Rewrite
Ella Warren, 24, and Hannah Cash, 26, were between jobs when they decided to create a zine together. “Both of us were entering a new kind of period of uncertainty in our lives: I had just finished studying for my masters and Hannah was reaching the end of her contracted job,” Warren recalls. “We both had this new abundance of time and were looking for some kind of creative outlet.”
“I had thought about making a zine when I was doing my masters in contemporary art practice at Edinburgh College of Art,” Cash continues. “Then I finished my masters, and it kind of went on the back burner. I didn’t really think about it too much.” When Cash met Warren, she mentioned the idea to her in passing. “Ella’s response was really exciting, she was really energetic about it,” Cash explains. “The more we spoke about it, the more it sounded like it could become real.”
The pair went on to create CWYR, a zine which seeks to platform the voices and artwork of queer artists. The first issue, published in April, focused on the ways in which we interact with, utilise, and resist digital technologies. Now the duo are publishing the second issue of CWYR: this time contributors have submitted prose, poetry, and artwork centred around the theme of ‘fulfilment’.
Here, Cash and Warren explain the meaning behind the name ‘CWYR’, what fulfilment means to them, and their hopes for the future of the zine.
Could you tell me a bit about the name ‘CWYR’? How did you land on that?
Ella Warren: I was thinking about the idea of ‘waxing’ interests – like, the way you can develop new and novel interests. And because Hannah has Welsh heritage, I thought it’d be really interesting if our zine name was in Welsh. So I said to Hannah, ‘what’s the word for wax in Welsh?’ and she said, ‘it’s cwyr’. I thought, ‘that’s funny, because that really sounds like queer’ – given that our zine is about queer creativity and promoting engagement with queer creativity. It felt like the perfect word to encapsulate that.
Hannah Cash: I’ve always really struggled with naming things. Ella kind of took the lead on that. I think to be able to have an interesting name that also represents what we’re trying to do – showcase the work of queer people – is really exciting. It’s an interesting name visually to work with too.
The more I’ve grown, I think I’ve realized that fulfillment comes in shorter spurts and it’s okay to not always feel fulfilled
Your second issue, published today, is centred around the theme ‘fulfilment’. What does fulfilment mean to you?
Ella Warren: It’s been an interesting time for us while making the zine, because of the precarious nature of jobs and looking for work, or being in work that’s not very fulfilling. When we were both thinking about the theme for this issue we had some general ideas, but something I kept returning to in my own journaling was this feeling of being incomplete or unfulfilled. It’s been a feeling that’s been very particular to this moment where I’ve not had structure and I’ve had to create structure for myself. Through looking for work, I’ve felt very directionless, and as a result, unfulfilled. So we wanted to kind of look into fulfilment more, and think about how we are limited in trying to seek fulfilment and what poses a constraint upon our experience of fulfilment.
To me, I guess fulfilment is a feeling, not a permanent state of being. It’s more something that you work towards. A project. Some things are more or less fulfilling, and in the tapestry of life we need those varied experiences. With me, being in this kind of slump at the moment, it allows me to kind of interrogate what fulfilment means to me and work towards it. But I think it’s definitely something that you actively work towards. And you’ll never be in a perfect state of fulfilment and contentment, but I think you can create the necessary conditions to be more disposed towards fulfilment.
Hannah Cash: I’d always thought about fulfilment as an end point, something that you arrived at – once you got your job perfect, once you got your living situation perfect, once you got your social circle perfect. But now I think this was a bit of a kind of naïve outlook to have on things. The more I’ve grown, I think I’ve realized that fulfillment comes in shorter spurts and it’s okay to not always feel fulfilled.
What’s really interesting about the theme, in general, was that we received a real breadth of responses in terms of what fulfilment could be and what it means to people. Between the written pieces, the poetry, and the visual responses that we’ve had through, it’s been really exciting and interesting to think about what fulfilment means. I hope that people read the zine and reflect on what fulfilment means to them, and maybe rejig their idea of what fulfilment is. I think that’s definitely what it’s done for me.
What are some of the standouts from the new issue – are there any pieces of art or writing in the zine that you’re particularly excited to share?
