welcome to aesthetiks magazine! i know the all lowercase helvetica font doesn't show my delight, but i'm really excited you decided to join. here's how you were selected:

when i'm bored, procrastinating, curious about the existence of dallas artists, i browse through user profiles, specifying the radius to 50 miles from the epicenter of the city. you've been selected because you have exhibited at least some interest in art, music, writing, film, poetry, etc. either that your you've expressed an interest in tool and/or the mars volta. keep in mind that your profile was in some way interesting enough for me to click on in the first place. it's all kind of creepy, but please understand that i'm not trying to molest anyone.

anyways, this is my schpiel:

the short story:

aesthetiks magazine is a dallas based art and culture magazine dedicated to...
1. promoting local artists
2. promoting social discourse in the
community.
3. revealing that there IS a dallas art
scene.
4. promoting artists of color and
marginalized groups.
5. being better than the f-ing dallas
observer

other publication influences include:
giant robot magazine, juxtapoz art and culture magazine, found magazine.

the long story:
(i got hammered one night and this is what i wrote)

1. i am not an art scholar
2. i think that around one half of all scholars are self righteous assholes
3. as dallas based artists, we are already all marginalized, regardless of our skin color or sexual preference.
4. i want a rennaisance.
5. i want US to make it happen.
6. i know we can do it.
7. this is not a pyramid scheme.

When people ask me what the hell i'm going to do with an asian american studies and english degree, i generally tell them, "i'll do whatever the hell i please." This magazine, i suppose is precisely "what the hell i want" to do with my life. after i graduate in the spring, i'll be moving back up to dallas to live with some friends i've had for years. we all seem to have our respective creative projects in this limbo period. (between undergrad education and grad school)

throughout history, art has had an uncanny ability to reflect the culture of any given period. since most culture is born out of some kind of despair, i want this magazine to be a mouthpiece for our generation to say what we need to say. i really feel obligated to a rennaisance led by twenty somethings in a city that desperately neeeds an artistic uplifting.

if anyone has ever tasted art's ability to redefine a moment in history, stirring action from complacency and ownership from subjecthood, (s)he is obligated to stay vigilant for the sake of creativity. with his/her medium, the artist has the power to expose the viewer to something as vulnerable as personal experience. as these experiences are made to witness through theatre, poetry, performance, film, painting, drawing, graphics, music, et. the audience can perhaps have a shared experience with the artist.

although these shared experiences probably will never lead to mass car pooling, or the whole city of dallas holding hands, we will let it be known to the world that art exists here. by asserting ourselves as an art conscious city, we express our identities, which are ever burgeoning and evolving in DFW. if we express ourselves, we can atleast begin a social discourse to better understand where we're all coming from.