The intimate is one of proximity and familiarity. As a relational category, intimacy is a quality of closeness, attachment, and belongingness. To be intimate with someone or some thing is to have an innermost connection. Intimacy, or intimus, designates interiority or an inward sensation, as in under one’s skin. To intimate is also to communicate with a hint, to imply subtly. This process requires a codified reception, a circle of acknowledgement and recognition. Intimacy not only designates issues pertinent to the discussion of home, sexuality, identity, the slippage between the private and public, but also relationships made out of kinship, ...

Shifter published ten issues between 2004 and 2007. Issues 1 to 9 were distributed as free PDFs. With the 10th issue a short print run accompanied its digital counterpart. This anthology presents re-edited and reformatted versions of first ten issues, in order to consider them together and take stock of the early period of Shifter.