Whose Sleeves? takes off from the experience of a visit made by Nick Mauss to the storage facilities of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where Merce Cunningham’s costumes and props are stored as part of the museum’s collection. This experience and writing a text about it became a way to reflect on one of the artist’s fixation: ‘the encounter’. Whether, the one with Cunningham’s archive, or with an Aubrey Breadsley book in a bookshop in Riga, or the real/virtual one with some of David Bowie’s make-up, the encounter represents for Mauss a valuable “state ‘before’ understanding or knowledge, and the tendency to think of spatial or lived experience as if it were an asterisk in a text, pointing out possibilities ‘outside’ the text” (Nick Mauss). A reflection on presence and absence that has much to say about the relation with artwork, life, love and their unpredictable destinies.

Nick Mauss (1980) lives and works in New York.

Peep-Hole Sheet is a quarterly of writings by artists. Each issue is dedicated solely to one artist, who is invited to contribute with an unpublished text whose content is completely free in terms both of subject and format. The texts are published in their original language, with accompanying translation in English. Peep-Hole Sheet is meant for those who believe artists are catalysts for ideas all around us, and who want to read their words without any filter. Over time it aspires to build up an anthology of writings that might open new perspectives for interpreting and understanding our times. Peep-Hole Sheet is published and distributed by Mousse Publishing.