ICARUS 73:2

VOLUME LXIII, ISSUE II

“We can't go over it. We can't go under it.

Oh no!

We've got to go through it!”

First we thought about who was writing, and then who we (us) were writing for, and in those thinkings, we eventually thunk that one just couldn’t be so sure. Boiling this down, we found that the Whos and Whats of people and things were less important than the Wheres of where they were.

The directions of the Wheres which we found within this assembly of pieces seem to fundamentally point to, from, and inwards.

Among the infinite points along numerous vectors, we found ourselves often returning to the varying degrees of authority we have over the representings of our subjects.

How strong we feel about the Whos and Whats are often shown/obfuscated by the way we position them: alongside/against — ourselves/others.

Much of this art is preoccupied with the distance between people (longing to be closer, longing to be further...), the distance from or closeness to nature, and our own gaps in knowledge. We all have a subject matter and a positionality to that subject matter when we attempt to create art.

We can use writing to address our subject matter face-to-face, to write ourselves away from or out of something, or to meditatively/reflexively understand ourselves. In doing so we also, implicitly, orient ourselves towards the reader.

A poem or a painting or a photograph contains many directions – the direction of the vision of the artist, the direction of the vision of the subject (if the artistic subject can look back), and the direction of the vision of the viewer. We are happy to be caught in these crosshairs, attempting to understand the many Where's– turning toward, turning away, turning inward.

-Cathal & Ava

Contents

Cover: Just Missed by Lara

Prideaux