Print’s not dead – at least not in China, says Phil Tinari, high priest of Chinese contemporary art and chief editor of Leap, China’s newest bilingual art and lifestyle magazine.

How did you get involved in this project?

They sounded me out in November last year and I very quickly met with Thomas [Shao], the CEO of Modern Media Group and we formally signed a contract and started work by December 10. In less than two months we have got together the concept, design, positioning, publicity and a whole first issue of 225 pages.

What were your first thoughts?

I’ve been a magazine aficionado for a long time and I’ve always liked to imagine Chinese contemporary art as a sphere that was wide enough to have a magazine about it that was also relevant to people outside it.  It’s a funny thing to be embarking on a print magazine in 2010 and it’s only really possible at this level in China right now. Having that said, if you’re doing a magazine today you’re thinking right away about what sensibility the magazine stands for. I mean, Monocle is the classic example. In this day and age print is not really there to disseminate information any more but to advertise a concept.

You have a lot of art magazines in China that are lifestyle led but this is kind of going the other way – a lifestyle company trying to do something serious about art, and because of the existing client relationships the company has – the car companies and the liquor companies – it gives them the opportunity to advertise to a new market.

Is that the motivation?

Not the motivation but that’s why we think it’s tenable. The point is that we don’t have to rely on the gallery world to survive and we can allow ourselves the liberty to take an honest critical stance. I mean, you look at the rate card of any art magazine in China and the cover is on there. The company does a lot of that kind of stuff with some of its other publications, but Thomas and I came to an understanding that the only value an art magazine has is its perceived neutrality and that that generates value rather than erodes it.

Will it be exclusively China focused?

Yes and no. The reviews section covers exhibitions that take place in Greater China, which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong or which somehow relate to it – so, the Asia-Pacific trend in Australia or a show by Xu Zhen in New York. It is focused in that way but we don’t have a narrow definition of China. I also don’t hold a particular fondness for an exclusive notion of Chinese contemporary art that is based on some sort of cultural or national definition.

I wrote a preface for the magazine, sort of a manifesto, and there was one line about how we’re not art nationalists – disavowing that kind of very simple nationalism that you sometimes see. It’s a complex position, but then we’re not really sure where Asia is, which is why we’re not calling this an Asian magazine. I actually think there’s a lot more connection between what happens in Beijing and New York and what happens in Beijing and Tokyo – those paths that are paradoxically much better travelled.

There’s also a lot of plurality inside China. Often we’re talking about the Beijing and Shanghai art scenes but another approach is to look at the situation in Shenzhen. We have a piece in this issue about the Inheritance Project, which is a small, pop-up non-profit space there. I’m trying to be ecumenical not just geographically but kind of beyond straight art, so we also have a big feature in the first issue on a company called Crystal CG, which is an architectural rendering firm from Beijing. It’s an example of image production that is relevant on a number of social and cultural levels, and while it’s not actually “fine art” it’s still visual and cultural. So, these are the sorts of boundaries that I’m interested in pushing.

Have you discussed censorship?

One thing that’s kind of interesting is that you don’t see really great, subtle English coming from the official state press because it’s all written by people with degrees from Bei Wai [Beijing Foreign Studies University] who are not actually native speakers. This is to take it back to a very pedestrian level, but we have such a rich language that, you know, I think that there are lots of ways of expressing oneself.  The idea that there hasn’t been a magazine from China with an interesting, punchy writing style is almost more problematic. But, of course, I’m very much aware of the complexities of the context we’re dealing with. The thing is the stakes are low because it’s art. A lot of times the harder constraints come from the market itself in a very direct way or from a parent company or something like that. I’ve felt quite free and empowered to pursue a sensibility that I was comfortable with in terms of the editorial structure and stance.

Who is your ideal reader?

Our ideal writer and reader is someone who is equally comfortable in both languages, but it’s a number of types –  it’s the graduate of Goldsmiths who came back to open her own gallery; it’s the curator or the designer or the cultural entrepreneur type who’s on a plane all the time, who maybe doesn’t live in China but wants to keep abreast of the situation, and then it could also be the kid at the Foreign Languages Institute up in Haidian or the sculpture professor at Chonqing who only comes to the big city twice a year but who can read this magazine and feel like he’s part of the scene, you know, like people who read The New Yorker in Iowa.

The idea of the ascendance of the creative class is very ideologically correct in China right now because it ties into ideas of ascending the value chain, and that’s sort of lifestyle driven. There have been a lot of magazines in China that have tried to capture that idea materially. What we’re trying to do is put our finger on the sensibility of the times.

Leap is published every other month and is priced at RMB 50. See Phil Tinari’s blog at http://philiptinari.com/.