Art Metropole

#04490

File Megazine (complete reprint)

Artist

General Idea

Date

2008

Publisher

JRP / Ringier Kunstverlag

Format

Artists' Books

Details

Softcover

ISBN

9783905829211

Size

23 × 32 × 17 cm

“An alternative to the Alternative Press,” legendary Toronto collaborative General Idea’s FILE Megazine—published from 1972 to 1989—is compiled, at long last, in this important six-volume boxed-set edition.

General Idea cheekily appropriated FILE’s name and logo from LIFE magazine, and it quickly gained a reputation far beyond its Toronto underground roots. It was subversive to the core, pilfering freely from mainstream media and culture, while maintaining close attention to design issues and the use of experimental layouts. Three decades later, this compilation reveals FILE’s influence on both underground and mainstream publications. As critic and artist Peter Gallo has written, FILE “anticipated many queercore and punk zines of the later 70s and 80s…as well as more recent mass-media interventions…”

The present six-volume reprint features all the issues, reproduced page by page, in a slightly modified format. It provides the rare opportunity for an art, design, and culture-orientated audience to own these long out-of-print and much sought-after magazines in a complete box-set edition.