Loukia Richards

In the midst of the pandemic, visual artists Christoph Ziegler and Loukia Richards launched a triannual English-language magazine that seeks to trace new artistic and societal trends, providing “outsiders” with a platform, and spotlighting the importance of the applied arts in contemporary artistic creation. Issue #1 of SMCK Magazine for Independent Artists (www.smck.org) – which took its name from the word “smack”, the sound a punch makes in comics, and “schmuck”, the German word for jewelry – was released in August 2020, and took the body as its editorial theme.

Firm in their belief that Covid-19 is not having a wholly harmful effect on the arts but rather also offering up opportunities for innovation and the promotion of art, the magazine’s two co-publishers decided to share their experiences of managing the broader crisis facing artists (both identity and financial) since certain art disciplines can provide some interesting answers.

Thanks in part to being featured on a series of online platforms – Klimt02 (Spain), Res artis (Holland / Australia), Maja Houtman Newsletter (Holland), and blog.craft2eu.net (Germany) – SMCK enjoyed some 10,000 unique site visits and 100,000 page reads online in August and September 2020.

SMCK is a small and flexible outfit that is know-how and specialized practice intensive rather than capital intensive. All design, content, and production matters go through the pair. Christoph Ziegler, who has extensive experience when it comes to graphic design and new media, is the magazine’s publisher. With 25-years of experience as a journalist, Loukia Richards is the editor-in-chief. SMCK is a cross-disciplinary arts and communications project, a continuation of other projects they have undertaken over the last decade, in which art has served as a vehicle for political messages aimed at the general public.