Between the intersection of rough lines and shadows that are heavier than the body in the light, there is a gender that multiplies existence and yet its own existence is fractured repeatedly – the female.
For her, time works strangely. A quarter of a life to give birth, half a life to live and a persistent eternity, as long as written history, spent in an effort to catch up, step up. Even if she has her own day in the year, even a whole month. Even if during that month many articles will be written about her, this will not be one of them.
And estrangement is even stranger for her. It is not because of the absence of kin, not because she is herself different but because space shrinks and expands around her more often than around him, space is a bully. The space is often his to begin with. Even if she has a home, a room, a table, her cup always fits the same six sips of bitter coffee. She also has her place and volume on celebratory tables. One toast if you are the “beautiful sex” and an extra one if you have given birth. But take toasts with a grain of salt, more often than not they tend to be confessions of guilt in this space – the soldier, the mother, the women… Men do not toast to their own gender, they do not need to.
And men do not search for their own space, their spaces are the kind that can be conquered. He takes his space, she has to create her own.
This month’s issue is an attempt to create an alternative space. One that will only last the duration of a scroll on a page. It might still serve as an exercise and an experiment to step away from that which already exists, the prefabricated social, urban and personal spaces. It asks, “What if …” What if Mother Armenia stepped down from her pedestal, what if we lived in a city where the walls also spoke of the fates of its female residents…what if space as we know it is reconfigured and she is equal owner, equal conqueror, equal creator?
