Megawords Experiments with the Art of Conversation

Those who vis­ited the In­sti­tute of Con­tem­por­ary Art’s One Is the Lone­li­est Num­ber ex­hib­it this sum­mer had the chance to see something that is rarely vis­ible in mu­seum spaces any­more: a cool space to just sit, read, and re­lax. No ad­vert­ise­ments, no over­priced cata­logs pushed at you. Just a few chairs and well-worn pho­to­graphy magazines to per­use while you soaked in the show: cas­u­ally strewn West Afric­an fab­ric pat­terns, neon-colored graph­ics, old Leicas, cas­sette mix­tapes and whatever else they’d set up in the mu­seum’s loft space.

An­thony Smyrski and Dan Murphy made that hap­pen. Most known for their gritty, ad-free and nearly word­less magazine Mega­words —which serves as a me­di­um to ex­per­i­ment with their ideas free from com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion—the pair aren’t just con­cerned with the art you con­sume, but the way in which you con­sume it. For the past three years, the guys have been spe­cial­iz­ing in cre­at­ing pub­lic spaces, lit­er­ally bring­ing their prin­ted pro­ject to life.

“A magazine can move,” Murphy says. “It’s a phys­ic­al ob­ject, you can take it to any place, anytime, and have so many dif­fer­ent people ac­cess it, and that was very im­port­ant to what we were try­ing to do.”

The pub­lic pro­jects that Mega­words have cre­ated in re­cent years speak to this ini­tial goal of pub­li­ciz­ing art, and mak­ing it a cul­tur­ally en­ga­ging and en­rich­ing ex­per­i­ence for all in­volved. In Septem­ber 2008, they tem­por­ar­ily set up shop in an old store­front in Chin­atown, creating an all-pur­pose arts space, cur­at­ing tem­por­ary ex­hib­its, screen­ing films and host­ing mu­sic­al per­form­ances. Last year, they set up a Mega­words news­stand on the corner of 27th and Gir­ard, where read­ers could pick up cop­ies of the zine, but also speak dir­ectly with Murphy and Smyrski about their motives and in­spir­a­tions. This year, they screened an art film in an old Kens­ing­ton lot.

“One of our goals [with these pro­jects] was to set an ex­ample to show that we need free spaces like this where you can ex­per­i­ment that’s not based around re­tail,” Murphy says. “Kids need a place to go break win­dows or be cre­at­ive. We need more space that’s not a bar, not a club, not a gal­lery.”

More re­cently, the guys have fo­cused their en­ergy on Kens­ing­ton, push­ing neg­lected areas to the fore­front of res­id­ents’ minds and cre­at­ing a world in which art is taken out of its priv­ileged gal­lery con­text. At the end of Ju­ly, Smyrski and fel­low artist Mat­thew Galla­gh­er spear­headed a cleanup pro­ject on Sil­ver Street, only a mile or so from Smyrski’s child­hood stomp­ing grounds, turn­ing a corner usu­ally littered with drug ad­dicts in­to a beau­ti­fully painted sit­ting area that res­id­ents can ac­tu­ally en­joy. “Stuff like this lets us make that one-on-one con­nec­tion [with people from the neigh­bor­hood],” Smyrski says. “I think these un­ex­pec­ted in­ter­ven­tions or out­bursts can al­ways make people think. We like to put ourselves out there to get us to en­gage with them.”

“It’s nice to get people from the neigh­bor­hood to see films that they nor­mally wouldn’t or couldn’t get a chance see,” Smyrski con­tin­ues, “and to get fans of our work to come out to a place that they nor­mally wouldn’t come to. For many people liv­ing in Cen­ter City, it’s like [Kens­ing­ton] is not even there.”

For more in­form­a­tion about Mega­words and its pro­jects, vis­it mega­words­magazine.com.