Peter McCain: Batshit Times

An Interview with Peter McCain, Editor-in-Chief of Batshit Times, a New Magazine for an Uncertain Present

The first issue of Batshit Times launched online yesterday. An avant garde consideration of our own attitudes toward the world we live in, the magazine intrinsically uneasy. That’s where the fun is. Like its name, Batshit Times finds humor in the darkness, seduction in the disturbing, humanity in the digisphere, and life in boredom.

The entire first edition is available for free as a PDF on Batshittimes.com. You’ll recognize work from some of our beloved Austin favorites, including Evana Marissa, Hannah Edelman, Lindsay Gallagher, and myself. 

I spoke with editor-in-chief, Peter McCain, over the phone last week to see how Batshit Times was started. Our conversation is below. When you do check out Batshit Times Volume 1, it’s extra amusing to remember that it stemmed in-part from a failed attempt to read Anna Karenina. Thank you for putting down the Tolstoy, Peter (no offence, Leo) and gifting us with Batshit Times.

Rob

Peter, how’s your quarantine?

Peter

Let’s see… where to start with my quarantine? Well, my quarantine has been a lot of sitting in my apartment, looking out the window.

Rob

What’s your view like?

Peter

It’s interesting because I live a block away from the hospital where the very first person in New York died of CoronaVirus so there’s always people going to the hospital… The hospital is definitely in use more often these days. That’s really interesting to see.

New York is interesting because it’s such a connected city. Before quarantine I was seeing upwards of 30, 40, 50 thousand people everyday. I work in Times Square five days a week so I was going to the epicenter of human congregation.

It was March 12th, a Thursday, that Broadway announced they were going to close and groups of 500 or more people would be banned. I work in Broadway advertising so I was instantly out of a job. 

Now, of course, you can’t really congregate with anyone. I heard they were going to fine people who went to parks.

Rob

I heard they were going to double the fine from $500 to $1000 for going to parks in NYC.

Peter

See, the thing is, right now I can see a park from my house and there are dozens of people in the park. 

I don’t think people are really taking it as seriously as they should be. I mean, ice cream trucks are still driving around and giving ice cream to children.

Rob

Ah, Jesus. Getting people to actually change their behavior is hard.

Peter

Exactly, one of the biggest things is that so many people in New York don’t ever have this opportunity to just chill at home everyday so there’s so many working class people who are now able to spend time with family every day of the week, go to the park, have block parties. 

That’s just a very sad reality of this capitalist system we have in this fast moving city is that you need a global pandemic that shuts down the economy in order for people to hang out with their families. So, of course people aren’t going to be taking the guidelines seriously.

Then you have the artist class, freelance artist community. None of us have any work. We’re just consuming art in our apartments, which is honestly a double edge sword because we get to fill our brains with all kinds of great information but we also have to pay rent and taxes, so we’ll see how this goes.

Rob

But you haven’t let this slow down your capitalist ambitions, starting “Batshit Times”?

Peter

When this all started, in March, there were a few days where I was like “Okay, now I have nothing to keep me occupied.” I started reading Anna Karenina and made it through a third of the book until I realized, “wait a minute, I know what I could be doing with my time.” It hit me so fast. It was actually on my last ever subway ride. I had this epiphany and I was like, oh, I got to make the magazine. 

I've been wanting to launch a magazine since my last summer in Austin two years ago and I've been sitting on this idea of “Batshit Times” for awhile, because even before this pandemic, we had been living in crazy batshit times. 

Every day it seems like something crazy in the news is happening. Trump is doing something crazy. Boris Johnson is doing something crazy. The American people, the British people, the Italian people, the people of India, the people of China, we're all just doing the most absurd things. And you're just like, how are people voting for Brexit? How are people ok with Trump being in office? Every day you're just like, “Oh my God, nothing is going our way.” We are so disenfranchised. So that was kind of the origin. 

Rob

So people know, what is Batshit Times?

Peter

Batshit Times is a magazine for experimental artists. 

If you go to a bookstore and you look at the magazine stands, more often than not, they're all just fashion magazines. They're all really great, and I'm inspired by a lot of them. And some of them are really experimental but I was looking for a magazine that showcases the works of all types of visual and performance artists and musicians.

And we're less concerned about marketing clothes and more concerned about just showing the work of other types of artists. And you can get that material in the $60 art books section at a bookstore but I wanted something that was a little more accessible.

Cover of Volume 1, shot by photo-editor, Austin sweetheart, Hannah Edelman.

Rob

You mentioned you wanted to start a magazine for a while. Was showcasing experimental art always the concept or did it come about more recently?

Peter

It's definitely basically the form, the makeup of the magazine, which is a combination of photography, visual art, paintings, and illustrations and written word, poetry, and short stories has always been the idea.

Really, this is not a lie, what inspired me to make this magazine is that Hannah Edelman kept putting out so much work, so many glorious photos. She's honestly my favorite photographer. And I was thinking, “Man, I just want to be able to publish a bunch of these really great photos which happened to be dark and a bit more mature and they play and toy with the form of film photography. So you have high intense grain or crazy contrast and fading, just like playing around the camera and developing a film. I wanted to pair that with words and ideas to create a larger story, a larger curation of an overall theme, which fundamentally becomes this idea of "The Batshit": the art in today's society that is avant garde, that runs against the mainstream and which fundamentally is the driving force in art. And because it's not mainstream artists who create trends, it's people starting from the ground up who do the crazy things.

So that's one of the things that inspired me. It was like, okay, let's create a magazine that showcases the absolute avant garde, the people that maybe no one is into right now. But if you put it all together in a magazine --which I am pretty proud of right now-- when you put them all together side by side, they all work to tell a larger story. That larger story is what influences art as a whole. Because art isn't just about the individual. It's about the community and the collective. We have this romantic idea of New York in the 50s or L.A. in the 80s.

