EDITOR'S STATEMENT
by Ana Chen, Co-Editor-in-Chief
by Ana Chen, Co-Editor-in-Chief
What does it mean to haunt?
In our retreat from normalcy, we’ve settled into new patterns of lingering and longing and remembering. Just as much as the past haunts us, we’ve begun to haunt the past, searching for what could’ve and should’ve been. The future has always been a question. We expect the past to yield answers.
But 2020 has at once exacerbated and shifted the parameters of this question/answer paradigm. We hunger for answers from the past and accountability from the future. We are no longer asking, but demanding (some of us have always been demanding). So where, then, does the theme of “allure” belong in all this?
Allure emphasizes the magnetism of beauty. It implies a certain pull towards. Art, in this sense, is never static; it exists in a state of diversions and demands. Where do we allow art to pull us? How much do we allow it to pull us?
Art necessitates a question or an answer, and sometimes both. The pieces of Issue 15 pull us away from our patterns of haunting, demanding we seek answers elsewhere. They question the allure of past and future, and they draw us to new centers of gravity.
As different as the pieces of Issue 15 are, they have one similarity: their allure resides not in their ability to distract from the world, but to bring us ever closer to it. Happy reading, and please stay safe!
- Ana Chen, Founder + co-Editor-in-Chief
In our retreat from normalcy, we’ve settled into new patterns of lingering and longing and remembering. Just as much as the past haunts us, we’ve begun to haunt the past, searching for what could’ve and should’ve been. The future has always been a question. We expect the past to yield answers.
But 2020 has at once exacerbated and shifted the parameters of this question/answer paradigm. We hunger for answers from the past and accountability from the future. We are no longer asking, but demanding (some of us have always been demanding). So where, then, does the theme of “allure” belong in all this?
Allure emphasizes the magnetism of beauty. It implies a certain pull towards. Art, in this sense, is never static; it exists in a state of diversions and demands. Where do we allow art to pull us? How much do we allow it to pull us?
Art necessitates a question or an answer, and sometimes both. The pieces of Issue 15 pull us away from our patterns of haunting, demanding we seek answers elsewhere. They question the allure of past and future, and they draw us to new centers of gravity.
As different as the pieces of Issue 15 are, they have one similarity: their allure resides not in their ability to distract from the world, but to bring us ever closer to it. Happy reading, and please stay safe!
- Ana Chen, Founder + co-Editor-in-Chief