Why must we worry over so simple a thing as preface making? - Cfr Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
When beginning to write my first editorial at the tender age of twenty-three I soon began to discover that there were plenty of things I could find to worry about. After all, it was in the forefront space of this publication that I initially intended to clarify the purpose of kuboaa, outline what it hopes to achieve and suggest ways in which it is different from any other independent publication.
In outlining my reasons for starting kuboaa I was primarily concerned with being as simple and direct with the reader as possible. In order to attain clarity I decided to avoid the sort of art magazine terminology I had come across during my reading, words like transdisciplinary and more ironically, truthfulness. There is a danger in misusing such terms and I deemed them too abstract to appear in a preface concerned with notions of clarity.
Despite my intentions however, I continually drew upon vague, smart sounding words for an editorial that I felt at the time was essentially responsible for umbrella-ing a group of until-now, (directly) unrelated works. Submitted by people that had in some cases never even met, fuzzy and important sounding terminology would seemingly assure that no one was left out and perhaps even give the illusion that I knew what I was talking about (right?) but it would also prove unsatisfying to (mis)use.
Relying directly upon my research, I continued to shuffle around the words of other artists and thinkers so that they somehow represented my own, resembling a sort of kuboaa shaped mould. It was this dependence, matched by an inconsistent desire for unconditional sincerity that soon began to fill me with an encroaching sense of doubt.
Perhaps this whole notion of sincerity was pointless all along, and was the very thing preventing me from defining my intentions unhindered. Or perhaps I was concerned that in clearly outlining my own intentions I would also be sticking my neck out somewhat and as a result, could risk appearing unlearned. (I needn’t remind you that worrying about ones appearance is neither healthy nor productive.)
Finally, after a number of unsuccessful re-writes and a somewhat ludicrous amount of time, I have moved aside my books and returned to the simplistic impulse from which kuboaa originates; That of a desire to bring closer together a myriad mix of projects, ideas and proposals, and in turn, my friends and peers responsible for them. It is in this meeting space, that kuboaa moves snake-like between various modes of thought and action, appearing transparent and opaque, serious and stupid, informative and positively misleading…
…As you can see, kuboaa is essentially an open structure for readers and contributors alike to find out what it is for and how to use it. Without wishing to simply reflect a desire to reassemble these things from all over the place however, kuboaa takes a particular interest in the space where these things meet as it is these edges and subtle overlaps that allow us to reveal new analogies, exploring alternative lines of communication.
And so in the true spirit of kuboaa, I submit this text not as an editorial, or a preamble to anything but instead take comfort in the knowledge that right now, whilst in it’s first issue, kuboaa is not sure of what it is doing or why it is doing it, and perhaps at times happens simply because I have no precise desire of my own (other than to experiment with other people’s).