PUB Journal #4: Floating in the Abyss

PUB is an trans-departmental initiative funded and run by students of Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam.

In January 2021, the team of PUB Journal found a common space to meet amidst lockdowns and time zones. Approaching the question of how to put together a journal, while we ourselves were strewn apart, we felt a need to address the span of uncertainties and fragments we had found ourselves hurtling through, alone and together. We called it the Abyss, and drew our inspiration from the dust storms that leave new paths in their wake.

In opening up our search for ways to surf uncertainties, we unearthed distant calls for new forms of being. We heard other needs for grounding, for grasping embodied memories, for archiving past debris. We received a plethora of text and images that expressed presence and power in matter. A collective attempt to uncover meaning in residue. In the Abyss, sound reflects and refracts. Silence and noise rub up against each other. An echo chamber of breathing rhythms. In the Abyss, the layers and cycles of time became evident; mutual desires for connection expressed an entanglement over notions of dominance—wandering into its depths, pressing into its presence.

After over a year, we are ready to share with you Floating in the Abyss. At the present moment, our lack of clarity regarding the future has not subsided, but rather grown stronger with emergent moments of destruction and displacement. We hope that this publication at least uncovers new ways of navigating our global precarious state. We are grateful for the generous contributions gathered in this publication. Together we sift through the dust as it shifts, watching as it sometimes resettles with blinding clarity.