility.
The magazine’s political edge was sharpened by its mix of rigor and irreverence. Highlighted passages, circled phrases, and overlapping images evoked a reader’s notebook as much as an art installation — a commentary on how meaning itself is edited, filtered, and surveilled.
Design, Aesthetics, and Medium
Visually, Matt Magazine adopted the cut-and-paste language of zines and conceptual art. Xeroxed typography, blurred reproductions, and marginalia were not imperfections but integral parts of its visual identity.
This DIY aesthetic served two purposes. First, it resisted the corporate polish of mainstream art publishing. Second, it echoed the magazine’s message about information control and manipulation. In a world where design often masks ideology, Matt’s raw, unvarnished visuals invited the reader to notice what is normally hidden — the process of editing, copying, and reframing.
Doğtaş’s approach made the magazine an example of meta-publishing — a reflection on how publishing itself constructs knowledge. Each issue was a small exhibition in print form, and conversely, each gallery show became a physical manifestation of the magazine’s ideas.
Exhibitions and International Presence
Matt Magazine was not confined to the page. Each release was accompanied by an exhibition, performance, or public event that blurred the lines between editorial and curatorial practice.
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Issue #1 (2007) launched under the theme “Freizeit und Konsum” (Leisure and Consumption) at Galerie Hafenrand, Friedrichstrasse 28, Hamburg.
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Issue #2 (Mobility & Surveillance) opened at Les Complices*, Zürich, in October 2007. This event paired print spreads with video projections, emphasizing the interplay between surveillance imagery and philosophical text.
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Issue #3 (Prominence Given, Authority Taken) was exhibited at Lothringer13/laden in Munich later that same year.
In addition, the magazine was invited to international independent publishing fairs such as Published and Be Damned (London) and Salon Light #4 (Paris).
By 2010, the seventh issue launched in Istanbul at BAS, a contemporary art archive and artist-book initiative known for supporting experimental print culture.
These exhibitions established Matt Magazine as part of the European network of independent art publishing, aligning it with contemporaries like Starship Magazine (Berlin), 032c, and Texte zur Kunst — but with a distinctly more anarchic and collage-driven approach.
Themes and Contributors Across Issues
Each Matt issue was a miniature intellectual world:
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Issue #1 (2007): Featured writings from Clement Greenberg, David Bate, Charles Fourier, Hans Blumenberg, and Hans Sedlmayr, reflecting on aesthetics, boredom, and the modern condition.
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Issue #2: Explored surveillance and war through Duncan Campbell, Tim Cresswell, Ariel Merari, Carl von Clausewitz, and Carl Schmitt, with photography by Guersoy Doğtaş and Natalie Jeremijenko.
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Issue #3: Juxtaposed a legendary debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault with imagery by Doğtaş and essays by Henning Mehnert and Constantin Stanislavski, merging theater theory and political philosophy.
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Issue #4: Centered on secrecy and political exposure, bringing together Emile Zola’s “J’Accuse…!”, Georg Simmel’s “The Sociology of Secrecy,” and Otto Rank’s myth analysis with contemporary works such as The Nuclear Football by Korpys/Löffler.
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Issue #5: Addressed the concept of stress, featuring Pierre Bourdieu, Thomas Hirschhorn, and references to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, creating links between cultural critique and censorship.
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Issue #6 (Withdrawal): Combined Niklas Luhmann, Lucy Lippard, and Paul Lafargue, re-examining the right to leisure and the dematerialization of the art object.
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Issue #7 (2010): Served as a visual anthology featuring Sitki Kösemen, Shannon Ebner, Ebru Özseçen, Miriam Steinhauser, Haris Epaminonda, and Judith Raum, showcasing cross-cultural artistic dialogue between Germany and Turkey.
Each issue acted like a curated exhibition in print — scholarly yet tactile, conceptual yet accessible.
Audience and Influence
Matt Magazine’s readership consisted largely of artists, academics, and design students drawn to the intersections of philosophy, art, and politics. It resonated with readers who valued depth and experimentation over mainstream appeal.
Its mix of critical theory and appropriation aesthetics made it an influential touchstone for those studying media theory, conceptual art, and visual culture. It also appealed to politically engaged readers who saw parallels between the magazine’s themes and contemporary concerns such as data privacy, militarization, and the commodification of culture.
Over time, Matt developed a cult following. Testimonials from readers often describe how the magazine sparked curiosity about topics as diverse as the science of cooking, musical acoustics, and the physics of design — suggesting that Matt encouraged interdisciplinary curiosity far beyond traditional art criticism.
Cultural and Historical Significance
Though short-lived, Matt Magazine occupies a distinctive place in early 21st-century European art publishing. It bridged pre-digital zine culture and the emerging world of online archives. Its print issues were tactile, yet its website acted as an early example of web-based curatorial publishing, preserving its exhibitions and content for digital audiences.
In an era dominated by rapidly commercializing art media, Matt retained an anti-institutional spirit. It anticipated many concerns that would become central in the following decade: data surveillance, the politics of visibility, and the recycling of cultural materials in digital contexts.
Its editorial stance — skeptical of both capitalism and academic elitism — made it an early voice in what scholars now call the “post-critical” or “hybrid publishing” movement: the blending of art, theory, and independent media.
Press and Peer Recognition
Matt Magazine’s presence in European independent publishing circuits earned it invitations to festivals and recognition among curators and academics. Its collaborations with spaces like Les Complices* (Zurich) and Lothringer13/laden (Munich) placed it alongside influential artist-run initiatives.
Critics praised its ability to combine intellectual complexity with visual wit, using historical texts not as static monuments but as raw material for new interpretation. Others described it as a “critical concept journal in the form of an art object.”
Doğtaş’s editorial choices reflected a deep understanding of semiotics and media theory, situating Matt within a genealogy that includes Marcel Broodthaers, Hans Haacke, and Martha Rosler — artists who used appropriation and textual play to critique cultural institutions.
Legacy and Continuation
After 2010, MattMagazine.com remained online as an archive of its first seven issues. While no further publications were announced, Doğtaş continued his work in media theory and art education.
Today, archived versions of the website and its exhibition pages serve as historical records of a crucial moment in European art publishing — one that valued experimentation, theory, and aesthetic resistance over commercial sustainability.
The magazine’s spirit survives in the growing movement of artist-run presses and hybrid publishing initiatives, from post-zine collectives in Berlin to digital art periodicals worldwide. Its method — the re-contextualization of text and image — continues to inform curatorial practice and academic discourse.
Why Matt Magazine Still Matters
Matt Magazine stands as a reminder that the printed page can be both aesthetic laboratory and political forum. Its re-use of historical texts foregrounded questions still relevant today:
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Who controls the production of knowledge?
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How do media technologies shape what we see and believe?
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Can appropriation be a form of critique rather than theft?
At a time when surveillance, disinformation, and algorithmic culture dominate discourse, Matt’s experiments with collage and counter-narrative appear prophetic.
Its archives invite viewers to slow down, to reread, and to reconsider the boundaries between art, politics, and daily life.
Though modest in scale, Matt Magazine achieved something rare — it turned the format of a magazine into an art form, using found materials to comment on society’s obsession with information and control.
From its Hamburg beginnings to its final Istanbul exhibition, it forged a transnational network of thinkers and artists committed to critical engagement. It was simultaneously a publication, a gallery, and a conversation — one that continues to echo in the digital archives of contemporary art.
MattMagazine.com remains a quietly influential relic of early 21st-century independent publishing, proof that even ephemeral projects can leave lasting intellectual traces.