Various Artists

Personal Best #8

Genre: MAGAZINE

Boomkat Product Review:

Issue 8 of Lasse Marhaug’s Personal Best, featuring interviews with Rachel Shearer, Peter Rehberg, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Benjamin Nelson, Peter Brötzmann, Jana Winderen, Otomo Yoshihide and Ghédalia Tazartès.

Three years on from the last issue, Marhaug and editor Vivian Wang are on top form here, Marhaug himself conducting long-form interviews with each contributor, a Q&A format that lends itself very well to the exploration of motivation, working environments, art, creation, commerce and life itself. Edited and produced in the peak of lockdown, but featuring interviews spanning the last few years, there’s a comfort reading about people’s internal processes and seeing their inner sanctums at a time we're all so removed from one another.

The interview with Ghédalia Tazartès, in particular, is a total joy - featuring photographs of his incredible home/workspace (“like being inside an artwork”) and leading from a discussion about his creative rituals, to his disdain for the GRM ("François Bayle can fuck off”) and what it's like making a living from music for 40 years when you don't consider yourself a musician.

If you’ve not read it before, ‘Personal Best’ will be a revelation, a sort of highly personalised and in depth cross between Frieze and Apartamento, but burning with a fanzine spirit specific to this tiny end of the art world we’re in. In an era of almost complete cultural annihilation, Marhuag’s more or less solo endeavours in print are not only to be commended, but also supported - if yr gonna buy one thing this week, make it this.