FROM THE PUBLISHER

Esopus is a twice-yearly arts magazine featuring fresh, unmediated perspectives on the contemporary cultural landscape from artists, writers, filmmakers, playwrights, photographers, architects, designers, musicians, and other creative professionals. Each issue Includes artists' projects, critical writing, fiction, interviews, and a CD of specially commissioned music. Its mission is to provide an accessible, non-commercial space in which creative people and the public can connect in meaningful ways.

Esopus 3 includes artists' projects by Andrea Dezsó, Jenny Holzer, and Mark Keffer; a removable poster of 100 frames from Bruce Conner's 1966 film Breakaway (along with artist Doug Aitken's appreciation of the film), photographs of Marcel Duchamp, Franz Kline, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, and others by the late photographer Marvin Lazarus (accompanied by Lazarus' journal entries from the 60s recounting each sitting); a new "Dear Sissy" letter-monologue by playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis; Alex Shear's Object Lesson #3 (foldout poster); an interview with (and bonus musical track from) acclaimed indie-rock band the Wrens, and much more. The theme of the issue's CD is "Product Displacement," for which musicians Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3), Jad Fair (Half Japanese), Scott McCloud (Girls vs. Boys), New York jazz/scat singer Connie MacNamee, and The Baptist Generals, among others, have "embedded" advertising jingles or slogans in original songs.

Esopus magazine is a thing of lavish, eccentric beauty, less flipped through than stared at, forcing readers to reconcile their expectations of what a magazine is with the strange artifact in their laps.