Kuntenserven Incorporated is a comradely publishing press, which aims to question and critique contemporary (fashion) design paradigms through embodiments of, experimental publishing on, and collaborative explorations of queer subjectivity. Initiated in 2023 by critical fashion practitioners Tjerre Lucas Bijker and Chet Julius Bugter, Kuntenserven Inc. positions itself as a critical research praxis, engaging contemporary reflections on queerness while drawing from the knowledge of queer predecessors. Moving across several publishing formats, it seeks to pass on knowledge and lived experience, melding and transcending the personal, the public, and the political.
Operating from an oppositional standpoint, Kuntenserven Inc. actively aims to counteract oppressive socio-political hegemonies in (fashion) design and connected fields, perceiving queerness as a carnal response to and an embodied critique of such regulatory structures. Queerness' subversive power holds a central position within Kuntenserven Inc., valuing queerness as a diverse, multifaceted carnal embodiment, providing a space for more-than-one lived experiences.
Kuntenserven Mag. Issue Zero: On Smutty Smut
In Issue Zero, Kuntenserven Inc. aims to pick out three main threads of (fashion) design critique, exploring and following the tension between the subjective and the filtered. How does the queer body and its subjectivity relate to power structures and representation? What does commodified queerness look like, and how can queer subjectivity in turn throw off the yoke of capitalism? And how can the living and breathing queer body become a method to carve out space for other (queer) bodies?
Next to plotting out several theoretical perspectives, Kuntenserven Inc. will set out to explore how the work of Iztok Klančar relates to these. Iztok’s artistic practice, where he sublimates himself into the alter ego of Smutty Smut, appears in front of the filter, breaking with commodified notions of queerness and centering subjective experience. By embodying our threads of critique, Smutty Smut carves out a safe space for themselves in a queer world that is fraught with tension: harnessing the power of their difference. The work that Iztok, as Smutty Smut, has put out in the world, gives us a glimpse of what could happen if we allow ourselves—as makers, designers, practitioners, and finally queer subjects—to move back to the “worlds within the world” sketched by Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta. The explorations that might result from this will provide a safe space for queer subjectivity to take hold, and allow other subjectivities to blossom, like it did for Smutty Smut.
Type: softcover — Binding: unbound — Dimensions: 210 mm x 420 mm portrait — Pages: 24 — Release date: April 2025 — Color: full colour — Printer: Print&Bind and homeprinter — Made possible by: Creative Industries Fund NL — Publisher: Kuntenserven Inc.