Print Club: Krass Journal is "an Antidote to the Slick and Saccharine”

Krass Journal is a radically political magazine straight out of Adelaide, which should be enough to pique your interest. But if you’re looking for more reasons to pick up a copy of its second issue, maybe start with its art direction. Young editors Tess Martin and Sanja Grozdanic have worked with designers Kirby Manning and Simon Pearce to create experimental typographical styles that are just as provocative as the written content.

What’s remarkable about Krass Journal’s design is that it’s purposefully discomforting. Slanting fonts, overlapping text, and clashing colours all serve to confuse but intrigue. Within the pages you’ll find photographs by Prue Stent, as well as interviews with French artist Camille Walala, internet art star Audrey Wollen, musician Kurt Vile, and filmmakers Maya Newell and Charlotte Mars, who directed and produced Gayby Baby, quotes from the likes of Susan Sontag and Etel Adnan, and a conversation with philosopher Noam Chomsky.

This is a publication that wants to be held and admired, a testament to the power of print to create beautiful objects. Speaking to The Creators Project, Grozdanic says that she and fellow editor Martin were inspired to create a timeless magazine that could almost could have existed in the pre-Internet age. “Tess and I studied journalism, and were forever told that print is dead,” she tells us. “So perhaps Krass is the response of two contrarians with an eternal flame for the printed medium.”

Grozdanic says that her reading habits are a little bit old school, as are her interests in the print medium. “I’m not much into reading on iPads or Kindles. I did consider it when buying Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick, but I learnt to enjoy the curiosity on the faces of my fellow commuters.”

Grozdanic notes that both the magazine’s design and content are in keeping with the magazine’s political ethos. Even its title reveals that Krass was never going to be twee or lighthearted; it’s something a little more forceful. “Krass is a German slang term for cool, tough, wicked,” she says. “It’s a word we appropriated as an antidote to the slick and saccharine.”

One of her favourite inclusions in this issue is a quote from Audrey Wollen that epitomises the magazine’s no-nonsense feminist philosophy. It’s a call to arms and a refusal to compromise: “I am often working in an effort to propose an alternative to the hyper-positive demands of feminism today: I am not reaching for a crystallized, capitalist “happiness” or “freedom,” but rather, an acceptance of a permanently alienated girl-self, but a self that can utilise its dislodged miseries and infuse them with meaning.”

But while Krass has big ambitions, it’s not trying to scare you off. There’s a pervading sense of community. “We explore the fact that we are all in this together,” Grozdanic says. “I was listening to an interview with Hilton Als recently in which he said, ‘Politics has to do with self realisation and not self denial’. Krass is all about self-realisation.”

You can find out more about Krass Journal here and follow the magazine on Instagram here.

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