ISSUE TWO

“Walking this smoky town in which I live,
Or climbing wearily my dingy stair,
I feel the sordid barriers around me give—
And I’m—elsewhere.”
—Barbara A. McClung, “Elsewhere” (1954)

All—Ways—Open is a publication set up to explore the theme of place. Each issue invites a group of artists to enter a local archive in a limited-focus, free-form exchange. It’s an experiment in opening writing outwards, seeing the backside of pictures, and directing readers towards visual histories and archives.

If Issue 1 was loosely about nature and place, Issue 2 is about metaphysics and place. The phrase "metaphysics of place" could evoke the capacity of a familiar topography to get strange on you, as if home reserves the right to alienate its most faithful inhabitants, concealing like a clam its tacit motive to change.