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DAMn magazine

Regular collaborations 2008-2020

I met Walter Bettens, co-founder of DAMn magazine, in Barcelona in 2008, because he was a fan and friend of my boyfriend´s jazz band and they both arranged for meeting there. We hit it off immediately and I started collaborating on the spot. When we moved to New York a few months later I continued feeding them on New York´s Art and Architecture.

I have grown a lot with them as a writer, and I am very grateful for the 12 years I have been writing for them and how much freedom of choice I have been given. Thanks to DAMn I have met many of my favorite artists and architects, who have taught me in turn so much as well.

 

I have to confess that I write to learn. New York was my secondary education. It´s great to be paid to learn, research, read and meeting great people, instead of paying for it 😊 It is funny because with time, I had more things to say and maybe (not less to learn) but I had things to say. It is great to be paid to give your opinion as well 😊

 

I started with interviews only, since my English was not amazing, to put it mildly... I still remember my ex (now) revising my firsts articles, and how much he hated it 😊 I think he refused after the second he did. It was me and google from then on.

 

Thank God of the amazingly patient copy editor Emma at DAMn… God sent.

 

At some point, the founders split up (a miracle they managed to stay so many years working together since they were married and split up when DAMn was born). I have never met Siegrid to date, but I did decide to stay on board with her and the new team.

 

I adore Walter still though. He is a rebel like me 😊 And He gave me this amazing opportunity I will never forget.

 

When the new DAMn came out, Siegrid was very kind and let me start writing essays!! So brave 😊 I had been already in NY for 8 or 9 years and my English was much improved. I have enjoyed my contributions a lot in this second chapter of the magazine. They were much more personal and long… They were so patients with that as well 😊

 

Turns out I have a lot to say!!

 

Who knows maybe we will work together again…. I only have good feelings and the utmost respect for all of them.

 

Project Gallery

Idée Fixe  is a Transdisciplinary Studio of Art and Architecture, run by Cristina Guadalupe Galván.

If in a website you normally find finished objects and products to share, what we are sharing here are more ideas – tested, developed and lived -- and their processes, that in many instances ended up happily physical. The creative process is about experimentation and the life that goes with it. The life and the people.

While building this site I came across a quote that explained it to me much better, by architects Josep Ferrando & Marta Poch, for their Quaderns d´Arquitectura, issue 273, THE THINKING TRADE:

      In a world dominated by images of the finished object and the immediacy of access to multimedia content, this issue of Quaderns sets out to reflect on the role of the architect –by means of their working processes, of the working methods (…) leaving the image of the built project on the background.

For artist Sol LeWitt, the process was also the work:

      The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. (...) It is the process of conception and realization with which the artist is concerned. 

Architect Josep Maria Sostres said something similar:

      The project, obviously as a mental conception, as a will to form, has a sovereignty, it has an internal power that must be imposed.

So this archive-website of Idee-Fixe, records more these ideas, processes and in many instances the collaborations that made them possible.

It´s about THE LIFE OF IDEAS.

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