Rob

Warhol's Factory...

Peter

Yes, exactly. And it's not because of one person. It's all of these different people, who are working together. So you could say this magazine is pretty communist in a way.

Rob

How many submissions did you receive?

Peter

I'd say receive at least 30. Ever 30 and 50 and not really too sure. I mean, I'm sure it's more than that.

Batshit Times’ hefty list of contributors.

Rob

Were you surprised at how many submissions there were given what’s going on?

Peter

I was surprised. Yes, I was surprised. Because it's like a magazine industry standard to print less than 160 pages, because after 160 pages, the cost goes up, I had to cut a lot of stuff and move it to the second issue. I was making these decisions based on what overall themes can be told with this first issue. 

For instance, the title of this first issue is "Quarantine". And I wanted to play with things that are about the caged-in feeling, the feeling of your body, feeling the effects of isolation and your mind, feeling the effects of being in the dark. That's what makes up this first issue. Every issue is going to be really dark. I think this issue is playing with ideas of self-reflection. When you're staring at a phone, a long time self-reflection, when you're face-timing people. There's this whole section about the webcam. And like, for instance, performers are performing a live stream or people in the sex industry who are using OnlyFans to make money by sending nudes to people who purchase them. Short films, where people are talking into a camera. Stuff like that is really big in this issue.

The digital, cyber, virtual are recurring themes in Batshit Times Volume 1.

Rob

One aspect of our situation that’s interesting to me is that there's all this encouragement of people to support your artist friends, support local restaurants, support creators, but it's usually it's like you're asking other millennials at the moment who probably lost a job or are about to or got their hours reduced to do the same sort of like self-circulating economy among young artists and creatives. At some point, that’s not sustainable.

Peter

That is why I'm making this first issue online for free. The plan is to have four issues per year, one for every season. Hopefully by autumn I'll have the audience to place these into actual book stands and sell them. Those proceeds then go back to these artists communities. The proceeds of the first issue are going to go to CoronaVirus charities and subsequent issues, those proceeds will go to different charities based on the overall theme of the magazine and the times. What's happening in November when Biden pathetically loses to Trump? I'm sure the magazine will be about politics.

Rob

Oof, yeah, Biden's going to get the snot beat out of him by Trump. 

I wasn't thinking about the urge to support artists as much to do with selling the magazine. I think I was more trying to say that’s a bigger issue brewing that affects our generation more acutely.

Peter

An issue at large, definitely. I mean, I'm looking at the magazine right now, looking at all these different people have contributed and I know almost all these people are just out of their luck right now. We're all freelance. We don't have the ability to really go out and make things. We have to do it from the confines of our home, which is very interesting. Which is why, paintings, for instance, you could paint in your home. I got some really strong painting submissions.

Rob

Very different than video or photography.

Peter

Right. Unless the video was shot in their bedroom.I got three of those. The photography and short films were, of course, shot before this happened. And I think that plays idea like we've been building up to this for a long time. This is just part of the Batshit Times. People have been feeling this way, a certain way, and we've been creating things that are now exploding. Things that deal with the idea of loneliness and isolation. 

Rob

Another thing I've been seeing, and I don't know, maybe I'm projecting onto the Internet, but there are a lot of people who are actually, ironically having a hard time being productive at the moment.

You were telling your story about how the idea came to you on the subway. I feel like you got moving early and fast. I was super surprised to see that you were already announcing the release date for Batshit Times. Has it felt that way to you? That you've been moving quickly on it?

Peter

Oh yes. Because the intent was to always publish this thing in a bookstore first. I expected this to take months. I'm actually flabbergasted that within three weeks all this came together. I interviewed five different artists and made stories out of their interviews. Someone else sent me another interview that they did.

There's this is Guy Alexander Baumann, who is from New York, who is just doing the craziest digital art, which I know it takes him days to render. So I'm blown away that that happened [for Batshit Times]. 

Alex Baumann’s Spread in Batshit Times

I'm not trying to be a prophet, but we need people to be like, "God, let's make some stuff," so that people are encouraged to make stuff. And I reached out to a lot of people who were like, "hey, sorry, I'm just not feeling productive. I can't really contribute." That's totally fine because we all have those bouts where we're just like, "I don't feel productive. I don't want to be productive. Right now, I just want to sit around and chill."

Rob

Were there any surprising things, difficult or easy, about starting a magazine during a global pandemic?

Peter

The difficulty is having conversations with people like "My guy, you got to submit that thing that you promised three weeks ago. I mean, we're all sitting around, none of us are working...."

Rob

The world's burning practically, but get your submission in.

Peter

And I understand, I'm not about tripping about it. Folks gotta do their own thing. That is the hardest thing right now. And that's not a hard thing. I'm sure the hard thing, of course, will be post-release. Actually, it's also the fun thing. Post-release is fun, because then you can just blast it to everyone. I'm gonna message every magazine I follow. Anyone who could potentially be interested in any of the interviews that we have, old professors, old colleagues. Why not? That'll be really exciting. But I'm sure at the end of the day, like any magazine could tell you, the hard part is getting stuff in the bookstore and managing shipping and managing printing. That's not my world. I am a consumer and creator of images, but I'm not a distributor. That's something I've been wanting to get into it for a while. And I'm so inspired by photographers who become magazine editors. And I'm just like, okay, okay, let's do it. Let's let's make this next step.

Rob

Hell yeah. I’m really excited for the future issues, too, Peter. Thanks for talking.

Peter

Definitely, thank you.

I already have plans for the next issue in the summer, when the reality of this all sets in on us. Right now I’m watching someone buy ice cream from an ice cream truck out my window. We’re still all in serious denial.