Always subject to change, invasion, adaptation, and enhancement, the body is our most essential material, our primary limit. Touch, meanwhile, is the body’s only unmediated form of acquiring embodied knowledge, constantly experiencing the texture of the present tense.

The Happy Hypocrite – Heat Island seeks to understand how our hands (as both digital and analogous devices) and our bodies physically traverse and negotiate knowledge. This issue comprises a temporary assembly of individuals who are acutely and intelligently aware that what we choose to do with our bodies, how we express it alone or with others, can provide valuable cultural openings and resistances to bodily regulation, whether self-imposed or via external legislation.

With contributions and new work by Park McArthur, Duncan Marquiss, Dena Yago, Elaine Cameron-Weir, Giuseppe Mistretta, Francis Sanzaro, Allison Gibbs, Will Holder, Mary Simpson, Charlotte Prodger, an interview concerning ‘adjustment’ between Anna McLauchlan and Gerry Kielty, and reprinted material by Paul Nash and Stow Print College, Glasgow.