Tourist Magazine

TOURIST magazine: Why was Fibra Casa Editora born?
Flavio Affonso: I started Fibra a few months ago with no particular reason at all. It was just like a sneeze, you don’t know where it comes from and you can’t stop it, even if you close your mouth your body shakes and your conscious state changes while you sneeze and it feels good to do it. Today I think the beginning of Fibra was a natural process, I was wondering about what I was doing everyday and wanted to start a personal project between different forces: less rational and more instinctive, far from business and closer to imagination, less professional and more amateur. At that time I was drawing and writing Aimanville and it was the first Fibra printed publication. I wanted to invite people to an open and already working publishing house.

Now I consider Fibra as a playroom to learn about things while I’m doing those things and to share the results. It’s also a way to express myself and be open to connect with so many people doing wonderful works out there to see if we can do something together. I see Fibra like an experiment, because it’s moved by things that really interest me things that can make me tremble at least one sensitive fiber and I don’t know where it is going to lead, I’m more focused on the ride rather than a certain destination.

TM: Where is home?
FA: I think there is a large amount of things should be present to name somewhere a home, but taking away everything I would say home is where sooner or later my loved wife, my son and I meet each other. It can be this apartment where we live, a car besides a river in the middle of nowhere on a trip, a tree we choose to meet at if someone gets lost at a concert. Home is where we choose to be and it can be everywhere. I feel more like a tourist rather than a town based guy, I was born away from where I’m living now, and every time we find a nice place to share our lives on holidays can be home anyway if we chose that place. Home is where the love grows between my family.

TM: Where did you grow up?
FA: I grew up in a smaller city than Buenos Aires with a smaller population, called Olavarría, where we almost all knew each other. A city with a lot of blue sky, where the buildings can be counted with one hand’s fingers, where we ride on bicycles from the morning till the dinner time, we used to climb to the trees, and later we loved to skate across the city, it’s a city crossed by a river and surrounded by countryside full of animals, lands of childhood adventures. A city where the shops close at the snap time and the parents go to their houses to have lunch with their kids. The hometown where I was born was the best place for me to have a childhood, and the best place to start knowing about girls as a teenager.

TM: Who are you, what makes you happy?
FA: I’m 35 years now, I came to BA at 18 to study journalism at University, I lived with my brother and friends in apartments at several city neighborhoods, I loved to get lost to know the city better when I came here, I have always had to work to live here, this is very usual in Latin-America to work while you study, and it’s very usual for me to go far from my parents house to live alone and study, so I had to learn how to be a bit self-dependent.
Some years ago I found the real love of my life with the girl I’m married to, that makes me happy, when I eat a tangerine and throw the seeds in a pot and then the plant grows I am happy, when I feel complicit with a stranger at the subway, when I arrive home and my child comes running to hold me, when I arrange to meet Maca in some place and I see she’s coming, when I start to draw something but it becomes something different, I could write a lot about the moments I feel happy, but the thing makes me most happy till now is to be the father of my 6 year old son.

TM: Are you an artist?
FA: Not at all, I like drawing, taking pictures, writing little stories, making paper insects, or building a turtle wood-house for my son’s turtle, but it’s only an intimate pleasure, I don’t enjoy those things once they are done, I really enjoy while I’m doing it. I don’t really know what it is to be an artist nowadays, I see myself as a communicator or like an enthusiastic maker who wants to share publications, talks with people I want to know better and things I found interesting.

TM: Do you design your own publications?
FA: Well, design is maybe a bigger word than the work I do, I’m an amateur designer if you want to, I order elements to create a narrative path to somewhere, or to create a certain system to share a content, I really enjoy creating the publications, but I need more skills to call it design, but I love the way things are done so far, I like to learn how to design while I’m doing it, I have an idea of how I will like to see it and I try to do it. What do you think about the publication’s design?

TM: Is FIBRA your full-time occupation?
FA: I could say Fibra is my full free-time occupation, I’m also a father, a husband, a friend, a partner… My full time occupation is working at El jardín, a communication agency we founded with co-workers 8 years ago. But I would love to dedicate more time to Fibra. I find myself thinking and generating Fibra projects more often every time and I need to sleep sometimes, because I use a lot of nights to set up and run the different projects.

TM: Which do you prefer, photography, illustration or painting?
FA: I don’t really know. If you point up to my throat with a knife asking for an answer I would say I prefer a drawing to share an idea and photography to let you get inside of an instant sensitive mood. But I do not prefer one in particular. I would say I prefer my own drawings than my own photographs.

