Postcards from the Pandemic
In late May 2019, we invited a group of artists and writers together for a week-long symposium to create work in response to the theme structures of anticipation . In our original call, we wrote that “We are iving in critical times, invoked less by concrete threats of destruction than by the feeling of something to come, or something that is happening but that we cannot quite get a grasp of.” We held the research-creation event in Windsor, Ontario, a city on the border with Detroit, MI. We could never have anticipated the ways in which the COVID-19 global pandemic would challenge us with much more concrete threats and would expand our sense of shared and differentially experienced catastrophes. This event grew out of earlier iterations of Structures/Ex Situ workshops, and the book Feelings of Structure, co-edited by Karen Engle and Yoke-Sum Wong. For information on each of these projects, please visit: https://www.structuresofanticipation.com
The workshop-symposium happened before COVID, before the proliferation of masks and anti-maskers, and before we all learned to assess 2 metres distance in the blink of an eye. It was before the renewed protests by Black Lives Matter and BIPOC activists, and before the US government began to dabble in proto-fascist intimidations. Since we wrote those words for our call in 2019, the feeling of ‘something to come’ has been borne out beyond all imagination. Now, we think that anticipation is even more freighted than before: we wait for the US election; we wait for a vaccine; we hope to see friends and families again. We want to imagine a return to normality. And all of this is nervously ghosted as we check ourselves ceaselessly for the implicit exclusions of inclusiveness.
We invite proposals for image+text-based projects that respond to the myriad structures of anticipation swirling around us and inside of us. This impetus is informed by digital projects like CC: World as well as our own explorations of photo-writing in the “Ex-Situ: (un)making space out of place,” some examples of which are below.
Our aim to develop a video-postcard is to foster a genre of image-writing that suspends the image and the writing in the same medium with neither one subordinated to the other. We are interested in how this formal constraint enables the emergence of new resonances.
We seek projects for digital exhibition, that adhere to the following technical guidelines:
Produce textual composition of 150 words total and pair with EITHER a still-image(s) OR a video as follows:
If still-image: produce a maximum of 5 images. Images should be vertical in orientation, and arranged as a diptych with accompanying text.
If video: maximum 1 minute video. Video should be vertical in orientation, and arranged as a diptych with accompanying text.
Proposals should be 1-2 paragraphs (word or pdf), and should identify which type of project (still or video-based), and a brief description of your conceptual/thematic approach. Submissions will be curated.
Please send proposals to: kengle@uwindsor.ca
Proposal deadline: December 15th, 2020
Decisions will be made: January 15th, 2021
Projects due: April 30th, 2021
For additional information, please feel free to contact the curators:
Dr. Craig Campbell: craig.campbell@utexas.edu
Dr. Karen Engle: kengle@uwindsor.ca
Dr. Yoke-Sum Wong: yokesum.wong@auarts.ca
Examples of ‘diptych’ style composition for image and text from the Ex-Situ project.
