BUTUMag Issue 1 "The City Needs Aliens"

BUTUmag is a project spawned from a desire to tell stories outside the contemporary; its entire ethos is rooted in the aim to bring fresh eyes to works, artists and narratives just beyond the surface. This is where the direction for the first issue, “The City Needs Aliens” comes from. The term Alien is often used to disparage, separate and alienate groups of people, creating division between the established and the perceived interloper. Instead, we have chosen to reclaim the word, using it to celebrate voices who live and work outside their native environment, through a dissection of their origins and their contributions to their adopted cultures (or cities). This magazine makes a conscious effort to reframe conversations about where art comes from, who is making it and where it’s going and to what ends. These conversations can often be deeply institutional and conceptual, having been so thoroughly obscured by intellectualism and tertiary analysis that they exclude the most important member of the dialogue, the audience. BUTUmag is in opposition to this perspective, presenting itself as not above the audience, but as another member of it, whatever that audience may be.