We seem to remember people going out; maybe it was a fever dream; or maybe they did but never came back. That’s the problem with the outside; every stroll, even the most casual, ends with an open manhole. Those who have lost bodies or luggage gain the secret quickest: a voyage? Just freeform waiting; an automatism of windows in motion. Backgrounds. Uncomfortably, some get a taste for this non-repetitive lifestyle. You could say that the act of physical exploration is able to uniquely reinvent itself in its own application and—importantly—never reinvents itself twice.

To go out or stay in? The material pursuit of the world “outside”, chance encounters, unfamiliar atmospheres, strange times, and unpredictable situations has always been the lifeblood of surrealism—without which, we contend, it cannot continue to exist. This has involved the unfamiliarization of the usual surroundings as well as the pursuit of new detours. In the face of increasing substitutions, homogenizations, virtualizations, and concessions for the voyage, and under the persistent threat of lock-downs and hard borders, we wish to undertake with some urgency the collective reconsideration of travel, and the possibility of a new age of discovery…

What actually is the new terra incognita, and how do we approach it? How do we reinvent the concept of travelling (and spatial exploration and remote bondforging in general), without succumbing to any of the available more or less ideological alternatives, including:

a) obediently switching to virtual digital substitutes (despite how this obviously has certain practical possibilities);
b) obediently awaiting the possible comeback of the mass tourism and business travelling industry;
or c) regressively being content with travelling ”within one’s own chamber” into nostalgic memories or unconnected projections (despite being highly ambiguous already from the beginning and no doubt with a particular potential)? Was geography always an esoteric discipline? Where do we go from here?

For this issue, we asked participants to share experiences and suggestions as to this particular area of “reinventing the world” in the hope that they might be pursued by others too and possibly sketch a useful approach taken together…

NB: Although definitely informing the background to our situation, this was not intended to be a pandemic-themed inquiry; we did not wish to focus on the virus, lockdowns, public health etc. Nor was it intended to be a surrealist travel agent brochure, or an anthology of exoticist personal fetishizations. In this intention we hope we have succeeded.