Ella Warren: There’s a longer piece called ‘Touching the Wound’, written by Isabelle Phoebe with accompanying art by Joely Mae Greally. I think what excited me so much about this piece is that we received it as two separate submissions for the zine: one was a collection of photographs from Joely, and the other was a poem from Isabelle. There was all this religious imagery and imagery of suffering in the photographs that really spoke to the themes and ideas that Isabelle had written about in her poem. Joely’s images really bring to life the words that Isabelle had written, even without any intentionality behind it. We felt that Isabelle could have more to say, so we asked her if she was open to writing a longer essay, and she was very accommodating. The end result is a beautiful piece about queerness in Christian medieval imagery. I think it’s really beautiful how, without planning it, these words and images from Isabelle and Joely have worked really beautifully together.
Hannah Cash: One of my standouts is a series of photographs by Tess Wood and Beth Greenhalgh. They’re really beautiful photographs: they look at the relationship between the body and its environment and the landscape. They’re incredibly simple, really effective. They capture bodies in water on black and white 35-millimeter film adorned with gold leaf, which they’ve self-processed and printed. I think they just really captured the theme of fulfilment in a sense that I hadn’t ever necessarily thought about.
How do you hope to develop CWYR in the future?
Ella Warren: Currently we’re working on a kind of biannual basis, so one issue every six months. And I think we could aim to have more regular issues, maybe a quarterly, but you know, I am still happy with the idea of a biannual issue. Maybe it’s less about having more issues or more frequent issues, but instead more about creating lengthier issues. I’d love to have more perspectives and contributors. Currently, we’ve had contributors from Wales, England, Scotland, Australia via New York, and I think that extending beyond a kind of Western-centric or Eurocentric viewpoint would be really interesting. So yeah, introducing more perspectives and showcasing the work of artists, not just artists from the Global North, would be wonderful.
Hannah Cash: I think for me what I’ve found really exciting about making CWYR is the sense of community that it is fostering. I’ve now been in contact with artists that I’ve admired from afar, but now I have a more personal connection with them. It’s creating a network of artists across the UK and even further afield. I think that’s really exciting, this sense of community. That’s what’s important to me, for the future of CWYR, that it’s not only something that exists as a zine – I think it’s really important that we have in-person events too. I want to look at doing exhibitions or talks or just creating opportunities for artists and queer artists to meet, to create a space for people where they can talk about queer art. If we can facilitate that, that would be really exciting.
CWYR: Issue 2 is available to buy here. Follow CWYR on Instagram here.
in HTML format, including tags, to make it appealing and easy to read for Japanese-speaking readers aged 20 to 40 interested in fashion. Organize the content with appropriate headings and subheadings (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6), translating all text, including headings, into Japanese. Retain any existing
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Ella Warren, 24, and Hannah Cash, 26, were between jobs when they decided to create a zine together. “Both of us were entering a new kind of period of uncertainty in our lives: I had just finished studying for my masters and Hannah was reaching the end of her contracted job,” Warren recalls. “We both had this new abundance of time and were looking for some kind of creative outlet.”
“I had thought about making a zine when I was doing my masters in contemporary art practice at Edinburgh College of Art,” Cash continues. “Then I finished my masters, and it kind of went on the back burner. I didn’t really think about it too much.” When Cash met Warren, she mentioned the idea to her in passing. “Ella’s response was really exciting, she was really energetic about it,” Cash explains. “The more we spoke about it, the more it sounded like it could become real.”
The pair went on to create CWYR, a zine which seeks to platform the voices and artwork of queer artists. The first issue, published in April, focused on the ways in which we interact with, utilise, and resist digital technologies. Now the duo are publishing the second issue of CWYR: this time contributors have submitted prose, poetry, and artwork centred around the theme of ‘fulfilment’.
Here, Cash and Warren explain the meaning behind the name ‘CWYR’, what fulfilment means to them, and their hopes for the future of the zine.
Could you tell me a bit about the name ‘CWYR’? How did you land on that?
Ella Warren: I was thinking about the idea of ‘waxing’ interests – like, the way you can develop new and novel interests. And because Hannah has Welsh heritage, I thought it’d be really interesting if our zine name was in Welsh. So I said to Hannah, ‘what’s the word for wax in Welsh?’ and she said, ‘it’s cwyr’. I thought, ‘that’s funny, because that really sounds like queer’ – given that our zine is about queer creativity and promoting engagement with queer creativity. It felt like the perfect word to encapsulate that.
Hannah Cash: I’ve always really struggled with naming things. Ella kind of took the lead on that. I think to be able to have an interesting name that also represents what we’re trying to do – showcase the work of queer people – is really exciting. It’s an interesting name visually to work with too.
The more I’ve grown, I think I’ve realized that fulfillment comes in shorter spurts and it’s okay to not always feel fulfilled
Your second issue, published today, is centred around the theme ‘fulfilment’. What does fulfilment mean to you?
