Odiseo

Odiseo
Folch Studio
6 Feb 20

On February 6th we celebrated a new event from The Magazine Club with Folch Studio. Albert Folch and Rafa Martinez, editors of Odiseo magazine, came to Madrid to join us for an insightful conversation on the occasion of the opening of the Erotica Papers exhibition.

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Odiseo is a small, bi-annual hardcover publication. Moving away from the tradition of magazine mass consumption, this is a publication to be appreciated and read without pressure. It deserves quality time invested into its content. Odiseo is an exploration of new ways of doing and seeing. Combining erotic imagery with insightful texts, and crossing the boundaries between books and magazines, it offers a different vision on eroticism, going beyond gender, seeking seduction through bodies and abstraction.

Odiseo
Spain
Since 2013
Biannual (2 per year)
170 x 245 mm
87 pages

“Deep down the line, I believe that publishing is one of the most powerful and revolutionary tools that we have at our disposal. With a publication of 500 or 1000 copies, you can influence global thinking, that is why it has a lot of impacts. It is always said that people do not read, but maybe there is 1% of people who read who are very influential, so for us getting there was more powerful than selling many copies or selling advertising”
—Rafa Martinez

MV: While we were chatting before the event, you told me why you decided to use hardcover from the second issue and the wish for the content not to expire when the following issue was released. It is a way of honoring the content and the work that goes into making each issue.
RM: Yes, in the end, we try to find certain coherence, not only in terms of editing but also for the viability of the project, and we realized that if we gave it a book-finish, it would not perish so easily in stores... the reality of the content attached to that logic was different, and if we added a hardcover the relationship itself of the object with the reader was another one. That idea opened up a world for us, also because we actually wanted to focus on sales and not on advertising insertion. And that was the origin of the hardcover... At first, we wanted it to be like a book-zine and for the cover to be flexible, but we did not find the optimal solution and in the end, we decided to opt for a hardcover and binding as we know the magazine today. It was a decision based on format, but also with the idea of being able to envelop easily. There was some limitation in terms of weight to facilitate shipping, and we made a series of very operational decisions in terms of format that helped us in marketing.
AF: […] You have to give coherence to the project, have that premise as a base, and know that sales are going to be essential for this project to last over time. Therefore, if your strategy is based on sales, it cannot be an excessively heavy object. This is something that we thought about for a very long time, all these aspects: costs, weight, measures...

MV: When the Odiseo project started, you stated during a talk that contents were not strictly linked to each other, however in the latest issues there is indeed a common thread that connects all of them and it has actually become the title in each volume. Why did you decide to change the trajectory?
RM: I always think that if you scroll through images on Instagram, these images fade no matter how powerful they are, but if you link an image to a concept, that concept remains in people's minds. Somehow we wanted to find a way in which Odiseo could have concepts of more in-depth thoughts to have an impact beyond the use of pure suggestive images, and beyond the impact of being in the publishing industry through an erotic project. We always searched for an idea that connected us to the future, as editors, and as a company, and allowed us to be seen as someone who is capable not only of interpreting what is happening in the moment but also of projecting into the future. That’s where it began the aim not only for publishing things but things that had a certain hidden meaning.

MV: Being a personal project, did you decide that you needed to create a structure —some guidelines— from the beginning, or was it a more liquid work?
AF: Both of them. It has a liquid part because there’s no urgency from anyone asking you for a certain delivery date, but on the other hand, there’s a demand on the project and on yourself. If I don't put a certain order, we won’t reach the date that we always want to release the next issue. It's a balance between both, as nor does it make sense to be excessively demanding on yourself. The fun part of these projects is that you can do them in a slightly intuitive way, a little more organic than commission projects... but you need certain guidelines.
RM: I think that’s is the key, not to be dogmatic. Order and structure are good for you because it helps you to work, but also exploration, and I think the dogma is what can turn an interesting thing into a kind of cliche.