thresholds: new digital zine for creative criticism

thresholds
http://openthresholds.org
@openthresholds

thresholds is a new scholarly zine for creative criticism. It takes as its motivating image the threshold, an unruly site of crossings and chance encounters where habits break and strangers meet. The threshold is not a wall or a barricade but an opening that unfolds in the spaces between.

The zine's design makes material these spaces between. A central seam runs down the length of each piece, dividing it into two halves. Imagine it as the gutter of a book, or the split-screen technique in film; it cracks open the essay form, revealing the text as a field of play and difference. After working closely with each author to design her piece, the editors stitch these texts back together into a patchwork tapestry. The reader navigates this space horizontally by bumping left or right, one half-screen at a time. While each contribution can stand alone, then, the intentional design of thresholds makes them a part of something bigger: a tangle of text and image and movement where the seams between each individual work become as important as the texts themselves.

thresholds launched in July 2017 with a pilot issue featuring fresh work by Lauren Berlant, Pinar Yoldas, Mark Amerika, Charles Bernstein, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Dominic Pettman, amongst others. Our second issue, "Traces," is a carefully-curated collective reading of the work of German media theorist Siegfried Zielinski. It is slated to go public in January 2018.

To express interest in collaborating with us or for more information, please contact the editors:

Frances McDonald
[email protected]
@franmcdee

Whitney Trettien
[email protected]
@whitneytrettien