The pilot issue of gg place magazine presents writers, virtual avatars and field reporters, on-air from ateliers and warzones. In 8 features, they answer the call to explore the meaning of touch today – this new contact in creativity, heritage, daily cultures and the globalised world: from unlikely meetings to the dreams of reunion.
Selected features are available in Arabic, Korean, Japanese and Ukrainian.
Cover photos by Olsdee Photography @olsdee
Introduction
On Getting in Touch
Welcome to the first issue of gg place, the independent folding magazine made to document and comfort a troubled world.
This is a safe place for those who feel paralyzed by the state of things. The lost and searching souls who find themselves in between worlds. The curious ones and those who want to do something meaningful (even if unsure what that would be yet) to make "the game" we play more compassionate.
"Old friends at the beach talk without words" is the photo that was chosen for the cover of this issue. It captures an eternal moment between two beings and the ocean. Looking at it, you can almost feel the breeze ruffle through your hair and hot sand brush against your fingertips. The moment is here to remind us of something we keep forgetting in this speedy era: the need for touch.
No matter where on this planet you were born, we all meet in times of rising isolation, limited access to resources, anxieties about futures and blurry identity paths – able to catch up in a single click and somehow drifting further apart. We can place the beginnings of our disconnection in between the first rising skyscrapers and the pixels that spill from our screens. The greedy stranger's desire for eternal growth severed deep bonds that used to exist between our ecosystems and our minds. Yet, in real time, we are witnesses to a new kind of growth sprouting from these wounds. It reaches further than ever before and forms unheard-of ways of connecting.
Closeness is the perfect theme to open a print publication. As a pageless strip of paper, the shape of gg place is an ode to the history of human relationship with thought and material, in other words, all the things that happen between a limb, a paint, and a surface. Swiping through invites us to recall the faint memory of leporelos, the folding books from our childhood that, back then, seemed endless. By balancing this scroll on your palm, you are entering that realm once again.
When was the last time that you saw something in the news that made you smile? Buried deep under the daily global news of destruction lie the hidden and forgotten deeds of good, the tales of dedication, hard work, and efforts towards brighter tomorrows. Anti-insanity Ritual is a virtual project, assembling the good news into chronicles of hope for humanity.
Written by tt.
A thinker who writes rather than a writer who thinks, drawn to the terrain between disciplines. Where the humanities, science, literature, art, and mathematics refuse to exist separately. Where the past continues to speak inside the present. There is a particular reverence for the dead here, not as relics but as quiet collaborators in the ongoing work of the living. The past is studied closely; the present met with discernment. Thought is kept nourished; language, attentive, not just a carrier of information, but part of the composition. Inquiry remains restless, as curiosity maps the ground mindful of those who walked it first.
Accompanying art by gl1tc4_s0n. A glitch artist and techspressionist from Kharkiv, Ukraine.
This is a story woven through skin. For centuries, Ryukyuan women, indigenous to the Okinawa islands, wore intricate hand tattoos, called ‘Hajichi’. However, this sacred practice, along with their lives, was heavily burdened by colonial oppression. During the preparation for this article, we received feedback from the Ryukyu community to always include an indigenous creator. So, Tereza, the author of this article, reached out to Mim, the owner of a tattoo studio in Okinawa, to tell us more.
Talks with Minami Shimoji * Mim Drawing
Written and translated from Japanese by Tereza Kovalská
Born and raised in Okinawa, Minami is a body artist, occupational therapist and a musician. Daily, she deepens her learning about Okinawan (Ryukyu) history and culture, Hajichi and the spirituality of her ancestors.
Tereza. An aspiring writer and graduate of East Asian Studies. She is currently working on her debut novel “Lost Among Salarymen” which she hopes will serve as a guide to anyone wishing to live and work in Japan.
