We are suspended in a state of perpetual background noise– morning rush hours congested with license plate frames stamped #BLESSED, construction fences greenscreening the skyline, and a microcosm of others headed towards the same horizontal abyss. Bright billboards saturate the city just enough to conceal the scaffolding and beams held up by chewing gum, string, brown paper, and sealing wax. Interstates loop with a kind of cyclic infinity and we feel conditioned to exist for the pure, undiluted pleasure of driving the ubiquitous machine. A hard, soft, supple, wet, techno dream.
Issue 10 draws from this reservoir— the ordinary, overlooked, and endlessly repeating. The everyday holds its own knowledge: of land, labor, and other quiet forces embedded in its ambiguity. What we so often understand to be neutral or simple is defined by a Western gaze, rooted in speed, artificiality, and production. Tomato does not seek to sanctify the mundane but instead, understand it as an epistemic site that shapes our modes of
