Introducing the Are.na Annual, vol. 7

Today we’re publishing the Are.na Annual vol. 7, themed “pool,” which is now available for pre-order. To give you an idea of what’s inside, we’re running the editor’s letter below.

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Dear reader, 

Without warning there were swimming pools everywhere. 

Maybe it was because we were newly primed to see them, given our work editing this volume, but pools took over our summer in a way they hadn’t since childhood. Public pools, private pools, overly chlorinated gym pools. A neighborhood pool by the highway where we played poker in the evening. Blow-up kiddie pools that suddenly appeared at sweltering backyard parties, before being flattened and folded back in on themselves. Was a lake a pool? What about the spot on the river where the flat rocks keep the current at bay? 

And it wasn’t just pools for swimming. We were starting to see pools in everything: a potluck was a kind of pool, as was picking up our friends and sailing through the HOV lane. Basically any sort of assemblage — of people, of data, of resources. All pools. 

In retrospect, it was the contributors who contaminated our minds. We had started, as we always do, with a call for submissions in the spring. This year the theme for the Annual was “pool,” as in “a quiet place in a stream; a gathering of people, resources, liquid, or light; to contribute to a common effort; a game of billiards; a place for swimming.” This definition, we thought, was expansive enough to solicit some interesting responses yet also contained. But when the submissions started rolling in, a record-breaking year, the possibilities rippled outwards. Fatima Al-Kuwari, a geneticist-turned-graphic designer, wanted to write about the gene pool, and what happened when humans tried to hack it, through the stories of two sacrificial lambs: her family pet Gold and Dolly the sheep. Keaton Armentrout, who studied neuroscience, wrote with a pitch about averted vision, the phenomenon when neurons pool in the side of your eyes, making it easier to see bright things at night if you look slightly away. 

You’ll find both of these pieces in the book, alongside essays on vernal pools and hypersaline pools, carpools and typing pools. We found that talking about pools often brought up themes of inclusivity and exclusivity, the ecological and the technological — and the leaky edges between these categories. Of course, there are also pieces about swimming pools: Nicole Tremaglio writes about pools in The O.C., those silent witnesses to the early aughts melodrama of the nouveau riche, and Nora Chellew visits the last remnants of the Poconos honeymoon hotels with their heart-shaped tubs. 

Some essays focus on the small and interior — the body and its bloodstreams — and others zoom out, are oceanic, planetary even. Rob Arcand, in the introduction to an interview with climatologist Paul N. Edwards, ruminates on the earth as a discrete “bounded object,” provoking a suspicion: perhaps the whole world is a pool, nested in the ebb and flow of the cosmos. 

This book began, as per usual, with an open Are.na channel where anyone could upload an image or snippet of text related to the theme. Are.na — we’re sorry, it must be said — is also a pool. It’s a digital watering hole, a confluence of upstream and downstream inspiration, making it an exciting starting point for a publishing project. 

At the end of the volume, you’ll find a collaborative text by Sara Magenheimer, in which words collected via Are.na channels punctuate the text, Mad Libs-style. Sara also used some of the text for the warped underwater scene on the beautiful poster insert she designed. The brilliant cover was designed by Maya Man, who first created a video of AI-generated water in order to produce the glimmering, blue rectangle you now hold in your hands. We invite you to dive in.

walk, don’t run, Meg Miller and Amirio Freeman, co-editors

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Are.na Annual vol. 7: Pool is now available in the Gift Shop.