What’s That Thing?

Allora & Calzadilla, Project for The Thing Quarterly, 2008.

Art21 artists Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) have designed the current issue of The Thing, a quarterly journal that takes the form of an everyday object that somehow incorporates text.

Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers are invited by editors Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan to create an issue of the periodical. The object is then reproduced, hand packed at a wrapping party and mailed to subscribers through the United States Postal Service. Allora & Calzadilla’s shoelace bookmark—laced into an actual shoe—begins The Thing’s current year of subscriptions (issues 6-9). The year continues with issues by writer Jonathan Lethem, the experimental geographer, artist and writer Trevor Paglen, and visual artist Ryan Gander. 

The Thing does not sell single issues; subscribe for $140 a year at TheThingQuarterly.com.