Call for Issue 3: Ecologies

Hyphen Journal asks for your contributions on the theme of Ecologies

This call is for

  • materials to be published in Hyphen Journal Issue 3: Ecologies in May 2021: please send your 200–400 word abstract to editorial@hy-phen.space by 5 October;
  • presentations at the Hyphen Colloquium: Overflows and Interdependencies on 23 September 2020 hosted online by the University of Westminster: if you would like to present at the symposium, please submit your 200–400 word abstract to editorial@hy-phen.space by 28 August.

 

Image: Arne Sjögren

Félix Guattari has proposed the idea of ecology as expanded from its mooring within environmentalism to include the psychological, the social and the environmental, with the aim of developing a critique of capitalism that deconstructs its workings across multiple scales down to the molecular and pre-conscious. We want to take Guattari’s call as a starting point to explore the connectivity and interdependence of everything that exists.

At a time of a global pandemic, many of these interconnections but also contradictions are coming into sharp relief. As nation states scramble to further solidify borders, the virus moves defiantly across geographies and even species. According to news reports, the total weight of SARS-CoV-2 in 4 million infected humans is two grams, an extreme contrast between the scale of the virus’s impact and its microscopic size that can be difficult to comprehend. At the same time, research and practice are often engaged in an effort to enlarge the realms of what is perceptible and to engage with the unseen, the unheard or the imperceptible.

We take a cue from Gene Youngblood’s formulation of the the artist as an ecologist engaged in the ‘revelation of previously unrecognized relationships between existing phenomena, both physical and metaphysical’. As the limits of global capitalism’s boundless appetite for growth stand revealed, it is worth to also revisit the myth of the artist’s infinite powers of invention and the researcher’s infinite powers of knowledge creation. How do the present circumstances demand a rethinking of research-practice? How to respond as ecologists to the issues of the current time in order to reflect on interconnected, transgressive and minoritarian ecologies?

We are calling for experimental, practice-based and theoretical research including, but not limited to, the following:

  • experimental, personal, creative and discursive written pieces of varying length, including poetry, typographic pieces, field notes or reflections on fieldwork;
  • collaborations across disciplines, between artists, writers, filmmakers, architects, scientists etc.;
  • video, animation, photography, illustration, drawings/sketches, sound, music, internet art, gifs, podcasts, computer games and other formats of creative media;
  • pieces written in a standard academic format and adhering to academic conventions.

 

Image: Matthias Kispert

Ecologies are essential even as they are dark, deep and defiant.
Ecologies are us, ecologies are without us.
Ecologies are the hard realities of infrastructure.
Ecologies are abstract and metaphysical.
Ecologies are plants, paints and hard disks.
Ecologies are to be thought about, ecologies are to be thought with.
Ecologies are practice as research.

 

The Hyphen Journal Editorial Team

 

Hyphen Journal is an open-access, interdisciplinary platform for critical thinking and making led by PhD researchers at the University of Westminster.