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MAGNIFIED KAJET JOURNAL This autumn marks the 30t
h anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent fall of communism across Eastern Europe. Born in Bucharest, Kajet Journal emanated out of an urgent need to provide a platform for Eastern European narratives. Petricā Mogos and Laura Naum, its creators, are presenting a fresh, authentic and challenging voice on Eastern Europe. words Michael McDermott – Where did the idea for Kajet Journal emerge from? Can you tell us a little bit more about your backgrounds and roles as ‘Founding Mother’ and ‘Founding Father’? Is it fair to assess you as radicals? The idea to start an editorial project about Eastern Europe came to us while we were doing our studies abroad, out of a certain kind of nostalgia, perhaps even a sense of alienation or displacement. I (Laura) come from an Economics background, but I’ve always been interested in the cultural sector, in the arts, in the ethnic melting pot that characterises Eastern Europe, in the cultural politics of minorities, but also in representational issues: how Otherness or the Other is represented, or more often misrepresented in contemporary society. So, I have managed to combine both while studying Cultural Economics. Petrica did a research Masters in Sociology and he is primarily interested as a writer and researcher in archives, issues of marginality, precarity and periphery, in marginals and outsiders and their relationship with post-socialism. We divide most tasks that running a magazine in the 21st century entails (except graphic design) and we are fortunate to say that it has worked well so far. The radical component is a pretty flexible notion that we try to maintain and stimulate further, although we have not been involved in any sort of political/ activist ventures so far. It is mostly a discursive radicalism, perhaps, by choosing to focus on critical theorists and thinkers that find themselves on the margins of mainstream academia. – Kajet Journal is a marriage of the academic and artistic. How did you approach this in terms of considerations and decisions made? That is true, we consciously seek to deconstruct Eastern Europe by merging academic means of expression with artistic or perhaps more informal tools. That is because one of our most important objectives is to leave some space for critical explorations of Eastern Europe to emerge. At the same time, we try to shy away from the rigidity of academia and frame strong theoretical standpoints though more accessible overtones. – You have explored Eastern Europe through the prism of communities, utopias and struggle in your three issues to date. In your editorials, you speak of how the region has doomed itself to “decades of stagnating, catching up, and forever emerging”, how it suffers from the “crisis of post-socialism” and how your struggle is “internationalist and collective in shape and form”. So, if we were to delve into the editorial vision of the project, we have to account that each issue is evocative of the socio-political and cultural realities that dominate our time and region. With each issue, we deal with a different theme, basically an overarching subject, what we like to call a timely and timeless topic. Timely because we choose subjects that pertain to the contemporary world, are relevant to our present times; and timeless because our subject matters are chosen in order to be reflected upon and read at other times as well; in this sense, we seek to give an archival value to our publication. Our first issue (communities) was made during the migrant crisis, the second one (utopias) during the May 1968 commemorations that truly revolutionised the way we look at utopias and utopianism, third issue (struggle) under the premise of three decades of post-socialism. – What is the new futurology of Eastern Europe? Although we talk a lot about the past, we do so in order to think more efficiently about the future. For this we believe in the necessity of a future-oriented kind of internationalism, one where a community of struggle across borders can be constituted, one that goes beyond Eastern Europe. Our future, we like to believe, needs to be constructed with indignation, solidarity, persistence and systematic planning. – What interesting connections and talking points have emerged from the publication of Kajet Journal? Our most interesting interconnected activity has to be this sort of zine-production workshop that we have given several times already. Done in collaboration with our friend from Choriso Press, we show young designers, writers and artists how a zine can be made in a matter of hours. It is a pretty empowering feeling to know that your thoughts and ideas can be disseminated so quickly! – In an essay ‘The Age of Nothingness’ which Petricā contributes, you expound about how “Capitalism has fragmented us into self-contained, individualistic beads, deeply eroding our ability to solidarise and act,” and how only “intelligent planning can save us from a decaying future”. How do you see this being applied and achieved? That is the question that we are trying to answer with each issue somehow. Above all the future should be about thinking of each other. – This winter marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and also the execution of Ceaușescu in your home country of Romania, is it fair to say you feel 68