volume 4/ MARGIN.

Margin describes a physical condition of demarcation: a line drawn, a border established, an edge of a place, a point of transition from one state to another: an extreme condition isolated from, or by, its defining construct. Margins are inherently bound to a particular condition that defines them.

As a print journal, we begin with the most tangible condition: the hand and the page. When a writer fills a blank page with text, its edges become margins, the negative space to thepositive subject. These margins mediate between the stories on the page and the literal edge of the page, and between the stories on the page and the hands of the reader; a space of empathy, margins are spaces for rewriting, perceiving, questioning, locating. They are palimpsests, traces of a previous condition [the blank page] and sites for collective reaction [the blank page and the writer and reader].

The following projects dwell in spatial, material, and liminal margins at many scales and in many contexts, but share fundamental implications with the hand, the page: margins are particular, specific, activated by the words, thoughts, and actions that inhabit them.

Editors
Noah Bolton
Robert Couch
Lauren Hackney

Image by Ronan Bouroullec.