Paper Trail

 

MARY-KATE AND ASHLEY OLSEN, WOULD WIFE, CHOSEN BY CHRISTINE ZHU, ISSUE #010. 

Part magazine, part collective diary, and part archive, the art journal Packet has been resisting publishing definitions since it started in 2012. “For the longest time I was like, just don’t call it a zine,” says co-editor and co-founder Chris Nosenzo. Alongside Nicole Reber and Christine Zhu, the Brooklyn-based team publishes Packet once every two weeks. Often, a miscellany of contributions results in a hodgepodge of photographs, interviews, poetry, paintings, illustrations, screenshots, collage, and everything in between. It’s all reproduced on printer paper and bound with simple metal fastenings, lending it an “Office Depot aesthetic,” as Nosenzo describes it. To stay unpredictable, every 12 weeks (or for six issues) a chosen artist begins a “cover residency,” during which time they’re responsible for the content on the covers. While Packet has been growing in influence—with MoMA recently acquiring their archive—it still knows how to have fun. The trio has a joke-themed issue in the works.