ASPEN. The Multimedia Magazine in a Box MACBA Collection

The editor Phyllis Johnson, who used to spend her winters in Aspen, Colorado, understood that the great spirit of experimentation that defined the art scene in the sixties demanded a new form of presentation. This is how ASPEN. The Multimedia Magazine in a Box was born in 1965. It was the first ever three-dimensional magazine. Subscribers received a box containing material for reading, listening, smelling, observing. John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Marcel Duchamp, Yoko Ono, Robert Rauschenberg, The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol, among others, collaborated in the project until its demise in 1971. Following the tradition of Marcel Duchamp’s boîte-en-valise, or ‘portable museum’, ASPEN is considered a masterpiece of experimental art and institutional critique.