Rethinking what it means to make art in Sluice magazine
Run by a collective of artists, Sluice has a knack for attention-grabbing cover art. Two issues ago there was a blown-up quote on the back: “Cut back on matcha flat whites and avocado marshmallow toast, you lazy little Millenial fuck”. This time there’s a woman biting into a ball gag made out of scrumpled paper.
The concept for this edition is the alter-ego, and what taking on a different persona can do for your expression, particularly in the context of performance art. This sounds frighteningly artsy and niche, but the material here is accessible: see, for example, the interview with Liv Fontaine, who assumed, for a few years, the identity of a gender ambiguous drag queen called Treacle Fuckface.
Another performed persona Sluice takes apart is that of the ‘artist’. One essay is about why, when a person decides to give up their ambitions to be an artist, that decision is interpreted as a failure. The Artwork Agency is introduced, an organisation that collects the unrealized ideas of ex-artists, and offers them up to artists who have none. The aim being to “lead artists and non-artists alike to rethink what it means to make art. Or maybe just what it means to forget it.”
Forgetting art is a refreshing idea to come across in the middle of what looks, on the face of it, like yet another arts magazine. Sluice is intriguing.
