Letter From the Editors

The transition from Newtonian gravity to Einstein’s theory of general relativity marked a profound shift in our understanding of the universe. Gravity was no longer seen as a force exerted by masses on the background of unchanging space and time. Rather, it became an emergent property of the curvature of spacetime, challenging notions of constancy and objectivity. In this issue, we asked our contributors to consider gravity in its various instantiations.

Gravity does not merely pull; it shapes, distorts, and alters. Anything with mass and energy bends spacetime. While curvature draws objects inward, motion ripples outward as gravitational waves. These waves stretch and squeeze all they touch, from the smallest particles of matter to the very light that lets us see. What form does such distortion take? Alexander Bondoc’s nail art might suggest a quivering geometry. Augusta Lardy Micheli’s canvases point us toward atmospheric diffusion, translucent drift, like air. Joanna Yamakami’s poems offer the ceaseless acceleration of memory.

Gravity is the language of the relational: any two beings in the universe are connected through spacetime. Consider human orbits. Attraction gives rise to elliptical returns, rituals like morning coffee, perhaps offered by a husband in Aliaksandra Tucha’s Still Life. Some life experiences feel denser than others, holding a weight disproportionate to their duration on a clock or calendar. At times, we find ourselves orbiting a shard of the past, our lives resisting the sequential march of time. Or, as in Miles Parnegg’s story, we meet moments taut with surface tension, skimming across hours or even years. This malleability of time is unpredictable and can be shaped by heartbreak and obsession, art and literature. Poems and paintings have the capacity to lend our lives depth and weight—embedding themselves as a new thread in our spacetime.

But what remains in the aftermath, when we find ourselves at the orbit’s farthest reach? Even in absence, we return to snapshot-hazy memories, fading light slipping past moving windows, as found in Phi Phi An’s All [self-vanishing] Farewells Are Sudden and Gospel Chinedu’s poem on the escape velocity of grief.

In its most forceful state, gravity invites surrender: collapse into Axelle Roth le Gentil’s chaises, the downward gaze of the camera in Lukas Felzmann’s Ground, Samantha Backlund-Clapp’s grappling with unbearable density. Surrender, however, can result in a hollowness of spirit, as Carlo Michelstaedter cautions.

Let us, then, resist gravity’s dominion through art. Leticia Bernaus bends her own light in Agnosis, as if to rewrite gravity’s claim on curvature. Martin Kähler’s looming, weightless seat in Eingesessen questions the capacity to hold heaviness. Magda Gourincha’s sonically interactive video refuses weight entirely—it flutters, wing-beaten, into flight.

These works in these pages are planets in their own right and have already established themselves as forces in our spacetime. We welcome you to their orbit.