Announcing Issue 08: Carving Space
Welcome to Carving Space.
The Pantograph Punch are delighted to present: Carving Space. Our Summer issue contains fourteen essays on how we mark our edges, how we claim and hold space, and how we remember the places we begin and belong.
In August, we asked our community to respond to our issue call out, and asked the question: ‘What does it mean to carve space?
From over seventy submissions received in our inbox, we’ve curated a selection of fourteen pieces that prod into questions of space, ownership, categories, power, visible and invisible marks on the landscape. Our essays in Carving Space transport you to pan-Asian comedy clubs, haunted institutions of ableism, the supermarket, the opera, the intimate space between bodies that are performing, the skin picked underneath fingernails, across Queer borders, online communities, popular cruising spots, polluted rivers, crocheted wharenui, noho marae wānanga, art galleries, artists’ homes and creative sanctuaries.
Recently we’ve been reflecting on the power dynamics of holding space. Who holds the majority of space, and who is left to carve out space of their own, is all political. In light of recent events in Palestine, we have seen the cruelty of a news media dominated by a Western colonial voice, and the difficulty for other voices to get through. We stand with tangata whenua and Indigenous peoples worldwide who continue to carve space for their own histories to be told, their languages to be spoken, their cultures to thrive, their people to be remembered, and their futures abundant.
The Pantograph Punch has always been a space for writers to write from where they are and who they are. We pride ourselves on having a platform that holds a myriad of voices. We want to be a place where people can carve out space for themselves and their communities.
Working on these pieces for the past few months, we have felt the aroha of artistic communities across the country who continue to collaborate, create and whakamana each others’ work. We will keep fighting and sharing these stories with you.
We hope you enjoy the first few summer pieces that have ripened. The rest will be released in the first few months of 2024, once we’re back in Kohitātea.
List of Carving Space pieces
- Make and Make Again – An Ongoing Collaboration by Dirty Laundry Collective
- In the Harakeke: A Kōrero with Debra Bustin by Moya Lawson
- Scenes from a Night at the Opera: A Poem Cycle by Cadence Chung
- The Self That is at Odds with Everything Around it by Makanaka Tuwe
- Aroha mai ~ Aroha atu by Lara Taylor, Kathryn Gale, Alison Greenaway and Desna Whaanga-Schollum
- Paving the Way for Pan-Asian Comedy by Jess Karamjeet
- Quiet Hours and Werewolves by Andi C. Buchanan
- Wharenui Harikoa is what dreams are made of by Briar Pomana
- Swimming in a Storm by Elise Sadlier
- Flesh as i Yau by Emele Ugavule
- Dissection #2 - A Confessional in Nail Polish Chips by Jude Saint
- Public Passions/Private Spaces by Sacha Judd
- Waterlilies Sucking Mud by Tom Denize
- Ghost Stories by Amelia Jacobson
Header collage by Lulu Qiu
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