338 SPRING 2022

Lord of the Flies, Shuang Li’s work – cover story of the Spring issue – has been performed in Shanghai in January 2022. Trained remotely, the twenty performers embodied the sense of failure and implosion that defined metropolitan cities during the pandemic years. The performance is about the absence of human presence, both contingent and conceptual, as well as the metamorphosis of interpersonal relationships during a historical moment in which humans have become ever closer to a state of dematerialization. This work also resonates in this crucial moment of the global political scene which probably is going to define one more time the delicate relationship between continents as well as among humans.

The entire issue reflects the lack of definition of the human identity through the own body, and aim to map the most interesting practices in studying desire and affect, which are reflected in nonhuman beings, questioning architectural spaces, in fictitious narratives across disparate temporalities and geopolitical contexts. This season will embody the essence of digitalized intimacy amid the existential restlessness of the world around us.