“Ere” in archaic English means “just before.” ere is also the title of a new independent arts and culture publication that explores being almost there, on the verge of something. The word’s mirrored spelling invites self-reflection, while its pronunciation sounds like “air”: the medium we breathe in and out, alluding to how bodies are not separate from the world.

The ere team members come from the fields of arts, anthropology, and design. We live, research and work between places, languages, and disciplines. Transit through physical places like bus stations, airports, and waiting rooms forces us to be present and reorient to the multiple worlds that can exist at once. We observe the air and water as connective, in-between elements of which we are a part. Even in our dreams, we go through tunnels and passages leading to (un)familiar, shifting spaces. We invite a shared attentiveness to the in-between where intervals, encounters with the unexpected, and lapses of meaning become ways of wayfaring.

This text was simultaneously written during a cloudy 0°C day on the border, on a bus travelling from Skopje to Athens; a lightly sunny 15°C day in Auckland; a clear 2°C day in Chengdu; a snowy -3°C day in Oshawa; a sunny 7°C day at an airport in Guangzhou; and a cloudy 4°C day in Mavrovo.