Mix-tapes are heterogeneous by nature, crossing genres and styles to create a one-hour experience that is greater than the sum of its individual parts. Animal Shelter, the occasional intellectual journal edited by Hedi El Kholti and published by Semiotext(e), is like a mix-tape, writes Alex Gartenfeld in Interview. The second issue of the journal features fiction, art work, poetry, conversations and essays that navigate from politics to sexuality, from fiction to non-fiction in a completely non-hierarchical way. What seems to hold this diversity of material together is “loss.” Both in an emotional sense – longing, sadness, the sense of an ending – and in a geographical sense – dispersion, displacement, “unbelonging.” “The 21st century is disoriented,” states Virilio; Kholti writes about the “beauty of exile”; Dodie Bellamy confides that whenever she enters heterosexuality, “it’s been like visiting a foreign country”. Almost every contribution is acutely personal, feeling raw and, in a good way, sometimes even a little unedited. This might very well be the success of a good mix-tape, that it speaks from one heart to another without betraying the effort that went into making it.