Swindle Quarterly No. 4

SWINDLE QUARTERLY NO. 4 : DRUM CORPS

Swindle was a bi-monthly arts and culture publication founded in 2004 by artist Shephard Fariey until 2009.

"With the world turning at ludicrous speed and with widespread uncertainty about its direction, it's easy to get caught up wondering how the present will turn into the future and overlooking how the future will eventually become the past. One of our goals here at SWINDLE is to give our readers a product with no expiration date, that will be just as meaningful (or meaningless) in 20 years as it is today, and will always reflect the continuity of cultural reinvention. We want to leave a leagacy. It sounds very grandiose, but it's the humbling thought of our inevitable demise that impels us towards that goal. As much as we aim to be cutting-edge and avant-garde and all other sorts of hyphenated adjectives describing how newfangled we are, we try to show as much reverance for the past as much as we can, since our entire existence merely rests atop foundations that were built long ago by people who are no longer around.

Death is a touchy subject for most people, and any fascination with it is labeled as macabre, grotesque, or horrific. However, death is perhaps the greatest motivating factor we have, since it forces us to see beyond our own existence and consider what we will leave to our descendants and our enduring culture. In that positive light, you'll find in this issue what we hope are inspirational, or at the very least entertaining, examples of people keeping dreams alive. For one, photographer Frank Jump, living with HIV, who has taken it upon himself to document the fading advertisement murals of New York City before they become dust and rubble. Our Caleb Neelon revisits his bygone childhood as he delves into the world of LEGO as never seen before. We get a glimpse of filmmaker Brian Liu's harrowing documentary Disarm, a political tool aiming to open eyes to the horrors of landmines and save lives via the silver screen. Even artist David Weidman, over 80 years old and still selling prints of his artwork from the '60s, proves that death is never a certainty when ideas are kept alive.

We like to think of the present as a vantage point from which you can look over one shoulder and see the past, and look over the other and see the future. And when you look straight in front of you, we hope you see a magazine to bring along in whichever direction you plan to go.

'Let us endeavor to live so that when we die, even the undertaker will be sorry.' - Mark Twain

The SWINDLE Staff."

pp. 25