They Created Penguin Boy
Tim R. Hwang ’08 experienced the first snow of the school year inside a massive, colorful cube. As snowflakes softly descended upon students marching innocently through Harvard Yard, Hwang and a group of upperclassmen were sheltered by a 9.5-by-9.5-foot wooden box they had worked all day to build.
The group—all affiliated with Present!, a new campus literary magazine—propelled the Cube in its merry shuffle down Mass Ave.
“It was a magical day to be carrying an enormous cube,” says Hwang, who found an unlikely home with the Present! kids just weeks after his arrival on campus this fall.
While the day seemed magical, the activity was not unusual for Hwang, who has long explored similarly bizarre hobbies. Earlier this year you could find him sticking dozens of painted cardboard penguins in the grass outside the Science Center, or announcing, through a bullhorn, numbers from the endless sequence of pi. He recently hung a giant eye in his Canaday window overlooking Annenberg, and ominously thundered instructions at the people walking below. The threat was swiftly dealt with by Harvard University Police, who paid him a visit in his room and demanded he cease his activities immediately. Hwang began working with Present! after meeting Alex L. Pasternack ’05, the magazine’s founder and a generally compelling campus personality, at the extracurricular fair. The duo quickly bonded over the fact that they both had the same calculator watch. Ever since, the freshman’s ideas—which he says are “not meant to be a crusade,” but an amusement—have been enthusiastically encouraged and embraced by the members of Present!.
NO RULES BUT THEIR OWN
Present! brightly entered the Harvard literary scene last spring, and has since set itself apart from other literary journals on campus by focusing on “living in the moment, sharing, giving, introducing, and making things seen,” Pasternack says. “It is geared not so much at ourselves, but at the presentation of wonders.”
The wondrous cover of the first issue describes it as “an ob-literary zine, and “an experiment in experimentation.” Technically speaking, it is an almost 50 page funhouse of innovative artwork and writing on the concept of “the future.” The ’zine, which proudly included an essay by world-renowned critical theorist Slavoj Zizek, was neither distributed through University mail nor door-dropped, but was instead left in cafes and offices around Cambridge. Some adventurous members of Present! even left copies of the magazine in various European countries while traveling over the summer.
The second issue, due out later this semester, will explore the theme “beat.” The group has developed a concept for a CD-ROM that would feature an interactive multimedia map. Clicking on one spot on the map might lead you to a song crafted by a beat-minded Present! member, while another will cause a piece of interactive animation to pop up.
Just as Present! has avoided magazine standards like distribution and binding, it has also avoided official association or competition with established names like the Advocate and Voice Where Prohibited.
“If you look at personnel, there’s a large crossover between the Advocate and Present!,” admits Hwang. “When I think of the Advocate, though, I think of darkened rooms, cigarettes, and clicking your fingers listening to poetry. That has its place as well, but Present! is more whimsical. Art holds significance for them in a different way.”
“In terms of social interaction, I feel like Harvard is a very constrained environment,” he continues. “So I like the idea of Present! as a group that’s official but does very unofficial things. It’s non-pretentious creative output with people that feel free abandon to do anything.”
THE EXTRALITERARY BONUS
Lately, building the ’zine has taken a back seat to staging events like the Cube and the Dance Conspiracy, in which a silent swarm of people vacillated and jived to rhythms supplied by Harvard radio station WHRB through portable radio headphones. These events aim at making people aware of their surroundings—their “space and place” as Present! co-founder Neasa Coll ’05 puts it. “Some of the events we’ve had have happened outside or they’ve happened in places where you wouldn’t expect to have parties,” she says. “I feel like it has to do with showing people how the grids and pathways that they use in everyday life can be relived, or can be changed.”
The Cube, for example, was part of a Visual and Environmental Studies thesis on disturbing and manipulating public space, written by member David D. Mahfouda ’05. “Basically we were building a giant problem to put in the middle of the Yard and see what happened,” explains Coll.
At a recent meeting at their new home in the Adams Art Space, Mahfouda passed around his iBook to share a photograph of a “sad snowperson” he had sculpted. As the crowd marveled at his creation, he discussed the feasibility of setting up tire swings on campus.
“We just want some sort of playful presence in the Yard,” he told his cohorts.
For Pasternack, who lethargically, but lovingly, leads Present!’s meetings in the Art Space, the group’s openness to new ideas and people is central to its mission. “We don’t want to be cloistered, and we don’t want to be at all cut off from other parts of Harvard. We always want to welcome other people,” he says.
He pauses to push his loose hair back from his rectangular black glasses. “I think of it as sort of like an invisible monster that haunts me at night,” he continues. “It, like, whispers really crazy things in my ear. And gives me hugs when I need them. You know, like a big furry beast.”
Pasternack adds that he has his sights set on evolving Present! into a multinational corporation, but until that happens, the group will remain local, creative, and loveably provocative.
As those plans develop, Hwang says he will be doing work of his own. He’ll continue in his position as contributor and grant writer for the ’zine, but he also plans to begin a few new activities. His fellow members of Present! would approve—roller-skating, middle-school-style, is at the top of his to-do list.