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094 095 Feature Opener

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The ground beneath our feet feels as still as the words on this page, yet we are all spinning and hurtling through space.

For some time now, artists, politicians, writers, thinkers and economists have been preoccupied with flux and motion: the flow states peddled by psychologists, the churn of the art market, the vast networks that carry global trade. Movement undergirds every aspect of our lives.

Current events have only made this more apparent. The fantasy of a limitless and frictionless digital self keeps running up against the material infrastructure that moves the world: the ports, cables and freight that the economy depends upon. Where the immaterial and virtual collide with these barriers, there is overspill and congestion, and spirals of content that outpace our ability to make sense of them. But friction can be productive. From these clashes of kinetic energy, new forms may emerge that were once hard to imagine.

This issue of TANK takes up with the tide. And now, with no small irony, we invite you to read about movement in static print.