INTERVIEW WITH ELEIN FLEISS,
EDITOR OF LES CAHIERS PURPLE.



WHY DID YOU MOVE TO LISBON?
I was tired of Paris and France in general. The atmosphere there, since Sarkozy was elected president and applied a far right politic, became worst and worst. I also wanted to be farther South, in a quieter city.

HOW IS YOUR LIFE THERE?
My life is not so different, I worked several months on my new magazine, Les Cahiers Purple, and now I'm resting, discovering the beaches around Lisbon which I didn't know yet...

ARE YOU PLANNING TO STAY PERMANENTLY?
I'll stay a few years but I don't think permanently, I lack a strong link with the culture. The problem is that I don't know where to go next.

DO YOU HAVE A ROUTINE OR TYPICAL DAY THERE?
I don't really have a routine, either I work constantly or it's a permanent vacation, meaning reading or going to see films at the cinemateca. 

YOU EDITED PURPLE MAGAZINE, THEN HELENE, THEN PURPLE JOURNAL AND NOW LES CAHIERS PURPLE. WHY DO YOU KEEP CHANGING FORMATS? IS IT DIRECTLY LINKED TO SHIFTS IN YOUR LIFE?
Yes. My life is very much like that, with rupture, rather than linear. At some point, I always feel a lack of freedom as well as boredom keeping the same title, format.

IS LES CAHIERS PURPLE DIFFERENT TO PURPLE JOURNAL?
Yes it is. I really thought of it like an annual magazine so the content is much richer. The spirit is not so different but the construction is. It's like different magazines in one. I give a lot of space to texts, I published a play on more than 30 pages, I couldn't have done that in Purple Journal. And I think this play is a masterpiece so I'm happy. It's very hard to translate the word "cahier" in english, that is why we left it in French for both versions (Les Cahiers Purple exist in a French and an English version). I think it would be easier in spanish. The english word "notebook" is too restrictive.

THE NAME PURPLE SEEMS NOW TO ME A BIT CONTRADICTORY, WITH PURPLE FASHION AND LES CAHIERS PURPLE GOING IN WHAT SEEMS LIKE OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS IN CONTENT AND IDEOLOGY. DO YOU SEE THAT IS EVIDENT OR PROBLEMATIC, OR IT'S ALL COHERENT IN SOME WAY?
As long as I feel a coherence between myself and what I do, I feel fine. It certainly is a strange situation in the magazine world and for some readers. I now doubt both magazines have the same readers. I know that a lot of the readers of Purple Journal which are more literature readers, don't even know Purple Fashion exist. I think most Purple Fashion readers are new readers, if you can call them readers, I think they're part of these people that go through magazines, look at them but don't really read. I'm doing a magazine to avoid this way of looking at magazines. If you glance through Purple Journal and now Les Cahiers Purple, if you don't enter in it, like in a book, take the time, then you don't get anything from it. It's not about visual excitement. A story like the one of Purple certainly never happened before. Olivier Zahm and I starting a magazine together in 1992, worked together for 12 years and went in such different directions that we decided to split. But we both feel "Purple" is us so we keep this name.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE CULTURAL IMPACT OF DOING A MAGAZINE IN THESE DAYS OF INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
I don't think it has much impact, I'm just trying to keep a voice alive, even though very fragile and minoritary. This voice is saying we're not completely defeated, not dead yet, we think differently, don't recognize ourselves in the world like it is shown in the media and in the kind of life most people lead.

DO YOU READ OR FOLLOW ANY OTHER PERIODICALS?
I read the news on the internet and wish I would stop doing that. Otherwise I only read books.

WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE INTERNET?
For the moment there is no way it could replace print for me, even though I don't think newspapers and magazines are more interested in print at the moment, it's completely empty on both formats. I love the internet for doing research. I wish I'll be already dead when books had disappeared.