ENGLISH

Project Room: Transper, Casper @ Printed Matter
by TRANS>

CASPER
Began in 1998 in Mexico for reasons both noble and obvious. The noble aspect is the entertainment factor for its creators — Daniel Guzmán, Gabriel Kuri, Damián Ortega, and Luis Felipe Ortega — or rather, taking advantage of the creators: entertaining get-togethers which did and still do take place in some fashion or another. The obvious is our desire to create a space for debate and publication of material which, as members of the public and as artists, we did not find in any other magazine. Our editorial criterion is full of mistakes and improvisations. We intended from the start that the first phase of CASPER, that is, a magazine produced by hand, format: half letter size, print run of 200, would have a limited life. This, along with our eagerness not to begin to create, by default, an editorial formula which would end up being boring, or which would take up more of our time than we were each willing to dedicate to our respective duties. We therefore intended to change gears after publishing monthly for a year, and the first stage of CASPER ended after 13 issues. Since none of the editors necessarily wanted to make a career of publishing, we wanted to preserve the spirit of making art collectively that would come about with the help of our friends, and without permission from the authors whose material we plagiarized (but with all due respect and thanks). CASPER, which changed name to PERCAS, SPEARCA PLUS, PESCAR, PERSAC, PACERS, SCRAPE, CASREP, SEPRAC, ES CRAP, A-E-S-C-P-R, SERCAP, SERAPC, and, this time TRANSPER, has become EDICIONES CASPER, an organism, albeit a more flexible one, whereby we intend to continue publishing different kinds of texts, or hosting events and generating projects. We might even return to the first year’s format with some variation or added value. Back issues (that is, all of them) are still available. Nonetheless we press on, maintaining an immaterial place which is ready to receive and react to anything which presents itself to us and suggests to us the next incarnation of our phantom friend.

Note from the Editor. This is the pilot issue of Casper.
It is the first magazine with a mutating name ever recorded in Historical annals. Writing our own History is not a duty that should concern us. This is why we invoke this organ: part organ, part material, part immaterial, part pastiche, part pun, to write for us. And so we are able to devote ourselves to being performer amongst spectators, sponsors, preachers, columnists — and several other infamous occupations of our own trade, to prevent ourselves from being the most infamous of all occupations, which is none other than reporters or journalists of that which does not concern us, be it that which we are meant to witness, but not just to run and tell, but instead to give faith or our doubt, our confidence in chance (assisted by the sanest of nepotisms) and of our only certainty, which is that of being not so sure that we are, or even were there and then at the eye of the storm, ready with our credentials, and the necessary arrogance to affirm that this is this, was like that, or should be this way. As it is customary in publishing enterprise, the articles and other interventions that here appear, are responsibility of the authors, and even though the authors are responsibility of their own intricate genealogies, together with all of that which has formed motivated and confused them, we would not want this to sound as a provocation, nor marking out of responsibilities, or ambiguity in matter of intellectual property copyright. Casper — an by this anima abbreviation, we mean to encompass all the names of its collaborators — is an organ that believes in the current validity of manifestoes. Understanding by currency, something like the life before expiry of seasonal fruit; and while we might have, on the other, the diverse advances in matter of Agrarian Reform Movements, (among them, printed manifestoes of technological and revolutionary struggle, that have the nobility of — having their contents expired — serving as wrapping device for housewives to take their produce back home) that have shown us that perpetuity and * (an asterisk) are practically synonymous when one is dealing with matter so immaterial as ideas, words, critique, point and line. Casper is a publication in constant transformation. We gratefully encourage any criticism, as well as notes, articles, reviews, graphic work, original or plagiarised, at the enclosed address. We will also be thankful if any of our readers — frequent or occasional — can put us in touch with anyone, or any organ that, they believe, should obtain or collaborate in the magazine.
Attentively. the Editorial Board. Daniel Guzmán, Gabriel Kuri, Damián Ortega, Luis Felipe Ortega. México City, May 1st, 1998. Labour day.