Ella Warren: It’s been an interesting time for us while making the zine, because of the precarious nature of jobs and looking for work, or being in work that’s not very fulfilling. When we were both thinking about the theme for this issue we had some general ideas, but something I kept returning to in my own journaling was this feeling of being incomplete or unfulfilled. It’s been a feeling that’s been very particular to this moment where I’ve not had structure and I’ve had to create structure for myself. Through looking for work, I’ve felt very directionless, and as a result, unfulfilled. So we wanted to kind of look into fulfilment more, and think about how we are limited in trying to seek fulfilment and what poses a constraint upon our experience of fulfilment.
To me, I guess fulfilment is a feeling, not a permanent state of being. It’s more something that you work towards. A project. Some things are more or less fulfilling, and in the tapestry of life we need those varied experiences. With me, being in this kind of slump at the moment, it allows me to kind of interrogate what fulfilment means to me and work towards it. But I think it’s definitely something that you actively work towards. And you’ll never be in a perfect state of fulfilment and contentment, but I think you can create the necessary conditions to be more disposed towards fulfilment.
Hannah Cash: I’d always thought about fulfilment as an end point, something that you arrived at – once you got your job perfect, once you got your living situation perfect, once you got your social circle perfect. But now I think this was a bit of a kind of naïve outlook to have on things. The more I’ve grown, I think I’ve realized that fulfillment comes in shorter spurts and it’s okay to not always feel fulfilled.
What’s really interesting about the theme, in general, was that we received a real breadth of responses in terms of what fulfilment could be and what it means to people. Between the written pieces, the poetry, and the visual responses that we’ve had through, it’s been really exciting and interesting to think about what fulfilment means. I hope that people read the zine and reflect on what fulfilment means to them, and maybe rejig their idea of what fulfilment is. I think that’s definitely what it’s done for me.
What are some of the standouts from the new issue – are there any pieces of art or writing in the zine that you’re particularly excited to share?
Ella Warren: There’s a longer piece called ‘Touching the Wound’, written by Isabelle Phoebe with accompanying art by Joely Mae Greally. I think what excited me so much about this piece is that we received it as two separate submissions for the zine: one was a collection of photographs from Joely, and the other was a poem from Isabelle. There was all this religious imagery and imagery of suffering in the photographs that really spoke to the themes and ideas that Isabelle had written about in her poem. Joely’s images really bring to life the words that Isabelle had written, even without any intentionality behind it. We felt that Isabelle could have more to say, so we asked her if she was open to writing a longer essay, and she was very accommodating. The end result is a beautiful piece about queerness in Christian medieval imagery. I think it’s really beautiful how, without planning it, these words and images from Isabelle and Joely have worked really beautifully together.
Hannah Cash: One of my standouts is a series of photographs by Tess Wood and Beth Greenhalgh. They’re really beautiful photographs: they look at the relationship between the body and its environment and the landscape. They’re incredibly simple, really effective. They capture bodies in water on black and white 35-millimeter film adorned with gold leaf, which they’ve self-processed and printed. I think they just really captured the theme of fulfilment in a sense that I hadn’t ever necessarily thought about.
How do you hope to develop CWYR in the future?
Ella Warren: Currently we’re working on a kind of biannual basis, so one issue every six months. And I think we could aim to have more regular issues, maybe a quarterly, but you know, I am still happy with the idea of a biannual issue. Maybe it’s less about having more issues or more frequent issues, but instead more about creating lengthier issues. I’d love to have more perspectives and contributors. Currently, we’ve had contributors from Wales, England, Scotland, Australia via New York, and I think that extending beyond a kind of Western-centric or Eurocentric viewpoint would be really interesting. So yeah, introducing more perspectives and showcasing the work of artists, not just artists from the Global North, would be wonderful.
Hannah Cash: I think for me what I’ve found really exciting about making CWYR is the sense of community that it is fostering. I’ve now been in contact with artists that I’ve admired from afar, but now I have a more personal connection with them. It’s creating a network of artists across the UK and even further afield. I think that’s really exciting, this sense of community. That’s what’s important to me, for the future of CWYR, that it’s not only something that exists as a zine – I think it’s really important that we have in-person events too. I want to look at doing exhibitions or talks or just creating opportunities for artists and queer artists to meet, to create a space for people where they can talk about queer art. If we can facilitate that, that would be really exciting.
CWYR: Issue 2 is available to buy here. Follow CWYR on Instagram here.
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