Body Language

Early in the autumn, we issued a rare call for pitches that didn’t lead with a theme, giving our communities and contributors a chance to have a say in shaping the next issue in a time of such trenchant irresolution. In response, we heard meditations on the rampant shift of the art world’s activities into online space; pained expressions of longing for IRL connection in the forms of exhibitions, openings, residencies, house parties, sex; ruminations on health and non-health of physical, mental, and psychic strains; and reflections on the now dramatically apparent reality that the self is an assemblage of continually unravelling experiences, many of which hinge on the involvement of others. Body language—that mysterious, intuitive social science and gestural repertoire that allows us to send and receive messages without words—in its straight-up definition, and in the more imaginative discursive possibilities it makes space for, seemed a fitting centre for these disparate parts whose tethers are perhaps only discernible in the light of our collective hindsight.

Dovetailing with our previous issue, “Gather,” which offered a multifaceted study on ideas around coming together, this issue brings focus to the idea