The World We Want: Dystopian & Utopian Impulses in Art Making – Call for papers

Edited by Grace McQuilten and Daniel Palmer

“How can we think in times of urgencies without the self-indulgent and self-fulfilling myths of apocalypse, when every fiber of our being is interlaced, even complicit, in the webs of processes that must somehow be engaged and repatterned?” – Donna Haraway (2016)

“It is art’s job – along with the other natural, social and human sciences – to help articulate how we might inhabit the world in a manner that might promote human thriving not its extermination…. to help show us how another world is possible.” – Justin O’Conner (2020)

Contemporary art has a complex relationship to crisis. On the one hand, art can draw us toward apocalypse: it charts unfolding chaos, reflects and amplifies the effects of crisis, shows us the dystopian in both our daily life and in our imagined futures. On the other hand, art’s complexity helps fathom the uncertainty of the world, question and challenge the order of things, and allows us to imagine new ways of living and being – to make new worlds. This edited collection will look at both artistic responses to crises – including the climate emergency, global and local inequalities, new forms of racism and sexism and the COVID-19 pandemic – and the changing nature of artistic production itself. Art making has always responded to the world; how are artists adapting to a world in constant crisis?

Possible topics include:

– artistic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

– artistic responses to the climate emergency

– artistic responses to migration and asylum seeking

– art and mental health

– new forms of collectivity in art making

– new economies of online art making and exhibiting

– utopian and dystopian visions in contemporary artistic practice

– radical pedagogy in times of crisis and the responsibility of art schools

Please send a 250-word abstract (or creative submission), together with a short biography, to the editors Grace McQuilten and Daniel Palmer by 17 July 2020: