An artist paints so that he will have something to look at; at times he must write so that he will also have something to read.
- Barnett Newman¹

So this is it, the first issue of our new collaborative venture in creating this journal. Quite a project when you think about it - three editors roaming different parts of the earth, two offices in cities 5,000 miles apart. This is either the future of arts journalism or a soon-doomed exercise in hubris. The excitement of the idea is in that uncertainty. Can we bring our various stories into close enough rapport to enable us to produce a viable, on-going discussion that will throw some useful light onto current art practice? The challenge will be both institutional and personal. CalArts and Central St Martins have a decent amount in common, but there are huge differences also - differences in scale, financial structure, even academic calendar. We'll push past all that, not only because we want to, but also because we must; for the bald truth is, it is near impossible to find anything interesting to read about current art. So much of what is out there is badly written, either clogged with undigested academic theory or filled with unformed enthusiasm, or worse, unexamined spite. In short, we have a mission, and that is to find us something good to read, even if, as Barnett Newman noted, it means we sometimes have to do the job ourselves.

For me this