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.
Contributions may take the form of artistic works and their documentation, as well as scholarly articles. Please download the call for each issue and type of works for submission guidelines from our website.
Issue 2: “Field Work” is out now
“Fields”: arenas for action; social discourses; professional areas of practice; knowledge disciplines.
Guest editors: Lucas Ihlein and Brogan Bunt
With artistic and scholarly contributions from Adva Weinstein, Campbell Drake & Jock Gilbert, Becky Nevin Berger, Dvaid Barzier & Kelda Free, Dominic Redfern, Marnie Badham & Kate Hill & Ted Purves & Susanne Cockrell & Amy Spiers, Laura Fisher, Alinta Krauth, Sean Lowry, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Maria Miranda, Meghan Moe Beitiks, Vanessa Berry, Johanna Hällsten & Catherine Clover & Shauna Laurel Jones.
Journal issue 3: “Art & Herbarium”—call for submissions
Guest editors: Thomas Bristow and Danielle Wyatt
About: Herbaria and natural history archives must be more than repositories for artifacts and scientific information. Curators of these collections are aware that while the archives have always been invested with human passions, natural collections are now laden with distinctly contemporary affect as ‘nature’ comes under threat from global challenges like species extinction, habitat loss and the impacts of man-made climate change. While natural collections institutions aim to improve our ecological futures through scientific research, it is clear that ecological literacy also requires involving diverse publics in more embodied, empathetic and ethical relationships with the natural systems that sustain our life on this planet.
Selected proposals for creative or schloarly works will be published on Unlikely—along with art works commissioned as part as an art exhibition at Lab14 in March 2017 in Melbourne.
Download: call for creative works/papers
Deadline for abstracts/proposals for all types of submissons: March 19, 2017
Notification by April 2
Final submission due July 2
Journal issue 4: “Cancelled”—call for submissions
Guest editor: Maia Nichols
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.
Selected proposals for creative arts works for “Cancelled” will be be exhibited/performed at a live event. This will be either in May 2016 at the Situation Room in Los Angeles and/or in June 2016 at Eastern Bloc in Montreal.
Download: call for creative works / call for papers
Deadline for proposals for creative works: March 12, 2017
Notification by March 26
Final submission of creative works due May 1
Deadline for abstracts for papers: March 19
Notification by April 2
Final submission of papers due July 2
Expression of Interest to edit an issue of Unlikely
Unlikely welcomes proposals for guest-edited issues, including the two-stage process of live event, presenting creative practitioners’ works, followed by peer-reviewed electronic publication.
Please send proposals to [email protected]