August 30 is an editorial that features a one-week diary of a different person each month. The curiosity for the intimate lies not per se in the proximity to possible secrecy but in the possibility to be proximate to another life. Despite the many infrastructures we traverse, both tangible and not, the complexity of present presence obstructs genuine connection. Close Distance has always been interested in the infinitesimal–a word taken from baroque mathematics that indicated the forever journey towards but failure of coinciding with a zero point. Acknowledging we cannot ever move outside our own perspective but in perpetual movement in an attempt to see around the corner, the journal aims to grasp the gravity of all perspectives, an infinite multitude of individual perspectives, that lie there.
However this chronicling takes shape, will be determined by each writer; the beautiful thing about a diary is, is that no rules apply other than the author’s––there is no need to commit to one language and no style or format is imposed. In case of entries written in another language than English, an English translation will be provided. Each contributor is invited by Close Distance and previous August 30 authors.
The project originates in reading my father’s diaries as part of research I am conducting into the life of the late dr. Selma Al-Radi, reading her sister Nuha Al-Radi’s diaries, and thinking of the diary as feminist genre in the eponymous workshops organized by Emma van Meyeren in the summer of 2021.
August 30 is an indication of time as encountered in a diary or letter, it is also the day that Nuha Al-Radi passed away.
CLOSE DISTANCE 