Editorial by Flo Sunnen & Dylan Williams
We’re delighted to announce the publication of issue 5 of Tentacular. When we sent out our call for submissions, we weren’t sure what to expect in response, and ventured into reading your contributions with glee. We were thrilled by the vastly varied interpretations of our initial call - varied in so many senses: from so many vantage points, places, traditions and using a diversity of media. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to Tentacular for their hard work and trust, whether or not we managed to squeeze you in this time. We would also like to thank Jonathan for giving us the opportunity to guest-edit, and for his generosity and openness along the way.
We hope that the entries selected for this issue will do justice to the joyful heterogeneity we found in our inbox, to the many strands we observed across the works. This issue bristles with a great variety of themes, from the ecological engagement found in Julieta Caldas’s MS Paint flowers, James Coghill’s mineral meanderings, or Chris Kerr and Daniel Holden’s glitchy video nightmare; to the explorations of lyrical playfulness in the breathless bracketing voice of Ocean Vash’s piece, Florence Uniacke’s melancholy longing, or Carrie Etter’s poignant response to Toyen’s paintings. Further, the works of Anastasia Freygang and of Lindsey Colbourne & Emily Meilleur explore the collapsing boundaries between media in contrasting, generative ways.
Underlying all this variety, we found commonalities, too, shared concerns. The questioning of subjectivity, and its relationship with voice and language, looms large. The problems and potentials of place, too, recur as focal points for our artists. But it is in the differences between these artists that this issue finds its main strength. The coming together of contrasting practices, the resonance between juxtaposed texts - all of this creates a sort of cross-pollination, a community of texts, where difference can be embraced. We hope that you can take the time to read across the various strands in issue 5, to discover its rich, potent variety.
