Strategies of Displacement in Artists’ Periodicals from the 1970s: «Neon de Suro», «Schmuck», «Commonpress», and «La Città di Riga»

During the 1960s and 1970s, artists’ periodicals flourished as a new artistic medium. Strikingly, artists behind these alternative publications often claimed a peripheral position, assuming a geographical anchorage far from the capitals and main artistic centres. This paper addresses how the notion of periphery manifests itself in four European artists’ periodicals published during the 1970s. It will focus on their distribution strategies, their ideological positioning, the works they disseminated, and the artists’ writings and statements they featured. First, the analysis of three European alternative periodicals — Neon de Suro (Spain, 1975–82), Schmuck Magazine (England, 1972–76), and Commonpress (Poland, 1977–91) — will highlight how a peripheral position far from the capitals and the main artistic poles could become a strength, even a real editorial strategy. Such preoccupations were not, however, reserved for artists outside the official art scene: the question of periphery also found its place, albeit in different ways, in more institutionalized periodicals. This will be evident in the case of the Italian periodical La Città di Riga (1976–77), the focus of the second part of this paper, which negotiated the idea of centre and periphery right from its name. Through the case studies of these four periodicals and the analysis of coeval theoretical contributions, this paper aims to shape an elastic notion of the relationship between centre and periphery, at the same time derived from and applicable to the experimental editorial strategies of artists’ periodicals from the 1970s.