Alongside each online Close Distance issue a limited print edition of 50 will be published. We invite a different graphic designer for every issue to interpret the content and translate it into a printed form or object.
For purchase contact: closedistancepress@gmail.com
Issue 3 is an unbound boxed edition with risograph, inkjet, photograph and metal cut contributions. ($30 + shipping; $10 of each purchase will be donated to Anera)
For its third edition, created while in residence at Maple St. Construct, Close Distance invited seven artists and writers to respond to the sentence, “Words have gone to sleep inside my head: the promise of a waterfront and the breath of distance”, and to send their response to Maple St. Construct via postal mail. All sent in items are copied fifty times; regardless of their format an (interpreted) duplicate is made and placed inside a USPS box, the cover or vessel of the publication, culminating in an edition of fifty alongside an online presentation of all content. The original mailed artworks form the core of the exhibition at Maple St. Construct and are curated around a three-dimensional essay by Lara Schoorl. The exhibition and publication intends to weave the physicality of language and location together.
Contributors include: Elena Ailes, Benjamin Krusling, Aryana Minai, Maximus Oppenheimer, Mattea Perrotta, Mayra A. Rodriguez Castro + Bitsy Knox, Albert Samreth, Selma Selman, and Hamza Walker.
Designed by Lara Schoorl
Dimensions USPS box: 9 7/16 x 6 7/16 x 2 3/16 inch
Dimensions content: variable and printed as risograph, photograph, with inkjet or laser cut steel.
Edition: 50 + 9 AP
Print edition available at LACA and the Poetry Center at University of Arizona
Online edition available http://www.closedistance.org
—
Issue 2 is a satin scarf and comes in an archival box; both are designed by Pouya Ahmadi. ($50 + shipping).
Inspired by Cecilia Vicuña, the second issue is loosely based around themes of home, movement and language. For the Harriet Blog, Vicuña wrote: “I imagined “migrant” was probably composed of mei, (Latin), to change or move, and gra, “heart” from the Germanic kerd. Thus, “migrant” became: “changed heart,” a heart in pain, changing the heart of the earth. The word “immigrant” really says: “grant me life.”
The concepts of home, movement and language can be interpreted widely. Whether home is a fixed place, or a moving entity, perhaps it is inside ourselves or defined in our language. Each of these themes are structures or architectures that humans create and navigate; our individual experiences of them vary, but they seem to be recurring within the work and texts of each of the contributors.
The limited print edition for the second issue is designed by Pouya Ahmadi and printed on scarves. Scarves are versatile in, the function of this garment changes per culture or geographical location. They can be worn as a fashion expression, religious expression, to protect us from the elements (cold and heat); they can be used as a blanket to lie under or sit on top off. They form a secondary skin between our body and the world, and in this adaptability a scarf reflects those functions of language, home and movement, too.
Contributors include: Mayra A. Rodriguez, Forrest Gander, Sam Yi Yao Chao, Ruben Rodriguez, Aryana Minai, Anton Schneider & Andri Luescher, and Gabriela Torres Olivares & Jennifer Donovan. Introduction by Elisa Wouk Almino
Designed by Pouya Ahmadi
Scarf: 54 x 54 inch printed on Satin
Archival Box: 12 x 12 inch with silk screen print
Edition: 50
Print editions available at LACA, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, and the Poetry Center University of Arizona
Online issue available online at http://www.closedistance.org
—
Issue 1 is a set of seven broadsides designed and printed by Rebecca Elliott, Meekling Press. ($25.00 + shipping)
These two words, “close distance,” are an accidental (mis)translation of the Dutch words dichtbij zijn. Although neither translates the other correctly, both indicate a perspective on being in the world and provide a space to locate the self or I in between places, between mind and body, oneself and another, language and a thing, thing and a thing, never fully in one place, constantly moving, being in and a process, and never ending.
I would like to use these thoughts of constant movement––a wave that breaks, that dissolves into sand, which is what shore means, there where land meets water, the wave doesn’t disappear, it continues to be in a different form––to think about writing. What I am interested in publishing is work in process, whatever that may mean to its maker. The words “finished,” “success,” and “failure” do not matter to me, what I care for instead are influences and influents.
Contributors include: Evan Kleekamp, Jane Lewty, April Martin, Zeenat Nagree, Nadia de Vries, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, and Mia You.
Designed by Rebecca Elliott; printed with letter press and wood blocks on broadsides.
Dimensions: 4.25 x 10 inch
Edition: 50
Print edition available at: LACA, Wendy’s Subway, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, and the Poetry Center University of Arizona
Online issue available at http://www.closedistance.org
/**/
CLOSE DISTANCE 