Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Calls for Grassroots Modernism

The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest are seeking submissions for their 8th edition.  We are reprinting their call below in full so that it reaches you.  Spread the word far and wide!

We hear of rigorously pedestrian, joyful projects.
We hear of projects,we hear of movements.
Rumor has it that they are adamant. Present and grounded. Utopian.
Rumor has it that they are creative and common and critically minded, and that they can blow our
minds.
Rumor has it that while the conditions can only be local, the ideals can find international support.
We are smart as hell, queer and quotidian. Just like the neighbors.

Its movement time again.
Utopia tomorrow. Hard work today. Hopefully, your situation allows it that you can enjoy the nights.

In calling for a Grassroots Modernism, we seek a political and cultural movement towards liberatory and just futures. This future is not the top-down technocratic, homicidal nightmare known as yesterday’s modernism. Rather it is a future where our children are crafting their communities, councils and networks, and being. Grassroots Modernism in contradiction explicitly to the current delusions of “impossibility”, “aimlessness” and “realism.” Grassroots Modernism must be realistic to localized situations and the general human capacity to dream together, and build together… and chill out.

The limitations of current social practices are now clear. Some are just cashed, others are easily normalized within the neo-liberal city. All the while, the earth gets more polluted, our children are educated with crap, and governments tell us we are more and more screwed by some unwitting invisible hand.

Grassroots Modernism doesn’t just talk about itself, it is visible in the generative presence of idealistic social formations. It is not art-historical.

To again be modern (here, modern=present in the future), we need to assess how neo-liberal regimes have crushed our capacity to realize our capacities- to articulate new understandings of social wealth, liberated corporeal presences.

We understand how neoliberal ideology from the most cellular level inside our wee bodies on up, has crushed solidarity, denied collective right to a good life, obliterated common interests. Yet as editors, we know that practice within grassroots communities, studios and movements best clarify these notions by demonstrating neoliberalism’s creative undoings.

We are looking for critique and reflection on what does and does not work. Now, now that tomorrow is a reality and our ideals are a possibility. That is a good thing, especially when our strategies, tactics, dreams and beauties come into effect.

What we may be looking for:

• projects from or in the context of collaborative or collective practices.
• grounded in specific practices
• grounded in occupation
• lessons learned
• constructive criticality
• that are of the flesh, for our flesh
• things that effect the ways we think about our lives
• that are strategic propositions to the readership on constituting movements.
• affective movement
• art with a role in a movement
• strategic propositions toward constituting movement
• new or old

Note: This submission call is a provocation as much as it is a request for archival material.

Proposals can be sent to us before you have the capacity to understand what it is you might really be writing, creating or organizing.

To submit:

LENGTH: Proposals can be short, one (1) paragraph is fine.

CONTENTS: Please provide us with enough information to be able to grasp what you are aiming at.

ETC: Please make sure your contact info is up to date.

DEADLINE: April 1st, 2011

SEND: editors@joaap.org editors (at) joaap.org

PROCESS: After the deadline, we will review submissions and be in touch as soon as our schedules allow.

NOTE :We are imagining a relatively long writing and editing period. We are aiming to release the issue in the late Autumn of this year. If this time frame was used advantageously, that might be interesting.