preface — persona/e

persona/e | rose van mierlo | john ros

our opening edition is an introduction as well as a question. what does it mean to be a person? where is the limit between the intimately known, and the publicly strange? which fictions underwrite our sense of being in the world, of being alive, of being perceived both by ourselves and others? in a time of virtual space, reality tv, and online personalities, how do we negotiate, expand, and play with the porous limits between self and other?

FUTURA FREE

residence time
noun /technical/
the average length of time during which a substance, a portion of material, or an object is in a given location or condition, such as absorption or suspension. [1]

the resources available to us for benign access to each other, for vaulting the mere blue air that separates us, are few but powerful: language, images, and experience, which may involve both, one, or neither of the first two. Language (saying, listening, reading) can encourage, even mandate, surrender, the breach of distances among us, whether they are continental or on the same pillow, whether they are distances of culture or the distinctions and indistinctions of age or social invention or biology. image increasingly rules the realm of shaping, sometimes becoming, often contaminating, knowledge. provoking language or eclipsing it, and image can determine not only what we know and feel but also what we believe is worth knowing about what we feel. [2]