Highway Issue 2

Our second issue begins with a profound and inspiring conversation with Israel Martínez, a remarkable sound artist whose work is recorded amid Mexico’s on-going Narcowars. Since 2010, the Mexican sound artist has been reflecting, recording, documenting and exhibiting the symbolic, personal, financial, legal, civic and human costs of Mexico’s War on Drugs. Martinez’ sound and installation work has been exhibited around the world and select works are in two of Latin America’s most notable art collections. This is Martínez first substantial interview in English and includes material printed for the first time. Samples of sound work by Martínez accompany the conversation in our App edition and will be posted online soon.

In the editor’s letter of our first issue, the words “seemingly cancelled times” were used to gesture towards an interview which has been on our mind for some time. We present a straight-forward, long-form, radical interview with the music writer, culture theorist and teacher, Mark Fisher. Fisher has garnered praise for Capitalist Realism and Ghosts of My Life as one can read in an accolade from 2014: “After the brilliance of Capitalist Realism, Ghosts Of My Life confirms Mark Fisher’s role as our greatest and most trusted navigator of these times out of joint, through all their frissons and ruptures, among all their apparitions and spectres, past, present and future. — David Peace, author of the Red Riding Quartet and Red or Dead.” The interview discusses music and mainstream culture, Popular Modernism, post-punk, “lost futures,” the intersections of music and politics and the borrowed phrase, “the slow cancellation of the future.” Fisher elaborates on select excerpts from his [radical] writing in addition to his personal life and career as a writer in this “life with music.”

As algorithms increasingly play a role in our life with music, this issue profiles the on-going and open-source Dadabots project initiated by two computer programmers and musicians. An exclusive to the magazine, the interview presents a portrait of these non-human bot “musicians” which explore and present the intriguing possibilities of generative music and autonomy across social media platforms.