softspot (InOtherWords) is a family of thoughts and observations made during 2020 and 2021. Conceived in a state of fragmented flow, an unsteady portrait of a year emerges. Drifting through field notes and fears, recent histories and cosmic concerns, it is a thing as nebulous as it is precise.
softspot is a fragile space seeking to make sense of a complex now. Through a collaborative process of editing and exchange between OK-RM and James Taylor-Foster, it is a dive into the recent past. Imagined as a container for the near and the close, the project contains a patchwork of prose, verse and visual work that oscillate between the subjective and the objective. Written through the lens of one writer and augmented by a conversation of contributions and references, the book represents a study in how words can be written – and how they can be held in a hand.
Each softspot contains three copies of the same book. You’re invited to keep one and to gift the others as you wish.
Conceived of and compiled between London, Stockholm, Berlin, Copenhagen and Amsterdam with Esther Cloe Theaker, Max Creasy, Rosita Kær, Smari R. Robertsson, Tony Karlsson Savci, and Michela Zoppi.
Referencing words or work by: Yarō Abe, Safdar Abidi, Wilson A. Bentley, Ingmar Bergman, Michael Brill, Martin Buber, Kate Bush, Robert V. Guzowski, Jacob Heinrich Elbfas, Herman Hesse, bell hooks, Stephen C. Hora, Robin Kimmerer Wall, Even Kjelby, Ludwig Mattsson, Walter McClintock, Meg Miller/Are.na Channel Good Sign-Offs, J. Fr. Neveau, Priya Parker, Rick Smith, George Steiner, Greta Thunberg, Kathleen M. Trauth, Simone Weil, Frans Wiklund, and William Wordsworth.
There is so much nowness to the now, in which the future seems impossible and all before a frail fiction.