TM: You describe FIBRA as 'an independent publishing house with focus on hunting and collecting fiction moments on everyday life'. Which is your favorite moment that you have collected so far?
FA: I describe Fibra as focused on hunting and collecting fiction moments because by “fiction moments” I mean those feelings, ideas or works that can make something new, something that didn’t exist after that moment.
I’m searching for fiction moments that can make real things be born and breathe and interact in human relations. I have collected beautiful moments running Fibra so far, I was able to see the world through Ana Kraš’ eyes, I could understand the chaos Carl Hammoud finds, I could connect with Vincent Moon’s search, I was able to see the fascinating differences Sebastián Lahera finds on the letterpress process. I feel grateful by all the comments I receive about Cíclope issues from photographers… I’m a very optimistic and hopeful person, but if you want the best moment I have collected so far, it was when my son was born and we looked on each other’s eyes for the very first time. All these moments become something from nothing, so I’m grateful I can enjoy those moments.

TM: Do you think you will ever stop hunting and gathering?
FA: I don’t think so, I will always search for something, but as I’m always changing, I will always be searching for something to do. I like to think about everything like in a continuous changing process in which I am involved. Las Vidas, (back seat life project) for example, is a project about written stories of different situations heard or seen on public spaces, and when I publish the first one as an invitation, a lot started to come, that is a clue not to stop hunting. I will print an issue of all the text that arrived to my mail.

TM: Tell us about Ciclope.
FA: Cíclope is a quarterly online magazine, and I would love to print it. Each issue is about a theme that I want to explore in relation with the participants. First number was about “I was there” and it became a short and childish storytelling of 64 pages about a ghost. Second number was about “You are so wild” and finally it’s a journal of notes of the student involved with Jarvis Cocker from Pulp song. I’m really glad almost 5000 people have already seen these two issues. The third number was about “These are my friends and this is me” and I’m currently editing this issue, I haven’t even told the selected photographers yet, but I feel very happy because I found the gate to this number, It’s a great feeling to find something that moves you forward on each number. It will be online at the middle of November. That’s a singular point I love about editing Cíclope, it changes all the time till it’s upload and online, it’s an ever-changing process, and I get surprised by the turns each issue does. I try to tell a story in each Cíclope, as I said up there, I try to build a tiny little narrative path from the cover to the end. The current open call is about “XXX The nude skin issue” and the only think I know is that it won’t be hard porn, soft porn maybe, but I need pictures.

TM: How do you make your selections for the final magazine?
FA: The submissions were rising from the first number, and I’m glad for that reason, I feel honored for such great photographers sending those pictures, I also invite to join a lot of pictures. I receive like 50 images a day and I try to update the cue with open mind. How do I make the final selection? It’s hard, I watch and watch the pool everyday till I start to find a leading criterion or concept, emotional most of the times, that will lead the issue in certain way, after that, I know which fits and which doesn’t.

TM: Are there any photographers who particularly stand out for you, either unknown or well known?
FA: Yes there are a lot of adorable people doing such great pictures, I can tell you the first I can remember, they always show me something that moves me in a way or another, I like what they see and the way they show what they are watching: Andrés Lehman, Fernando Mariani, Ignacio Parodi, Alina Schwarcz, Germán Paley, Ana Armendariz, Mariana Pacho Lopez, Ana Kraš of course, Marlon Kowalski, Fenkee Zhang, Li Hui, Jian Wei Lim, Aëla Labbe, and each one in a particular way.

TM: Do you believe anybody can take a beautiful photograph, or that it is a gift only some people possess?
FA: Of course anybody can make it, I think beauty is a standard that changes as time goes on. Where, when, why and how someone takes a picture builds the beauty of the moment and the picture is only a small fraction of that beauty. I think beauty is not only an aesthetic question, beauty also means truth, power, love, peace, orgasm, fidelity, dare to do what you fear, real beauty gathers a lot of powerful meanings that can be seen on a picture even if the light is not well registered.

TM: You use some poetry in Ciclope. Is poetry another of your loves?
FA: Yes, definitely. I was thinking to write you a poem as an answer, but I will let Matsuo Basho speak: “In front of the white chrysanthemums, the scissors hesitate a moment”. Now you see it’s hard to translate a poem even if it’s well written, that’s why I stopped doing it on Cíclope! Ha ha.

TM: What are your thoughts on the publishing industry at the moment?
FA: I think self-publishing and independent publishing has always had the beautiful job of updating the content to be shared, and to move the industry to the next level. When mass media promotes new content they know there is no risk in talking about that, but independent publishers have had to always take that risk.

TM: What are your plans for FIBRA in the future?
FA: Yesterday was the first time I saw the drawings for one of the Sponge Collection editions I’m going to publish as soon as I can, and it’s the second volume, the first one is a beautifully written storytelling, so I think the next month’s will smell offset. As for future plans, I would like to have a new site to suit the different needs of each section, I would love to print Cíclope, more interviews to better know the person behind the work, and I would like to design a printed publication about those talks. I would like to start some projects to make Fibra economically self-sufficient, I would like to achieve international distribution, a contributor also, but who knows what mutant enthusiasm will lead my sensitive fibers tomorrow!

casafibra.com.ar
Submit your photographs to Cicople


Seren Adams