Threshold Zine Issue 1: contamination

Show me your porosity, let me infiltrate you until we become a messy infusion. At what point do I end, and you begin? We are the impure spawns, riddled with disease and ideology. Fleshy interdependencies are the only way forwards - if forwards is even where we are headed.

What does it mean to be contaminated? Is it just a human-made idea driven by western scientific practices, focusing on extraction and results? In the wild, we are all contaminated by everything all the time. Pollutants, spores, pollen, interactions, the gut microbiome, political ideologies, sickness; contamination is inescapable. 

Alexis Shotwell’s ‘Against Purity’ campaigns for all that is impure. Purity is an unreachable goal – even though it is sold to us every day through detox juices, skincare and individualism. In a world of swampy information, contaminated thoughts and political corruption how can we wade through the muck and realise our contaminated potentials?

Threshold Issue 01 is an experimental publication, weaving differing artistic takes on the notion of contamination.