This issue, entitled “Sex Sells”, is a timely, subversive take on the commodification of sex in our culture industry. Once opened we’re given a pithy and politically astute critique of mainstream advertising and the use of sex to sell us everything. Beautiful graphics and text come together with short passages flavoured by Dada experiments and Surrealist games. This quote gives us a sense of the writing: “Post modernism wears a black leather hood and carries a big stick.” Sometimes the text becomes too heavy on the theory which makes me want to run for my Frankfurt School reader. Thankfully, beautifully crafted and well thought out graphics keeps the “explanatory” text down to a paragraph or so. This little chapbook sits attractively, dare we say, seductively, in the palm of your hand. Bravo! Fluxzine is also participatory being “part of an ongoing investigative social experiment.” I look forward to their second issue, but I’ll savour this one first.
chapbook / #1, 8 pages / main creators: Ed Varney, Jack MacColl / publisher: Fluxus International / $2 / Box 3294, Vancouver, B.C. V6B 3X9