Call for Proposals For Creative Art Works
Issue 4: Cancelled
Guest Editor: Maia Nichols
The Journal
Unlikely is a transdisciplinary journal, which opens unexpected spaces for artistic exchange and scholarly conversations across mediums, disciplines and continents. Unlikely supports the research community of practitioners, makers, and scholars working in the creative arts.
This international, peer-reviewed publication presents the opportunity for artists working in practice-led research to engage in conversation with a range of arts scholars on contemporary concerns. As an experiment in form, Unlikely engages its audience and contributors in a two-stage process of live event, presenting creative practitioners’ works, followed by peer-reviewed electronic publication.
Issue 4: Cancelled
They say “[t]he time of heroes is over”[1], hoping to bury with it all forms of heroism. Certain key aspects of society are irretrievable, crossed out, eliminated. On the one hand, some purposefully act under the guise of nonchalance, taking up a void status as strategic positioning. These can be seen to act up “be unruly” or to act out “behave anti-socially” within the world. On the other hand, the impetus for Cancelled will be to consider agency and alternative models of questioning globalized capital, by rethinking the productive legacy of nihilist strategies and their temporal effects. This exhibition invites artworks that consider how the fields of communication, hacking, design, architecture, activism, scientific or artistic practices produce effects through cancellation, deflection, or discretion.
[1] Bernadette Corporation, Get rid of Yourself, 2003
Themes
Contributors are welcome to confront the tensions between strategies of objectification:and tools of abstraction versus the glorification of self-hood, expressionism and the individual. Works will be selected that address specific forms of spatial orientation and the advantages and pitfalls of strategic desertion, drop -outs, or purposeful self-removal.
Cancelled invites contributions on the aesthetics, function and purpose of cancellation inviting artists, designers, working with design, architecture, fine arts, performance, and all other avatars to submit artworks to be exhibited in sculpture, technology, photography, installation, video, performance and all other forms of media. Collaborations are welcome. Artists in new media, design, architecture, fine arts, performance and neighboring fields may submit works that consider:
- Critical engagement with subterranean networks
- Bio-politics and discretion
- Neuroscience, architecture, history of science
- Practices that abhor an audience or use only what is necessary and without documentation / reflection
- Collaborative projects (for example, that provide models for the redistribution of agency or make use of field notes)
Process
Selected proposals for creative arts works for Cancelled, the fourth issue of Unlikely, will be exhibited/performed at a live event. The first exhibition will be held in May 2016 at Situation Room in Los Angeles. These works will then be eligible for peer-review for the online publication of the issue. Works selected will be considered for how they approach the intersection betweenimage, text and documentation, and how they address what is presented in the call. Artists will be chosen to represent a variety of genders, ages and cultures and will be acombination of international, emerging, and mid-career artists.
Submissions guidelines
- Title, medium, names of participating artists and synopsis
- Up-to-date CV and artist statement (100 wds maximum) and up-to-date CV and for each participating artist
- Brief rationale of your response to the given theme and how it functions within the broad premise of creative practice as research
- Detailed description of the event/performance/work including technical and spatial considerations and requirements
- Estimated duration
- Up-to-date CV for each participating artist
- Images (5 maximum) or links to previous works
- An artist statement no longer than 100 words.
Please send all materials in a single PDF file or a zip folder with the following format: “C_LastName(s)” to: cancelledinf(at)gmail.com with the subject: “Cancelled Works Proposal”.
Selection Process
Selected proposals for creative arts works for Cancelled, the fourth issue of Unlikely, will be be exhibited/performed at a live event. Works will be performed/exhibited/enacted and The exhibition will be held in May 2016 at the Situation Room in Los Angeles and in June 2016 at Eastern Bloc in Montreal. These works will then be eligible for peer-review for the online publication of the issue.
- Proposals are due by March 12th 2017
- Successful participants will be notified by March 26th 2017.
- Artists will then have until May 1st, 2017 to complete and submit the work. Any expenses incurred for creating or shipping the works are the responsibility of the artist.
Works selected will be considered for how they approach the intersection between image, text and documentation, and how they address what is presented in the call. Artists will be chosen to represent a variety of genders, ages and cultures and will be a combination of international, emerging, and mid-career artists.Works will be selected on merit, feasibility and response to the theme. Work will be performed/exhibited/enacted on as part of the two exhbitions. All successful participants must agree to publication in the online journal, subject to peer-review.
Please send proposals to: cancelledinfo@gmail.com.
Image Credit: Francis Picabia, Relâche, performance, 1924, Web.