Does My Name is Ferdinand welcome contributions?
My Name is Ferdinand is always looking for contributors for both the magazine and for the online exhibitions programme ‘C’est Idiot’.
What should I contribute? Anything you like really. Mostly we like work written or produced by artists. Such as poetry, short stories, photography, essays, diaries, regular (semi-regular or whatever) columns, audio artists, artist’s statements, drawings (but they’d have to be scanned in and giff’ed or jpeg’d) etc. That is not to say that we do not want to hear and publish the work of critics, or receive exhibition previews from galleries and artist’s organisations because we do.
Oh and we are looking for someone to translate the magazine into French, German, various other European languages, if anybody fancies it. A long shot obviously but you never know. We can probably manage to translate it into American ourselves.
What is ‘C’est Idiot’?
‘C’est Idiot’ is Ferdinand’s online exhibition (housed on our sister site http://www.kioskcity.co.uk/ferdinandexhibitions/idiot.htm). As with any contribution to Ferdinand, artists do not get paid for exhibiting (see below – nobody gets paid for doing anything for Ferdinand as it doesn’t make any money itself). We merely intend the exhibitions as a chance to promote artists work online, similar to how an artist may upload their work onto MySpace or Facebook but in a slightly more specific way and responding to a loose exhibition brief.
What kind of work do you except?
Since there is no payment for the exhibition we don’t expect artist’s to make a new piece for a ‘C’est Idiot’ exhibition (though they can if they want to) but rather to provide any existing work that may relate to the brief or to pick a piece of found footage or a found image (from Google image search or YouTube). The only thing we insist upon is that it is formatted to be shown on online (scanned in, youtubed, jpeged, etc).
How long do C’est Idiot exhibitions run for?
Like the magazine they run for seasonally for four months or so.
Is there a particular word count for pieces written?
No. ‘Length is not a problem, it’s what you…’ Nah we won’t be so cliched, we don’t care how many or how few words you write. We welcome short stories as short as short as Ernest Hemingway’s famous six word short story (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”) or as long as you like, this is the same with poetry or anything in written form.
Can I submit a review? Can I submit interviews?
Yes but it doesn’t have to be timely and it doesn’t have to actually be much about thing that you’re reviewing but maybe about your experience of attending whatever it is that you want to review. It can be more straightforward if you want though too. You can review the anything from any era or of any sort. Likewise with interviews.
I am the owner of a gallery or some kind of art space. Can I submit a preview an upcoming show in order to help boost visitor numbers?
Yep. Don’t know if it’d actually help but who are we to stop you? We’ll see what we can do. We’d like to actually.
What about food, do you consider food to be a worthy artform? Can I write about food?
Yes, we like food. You can send things about food, probably not ideal to send food through the post though and I don’t think you can send it via email as yet. Restaurant owners who want to give free finely crafted meals in return for sycophantic reviews…that’s fine too.
Will you pay me for my contribution?
No. We don’t get paid ourselves for any of this. The magazine is web based, carries no advertising and so on, so we can only pay you in the kudos that you will not doubt receive from your association with ‘Ferdinand’. As for the 25p paper zine Ferdinand Specials – well the 25p from these goes to the stockist that sells it and they can do what they like with it.
