In this highly anticipated new issue, we encounter brilliant examples of what writing can do in a hypernormal time – whether that's Benjamin Gready on the absurdity of fieldwork on land under active occupation or Zahid Gamieldien's short story about a dancing rat who finds itself enmeshed in systems too shadowy to be true. But, as with the emotional cycles of resistance, hope and snark are features too. Dan Hogan considers the lawn as a class obsession, and π.ο. asks a question: why people hate poetry? We also read about a rakhasa family who passes on wisdom to their young kin, a story by Shefali Mathew. And you’ll find new poetry by Eli McLean, Fiona Hile and Sol Chan, among others, as well as a comic by Safdar Ahmed, plus heaps more. Co-editors Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk write in the editorial, "Writing always matters, but it matters most directly in the face of this kind of thuggish assault on language, our first and last commons. We can’t let the bastards have it.”
Not since the work of James Joyce has any one person so creatively explored layers upon layers of dimensional linguistic meaning as the writer/artist Mez Breeze.”’(Séamas Cain at ICIS 2012) Mez Breeze is the Creative Director of Mez Breeze Design (mezbreezedesign.com), an agency which provides boutique digital product and design services (including illustration, text, games, transmedia, and digital interactive media). Mez is also currently an Advisor to The Mixed Augmented Reality Art Research Organisation and is currently Senior Research Affiliate with The Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab. Mez has shown her ground-breaking creative works widely, and her awards include the 2001 VIF Prize (Germany), the JavaMuseum Artist Of The Year 2001 (Germany), 2002 Newcastle New Media Poetry Prize (Australia), co-winner of the 2006 Site Specific Index Page Competition (Italy) and the Burton Wonderland Gallery Winner 2010 (judged by Hollywood Director Tim Burton). Her works reside in Collections as diverse as The World Bank and the PANDORA Electronic Collection at the National Library of Australia. Duke University have recently extended to Mez an invitation to develop a comprehensive career archive to be housed there at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
