General Idea

General Idea Synopsis

"An alternative to the Alternative Press," legendary Toronto collaborative General Idea's FILE Megazine--published from 1972 to 1989--is compiled, at long last, in this important five-volume boxed-set edition. General Idea consisted of AA Bronson--now the Executive Director of New York's Printed Matter--Jorge Zontal and Felix Partz, who both died of AIDS-related illnesses in 1994. The trio cheekily appropriated FILE's name and logo from LIFE magazine, and it quickly gained a reputation far beyond its Toronto underground roots.

It was subversive to the core, pilfering freely from mainstream media and culture, while maintaining close attention to design issues and the use of experimental layouts. Three decades later, this compilation reveals FILE's influence on both underground and mainstream publications. As critic and artist Peter Gallo has written, FILE "anticipated many queercore and punk zines of the later 70s and 80s…as well as more recent mass-media interventions, such as the widely distributed, anti-globalist Vancouver-based publication Adbusters."