[ New Moment, Magazine for visual culture, nos. 1-2 / 1994, SMB-BSB Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising Balcans, Belgrade ]

After a two years' break and nearly a year's work on the first issue, a new series of the visual culture magazine Moment has been launched. With the prefix New in the title, with a new team of editors and a new publisher, it also now has complete autonomy, which makes possible a very specific concept, and, in these parts, an easily recognizable identity.

A fragment from the editorial in the first issue of New Moment heralds a textual practice not common to magazines of similar format, of which there is now an increasing number in Belgrade (Projekat, Eterna, Vreme Umetnosti, Nase ideje). The above-mentioned fragment is a quote from Benjamin, and speaks of the "end of criticism", a concept later developed by modern French thinkers. The application of this concept leads to a position of confrontation between an "objective" and "unbiased" approach to art and culture and a more direct, marketing-oriented one, between a "free game space" and a space of danger, between distance and proximity, between criticism and advertising. The magazine's concept is presented through confrontation of the two paradigms of so-called "art criticism", wherein the first paradigm, that of a distanced objective judgement, appears as outdated or inapplicable, or as shattered by new media into fragments, sketches, impressions, just as human experience (inlcuding the experience of a critic and an aesthete) from the time of Baudellaire and Proust has been losing ground in a series of shocks set up by everyday life (which is precisely the subject of Benjamin's essays). The editorial which starts with a fragment introduces the fragmentary technique of writing, while the author of the fragment, to whom a thematic block is devoted in the first issue, the author who disliked the "jargon of pimps", as the instrumentary of the technical terms of his "profession" appeared to him, introduces the reader to a register of words, a complex of problems and an approach which are far from being those customary for the discipline in question.

The paradigm thus adopted is not the paradigm of mirrors according to which classic art criticism (as well as artistic practice) functioned, but the paradigm of the screen. New Moment sets itself up as a screen which "registers certain changes in the world of art, theory, marketing, business, communications."., as something completely virtual, something offering us an image which is "too close to be true (to have the proximity of the stage), too far to be false (to have the magic of the artistic)".

Introducing an element of advertising into the conventional space of the critical text, which in this case resembles the usual conception of art criticism very little, perforce brings up the objection that the magazine is over-designed and over-aestheticized, as well as that it uses the iconography and semiotics of the type which dominated in the works of Russian constructivism. From the point of view of the criticism usually practiced in these parts, this is mere playing around with the visual component of the magazine, while from the point of view of a magazine which sets itself up as a screen, text is necessarily also seen as a collection of graphemes which just as necessarily participate in the visual organization of space in the magazine. This game is therefore revealed as a Derridian game with the parergonal, while "Advertising" is introduced as a permanent department, in which article titles even appear as questions such as "Where to invest next year?". Possibly the most typical illustration of the magazine's editorial policy is the obituary of Federico Fellini, which deals not with his most acclaimed, best, or most widely known films, but with his ads, which he made precisely for Saatchi and Saatchi, the company which now publishes New Moment.

The proximity which is the magazine's point of departure, and the virtuality into which it draws the reader, offer the local audience a possibility to become acquainted with the above-mentioned new paradigm of critical work on material which is directly linked to the environment in which it is taking place, giving at the same time a good overview of the local scene, both artistic and critical, which is good merchandise in the information market. In order to make access to the foreign market possible, the editors decided to have part of the contents of the second issue translated into English. On the other hand, in order to please both markets equally, the theme of the second issue (Robinson Crusoe) is defined as a metaphor which dominates in this country as model in art, economy and theory alike.

The value of this magazine, as well as its position, both on the local scene and elsewhere, will be judged by its influence on the diffusion of the screen paradigm, as well as on the spreading of both textual and artistic production which will join high professionalism with easy and unburdened genres. Furthermore, this concept of an autonomous magazine can in the future be the model for any sovereign publishing gesture with no links to official cultural institutions, as it is completely independent of any ruling cultural policy. This kind of sovereignty has enabled New Moment to meet the highest professional standards of international magazine production.

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