Welcome to volume two of Variant, marking the re-launch of the magazine after a lengthy absence. It must be something of a rarity for a magazine which was ‘killed off’ to get the opportunity to discuss its demise; just like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn we have turned up at our own funeral.
Firstly we would like to thank all the many readers who wrote to the Scottish Arts Council in protest against their decision. We have tried to summarise the numerous issues brought up in some of the responses in the form of a letters page, which has the additional function of providing a link with the past and orienting our readership with the focus of the magazine. It will suffice to say here that none of the carefully reasoned arguments put forward met with anything like an appropriate response.

We have resurfaced at a crucial yet not altogether unfamiliar point, which in the interim period of our absence has witnessed this tendency to openly and routinely consign independent and critical voices to silence, developed into something approaching policy. From who’s viewpoint will the history of the last two years in the arts in Scotland be constructed, will it be from diverse sources? Just as Variant’s critical function had been defined as an urgent and diagnostic one, offered from a position of autonomy from vested interests (rather than operating as PR for the institutional art machine) it was targeted for closure. Was it really such an irony? It is our aim to carry forward Variant as a project with or without funding. As stated in the last editorial: “For the establishment of a critical, engaging and diverse culture, lateral links need to be made across media, and opinions need to be expressed and exposed.”

Is it unreasonable to assume that, earlier than in any other industrial country, British governments began to make the avoidance of crises their first priority? That even before the era of full sufferage they had discovered how to exercise the arts of public management; extending the states power to assess, educate, bargain with, appease or constrain the demands of the electorate? That they created in Britain a political Gleichschaltung, and a financial Anstalt, subtle and loose enough to be resented only by ‘deviants’ and ‘minorities’; and in which the challenges of Conservatism and Socialism were alike dispersed in a common reformist policy justified by an unreal assessment of historical tradition?

With comparatively limited resources we can sustain a much needed forum for debate based in Glasgow, which can move through the forces exerted by the administration of the arts in Scotland. It is our perception that the current climate seeks to stifle any deviation from the cultural packaging and re-packaging of a benign culture of entertainment. This imagined utopia, this “Disneyland without the rides,” is a product of the repressive prioritisation of public funds which has become social Darwinism run wild. It is our intention to challenge this emerging culture of denial and its attendant language of competition, through debate and critical analysis.

In this, the re-launch issue, we have taken the decision not to put a specific type of exhibition review to the forefront, but rather take the opportunity to focus on more critical/theoretical issues. Our initial plan is to produce four magazines in the space of a year, each one expanding the possibilities of what Variant has previously achieved. Variant has always been part of, and aimed to represent ideas that are refused the hospitality of the would be ‘mainstream,’ which itself represents and replicates the ideological chastity of a tiny elite. With the new format comes a wider distribution (possibly the highest of any comparable magazine in the UK) and a wider readership; also the magazine is free!