Shifter is a topical magazine that was founded in 2004 by Sreshta Premnath. Premnath continues to edit the magazine in collaboration with guest editors.

Finding that the internet was the only inter-continental “commons” which is not policed by immigration policy, Shifter began as an online magazine. It was conceived of as a topical magazine so that dialogue remained centered around ideas that were not in themselves culturally specific, and could be approached from different directions. It attempts to create a platform where individuals engaged in various fields including visual art, experimental writing, cultural theory, philosophy and the sciences can view their work in relation to each other without any hierarchy. The magazine has always been free, once again to circumvent the inequities of the global capitalist marketplace.

For Roman Jakobson, a “shifter” is a term whose meaning cannot be determined without referring to the message that is being communicated between a sender and a receiver. For example the pronouns “I” and “you”, as well as words like “here” and “now”, and the tenses, can only be understood by reference to the context in which they are uttered.

As this suggests, Shifter’s topics have often focussed on issues of subjectivity and rupture in language, and contributions reveal an equal emphasis on visual and textual strategies. This is a project open to change and failure and does not depend on revenue. Each issue creates a community of artists and writers who may not have seen their work contextualized together, and in this way hopes to open a dialogue amongst them.