Dear Kaputies,

A print edition in 2026, really? Especially when, like us, you’ve been so good at coping with the cold turkey of turning your back on print journalism for ten years now (okay, okay, one of us has a 30% stake in the Musikexpress editorial team, the other has brought a paper to the newsstands every now and then with the Monheim Papers, Chart – Notes to Consider and EM GUIDE), but otherwise… well, we could keep it short and simple: nothing kicks like when a freshly printed magazine that you are (jointly) responsible for and filled with texts finally arrives. Happiness hormones equivalent to three ecstasy pills at once.

But we don’t just do things for our own kicks. There has been (certainly not only among us) a long-standing dissatisfaction with the changed conditions of reading and discourse in the age of stream-of-consciousness internet scrolling, where – apart from a few specifically sought-out sites – a lot of reading time is invested in what the algorithm or apparent online friends put in front of you.

What weighs even more heavily is that people very rarely read entire daily newspapers and monthly magazines, but instead only perceive a weird mash-up of media and authors, so to speak.
We are aware of the danger of coming across as nostalgic here, but given the state of world politics and the massive climate of cultural questioning out there, it is much more than just a reflex of older journalists when we long for the ‘medium is the message’ days in the spirit of music magazines like SPEX; INTRO (yes, we have to mention our own history here, at least briefly), Flipside, Pitchfork (when it was still Pitchfork), music television stations (fittingly, MTV, which of course had long since ceased to be a pop identity-shaping medium, was recently taken off the air altogether), and the end of the daily taz print edition also hurts us deeply, especially since the other relevant arts and culture sections in print form between the Süddeutsche Zeitung, New York Times and Guardian are also steadily becoming thinner.

The positioning of a diverse group of authors on adjacent pages and TV formats created community cohesion and a shared pop class consciousness on the one hand; but since multiple opinions were conveyed and topics were viewed from different perspectives, it was never about staging a seemingly idealised little shared world, but rather about creating a cultural biotope that enabled discourse – even of contrary views – openly, often mercilessly, but always honestly.

In this respect, we hope that the first Kaput – Magazine for Insolvency & Pop print edition will do just that: create a place where the diversity and, yes, contradictions of the (pop) world can be controversially discussed, but always with the conciliatory intention that we want to move towards each other, defuse conflicts through exchange and find common paths.
That said, we are very excited to hear your feedback on this first 172-page draft. We are also planning a number of magazine presentation evenings in Germany, because we want to take the discourse with you from the pages of the magazine to kapute venues such as HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, Kapute Szene in Cologne, the Golden Pudel Club in Hamburg or wherever you invite us. Because Kaput is more than the sum of the individual voices of its contributors; it is the cultural sound corpus of all of us.

With this in mind, warm regards from the editorial team

Thomas Venker and Linus Volkmann,
on behalf of all the Kaputies who brought this 172-page monster to life

PS: It’s also nice to finally see the lyrics of artists such as Rocko Schamoni, Cameron Winter, Ronald M. Schernikau and KeiyaA in print again:

“Being different / And I don’t go to the polls, / I don’t go to work either, / I’d rather go broke” // „Anders sein / Und ich gehe nicht zur Wahl, / auch zur Arbeit gehe ich nicht, / lieber gehe ich kaputt“
(Rocko Schamoni, „Anders sein“)

“Try as I may / I’m still fighting for you / In my own long-suffering way / You were meant to watch / My private ceremonies / All in the dark parts of rooms”
(Cameron Winter, “Try as I May”)

“The only thing that interests me at work is being able to praise something. I hate negativity. On 9 November 1989, the counter-revolution triumphed in Germany. I don’t believe that it will be possible to write books in the future without this insight.” // “Das Einzige, das mich interessiert bei der Arbeit, ist: etwas loben können. Ich hasse Negation. Am 9. November 1989 hat in Deutschland die Konterrevolution gesiegt. Ich glaube nicht, daß man ohne diese Erkenntnis in der Zukunft wird Bücher schreiben können.”
(Ronald M. Schernikau, Rede auf dem Kongreß der Schriftsteller der DDR, 1. bis 3. März 1990)

„Tell me / How I’m supposed to thrive / When all I’ve known is to survive /
When all I’ve known is to rely on I / Tell me“
(KeiyaA, “stupid prizes”)

PPS: You want to order your own private copy? Paypal 20€ + 5€ + Adress to thomas.venker@kaput-mag.com

PPPS: For whole sale demands contact  Wolke: wolke@wolke-verlag.de

What else to say? Well, maybe you are curious what we cover in the Kaput print debut?  

Editors-in-Chief

Thomas Venker & Linus Volkmann

Editors

Lennart Brauwers, Philipp Kressmann, Alex Mayor

Photo Editors

Marisa Eul Bernal, Vicky Hytrek

Authors

Laura Aha, Aida Baghernejad, Lennart Brauwers, Julian Brimmers, Mark Fell, Lars Fleischmann, Oke Göttlich, Steffen Greiner, Christoph Jacke, Philipp Kressmann, Mario Lasar, Alexander Mayor, Christina Mohr, Dragos Rusu, Shilla Strelka, Annett Scheffel, Rebecca Spilker, Maurice Summen, Saskia Timm, Thomas Venker, Linus Volkmann, Benedict Weskott, Marc Wilde, Ariana Zustra

Art Direction & Design

Christian Schäfer

Design Assistant

Davi Dattel

Kaput Logo, Kaput Collages & Cover

Sarah Szczesny

Photo contributions for the collages:

Jessica Foley (KeiyaA), Jonathan Forsythe (Justin Strauss), Uv Lucas (Daniel Avery), Adam Powell (Geese), David Višnjić (Rrose), Niclas Weber (Tyshawn Sorey)

Photos

Caity Arthur, Ella Barak, André Beiler, Marisa Eul Bernal, Beyond Binary, Lewis Evans, Frank Feiertag, Jessica Foley, Jonathan Forsythe, Florian Fries, Nazar Furyk, Gustav Glas, Luisa Hanika, Dudi Hasson, Vicky Hytrek, David Königsmann, Philipp Kressmann, Uv Lucas, Ophelia Mikkel- son, Cosmin Mirea, Olivia Mole, Nikolas Petros, Tess Roby, Katja Ruge, Lou Sauvard, Svenja Scholz, Marco Sensche, Mark Sommerfeld, Mat Steel, Aoki Takamasa, Norman Ulloa, David Višnjić, Nick Waplington, Niclas Weber