Cose Journal - Issue 1 "Table"

Cose Journal is a new independent publication striving to spark reflection on everyday objects and their different uses through a variety of vehicles for creative expression. Taking various ways of questioning about things as its leading motto, this print magazine prompts us to rethink the function of the elements composing the spaces that we inhabit, making way for unexpected discoveries.

Cose Journal's debut issue examines the objects that sit on the table, a symbolic, social environment that shapes humans' identities by serving as a theatre for their daily gestures, rituals, and conversations. At once intimate and convivial, the table is an anthropological place that speaks of what it means to be human by absorbing people's way of interacting with tools and one another.

Modern objects find themselves thrown into a large, dangerously indistinct mass. Linked to the subject by apparently feeble and impersonal relationships, they appear to have lost their aura. Perhaps, we can rediscover the hidden meaning which lies in them by lingering on the concept of selection because it is only through choice that an object belongs to us.

Now more than ever, this choice can become a demonstrative act. How? By studying the objects that surround us, hand-picking them, highlighting them, (re)acknowledging their value, clinging onto them so as to not be drawn into the flow and breathing new life into them. We can react to the desemantisation of the object by continuing to exercise our capacity for affection and prioritisation.

In a society driven by overconsumption and compulsive buying, in an era where it is impossible not to notice the aftermath of our purchases, paying attention to what we buy and how we buy it has become an ethical and political statement. The only way to reassess our understanding of freedom is to cultivate a new type of bond with the things around us, whether human or non-human.

Founded by Milan-based art director and designer Giulia Nardi, this quirky, thought-provoking magazine explores the hidden meaning which lies in everyday objects. For its launch edition, we are looking at the table – and all the things inhabiting it – as both an interior design product and a place for symbolic exchange and conversations.

Examining it from a plethora of perspectives through philosophy, poetry and short fiction, sustainability, plastic arts and photography, we aim to shed light on the subtle, yet pivotal, role that the table – conceived in its most comprehensive definition – plays in our lives.

Cose Journal is edited by Gilda Bruno, an Italian-born arts and culture writer, editor and photographer currently based in London.

2023
English
180 pages
23 x 30 cm

© Cose Journal