This issue of Manual—themed Out of Line—is a collection about the way that lines disrupt, point outward. In poetry, the attention to detail one takes in crafting a line is all about making the line disappear, making something it holds to take front stage. . . . The space between the lines creating the image . . . the space around that argues for the importance of all that the lines hold. Out of line—or you got me fucked up, as someone might have said in my youth. A way to say, the thing you think you know, ain’t right. The thing said, done, imagined: a crossed line. These lines we draw are all about history.

—Reginald Dwayne Betts, from the introduction to Issue 9: Out of Line
 

From the Files

Art historian Amber Lopez ponders the bill of sale for an enslaved person named Sam; archivist Douglas W. Doe digs up outrage about Private Parts

Double Takes

Stefano Bloch and Namita Vijay Dharia map the meanings of Your House is Mine (All City); Jared A. Goldstein and Mimi Cabell survey the legal and emotional boundaries of Carey Young’s Declared Void; Fida Adely and Lucinda Hitchcock champion Blue Bra Lady as political protest; Sheida Soleimani and Kate Irvin sing the praise of an Iranian dervish cap

Artists on Art

Posters by Douglas Kearney and Craig Taylor

Portfolio

Loose links & clear couplings

Object Lessons

Jeffrey Moser draws on mist as method in Cloudy Mountains, attributed to Mi Youren; Jan Howard considers drawing and disruption in the work of Shahzia Sikander

How To

Make your own Sol Lewitt Wall Drawing 328