Combining Edges

By Nora Bateson, Rachel Hentsch, Nesli Ergün and Kesh Sharma

Unpsychology Magazine’s 10th anniversary issue is on the theme of EDGES. The magazine is published in digital and print formats.

This is the second of a series of multimedia pieces and collaborations to be re-published on this Unpsychology Substack offering further content and context to their original articles in the magazine.

You can download a FREE copy of EDGES from HERE, and order a print copy from HERE.

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Combining Edges: Notes on Creating

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Introduction

In 2023, Nora Bateson published her second book, Combining, in collaboration with a team of fellow creators and illustrators:

“Combining is a blend of intellectual inquiry, essays, emotional engagement, storytelling, poetry, and graphic art; Combining is an invitation to nurture genuine connections and navigate a world brimming with warm data!”

Around the edges of the book itself, other creations emerged  – videos, poetry performances, new words and new combinings. In this short curation we offer a taste of these…

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First: Stretching edges

In one of the sections of the book, Stretching Edges, Nora and Rachel combine poetry and stark visuals from digital art and photography.

The words are inquiries into how we meet - each other and the world. The full piece is in the book, Combining, pages 78 to 85 and is reproduced below.

Rachel also made a video, “Stretching Edges - peek into the making of…" which you can find here and at https://vimeo.com/user103724340/stretching<iframe src="

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It takes all aspects of you to meet the world.
It takes requisite variety. Sensorial versions overlapping.
A million tiny hairs, and a repertoire of sound shapes,
wrapped in memory and
hiding deep below the conscious verbal world
attach and taste each encounter, skipping across time.

When you meet another person, how do you
make sense of them? Do you measure them
and look at their statistics? 
When you hear a piece of music
or enter a forest, how do
you make sense of it?

How can we describe what we cannot perceive, or
perceive what we cannot describe? Are there new
textures of being yet unfound? 

I can't remember what we talked about, but
I remember the texture of your words.

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Second: Where is the edge of me

This is a composed image with digital treatment of 2 photos taken by Nora Bateson, digital effects by Rachel Hentsch:

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Third: Hallway of Hallways

Hallway of Hallways is a poem by Nora from Combining (page 39). In this video treatment by Nesli ERGÜN, the poem is read by Kesh Sharma.

The poem - Hallway of Hallways is taken from Nora Bateson’s book, Combining, published by Triarchy Press, 2023.

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