Meet Roland at the ICA

London’s ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) has launched Roland, a new magazine that will be published to accompany each new block of its visual arts programming.

In truth it’s part-magazine, part-programme, with the first half of its 76 pages taken up by information on exhibitions, residencies, performances, discussions and other stuff happening over the summer. Get past the half way point though, and Roland turns into an incredibly eclectic literary magazine, bringing together Gertrude Stein’s experimental prose poem The Making of Americans, a strange dialect poem by Will Bradley that reads sort of like Middle English, and all sorts of other left of field bits and pieces.

It’s not particularly easy reading, in part because the pages are absolutely crammed with text. But it’s refreshingly different, and probably the sort of thing that could only be done in a free publication with the support of an institution like the ICA. So well done them for getting it together.

I think it’s available free from the ICA, so if you’re in London stop in at The Mall and pick up your own copy.