From vinyl, tapes and CDs to worn-out soles and then back again. The sudden connection of the 21st century opened access to a wide range of sounds and places that we otherwise would have only dreamed of visiting, including the efforts of alternative currents from around the world. Looking beyond the tall towers of K-Pop, this visual reflection on a student's research captures fragments of the fluid underground music scene in Seoul.
Photo-Essay by Iba Swan
A theoretical lighthouse keeper, writer, traveler, documentary maker and eternal apprentice.
She is interested in the meaning of fairy tales, most notably the overlap between urban legends and reality. Her work is focused on making anthropology more human and honouring ordinary rebellions.
the Horse
What if we interpreted a 50 years old Soviet animated fairy tale with a modern twist? We might find out that a forest full of danger is no different from the world wide web we're plugged into.
Norstein’s Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) becomes a small parable about touch in a mediated age: awe, dread, anonymous grace, then the awkward return to tea, jam and a friend.
Written by Tom Sanders * Speak Weird Words
A writer and sometime a performer whose work drifts through surveillance, memory and myth. He’s written a play in which statues speak, a story about a zoo with no exits, and journalism that tastes faintly of iron and ash.
His fiction and essays circle the eerie, the civic, and the unresolved. He reports from the fog but tries not to live in it.
A personal reflection on craftsmanship, cultural identity, and passion in the age of inhuman efficiency. As the creative world becomes increasingly reliant on the production of fast–paced digital matter, Chaerin's words focus on the artist's life and the slow touch of the material.
Written by Im Chaerin
An experimental filmmaker from South Korea. With the use of craftsmanship and distinctive materials, she explores gender issues and sexual imagery. By combining and experimenting with analog and digital print techniques, she makes new visual languages that challenge conventional norms of gender and sex.
Translated by Kim Jun-Yop.
On memory, belonging, and the internet beyond capitalism. 'Preserving Worlds' is a documentary series about aging social virtual worlds, intriguing online spaces that have been active since as early as the 90s, and the vibrant online communities built around them. Using an ethnographic approach, this duo of filmmakers noclip between the delicate environments to capture how people form bonds and spend time there. Welcome on board of the expedition.
Talks with Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil
Derek works as a public librarian in Boston, Massachusetts, but does film work in his spare time. Mitchell is a professional animator and adjunct professor in Brooklyn, New York. Together, they are a pair of filmmakers who have been working together ever since they started filming urban exploration trips in their hometown of Sarasota, Florida. That footage became the basis of an experimental documentary, Sarasota Half in Dream.
Following closely along the old railway network that connected neighbours to neighbours, Jwan's essay traces the past organic coherence of the West Asia* region and its violent colonial disruption, challenging the imperial lens and offering a dream of shared futures.
*This term has been favoured among scholars, notably Nawal El Saadawi, to replace 'Middle East', due to the Eurocentric nature of the latter term: as it refers to the proximity of this area from the British colonial empire, instead of viewing it as a center of its own.
Written and translated to Arabic by Jwan Zreiq
A Palestinian writer based in Amman, Jordan, writing from the perspective of the diaspora. Her work explores identity, memory, and language as tools of anti-colonial reclaiming, situating the struggle for a free Palestine within broader movements for liberation across the Global South, Indigenous communities, and marginalized peoples worldwide.
Vincent, one of the few masters of the sarangi and the only player of an amplified version of this instrument in the world, takes us on a walk along his music career. The sarangi, a rare Indian bowed instrument, becomes an intriguing case of a living heritage, where touch helped to revive a nearly forgotten sound. Now, it sails on experimental tides, towards neoteric shores.
Talks with Vincent Swierstra
A musician based in Amsterdam. He likes to combine the raw, mystic sound of the sarangi with electronic music. In 2021, Vincent released his first EP, The Sarangi Sessions Vol. 1, a collaboration with four hip-hop producers. In March 2025, he released a second Sarangi Sessions EP, this time working with techno producers. Recently, he finished a master's at Amsterdam University in Cultural and Social Anthropology. He wrote his thesis about the past, present, and future of the sarangi.