Space and Culture

A Kahnawake ironworker atop a column in New York City in the 1960s

[photo credit: KANIEN’KEHAKA ONKWAWENNA RAOTITIOHKWA CULTURAL CENTER]

TAKE’s Space issue (May 2010) considers the spatialities of digital and lived environments. Videoconferencing collapses geography and shifts social spaces from offices to screens, making one more aware than ever before of the different layers and modalities of interaction which flatten and collapse, or expand and extrude space. TAKE covers original art work and poetry, interviews, municipal anti-panhandling regulations that push the poor into specific areas, life in and out of prison, space versus place, the performative creation of olympic space during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the mobile spatialization of aboriginal ironworkers who specialize in construction at extreme heights, theatrical versus cinematographic space, the space of the signature, and the Canadian-New Zealand experience of living next to more powerful states and being dwarfed by them, by landscape or by the sea. An appraisal of the 2010 American Association of Geographers Conference rounds out this issue.

TAKE has a ‘zine aesthetic but is in effect an academic journal. At its best it uses novel formats to present critical analysis couched in its contributors’ lived experience. Life as theory. Its format varies to suit its topics.

A new issue of this limited edition journal on the miniature (pdf) is already out. Previous issues have covered flora and fauna, chaos theory, DIY, love and beyond.  More information can be found here.

-Rob