On Contamination | Are.na Editorial
When I trace contamination through digital and print interfaces I am crossing margins — the liminal spaces where interaction between two or more involved entities is situated.11 How can we understand the in-between not as gaping void — an unbridgeable gap — but an invitation for encounter? How can we inhabit the digital margins?12 While seeking intertextual encounters in margins, I didn’t just come across comments and annotations. Footnotes caught my attention, too, because they are at once graphical (textual) interface elements but also part of a (networked) infrastructure.13 Contamination enables us to reimagine ways of relating, and move towards encounters not assumptions.
When I trace contamination through digital and print interfaces I am crossing margins — the liminal spaces where interaction between two or more involved entities is situated.11 How can we understand the in-between not as gaping void — an unbridgeable gap — but an invitation for encounter? How can we inhabit the digital margins?12 While seeking intertextual encounters in margins, I didn’t just come across comments and annotations. Footnotes caught my attention, too, because they are at once graphical (textual) interface elements but also part of a (networked) infrastructure.13 Contamination enables us to reimagine ways of relating, and move towards encounters not assumptions.