un Magazine 12.2: Strategic Liaisons

Join us for the launch of un Magazine 12.2: Strategic Liaisons. Edited by Maddee Clark & Neika Lehman, with Assistant Editor Daniel Browning, this issue features writing and artworks exploring creative collaborative relationships.

Rumour has it there'll be a karaoke machine - duets only...

STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILS...

When: Thursday 22nd November
Time: 6pm
Where: Blak Dot Gallery, 33 Saxon Sta, Brunswick

RSVP Online.

Featuring writing & art by: Featuring: Kate ten Buuren, Dennis Golding, Anna Dunnill & Danni McGrath, Francis & Spaghetti, Emma Size, Warraba Weatherall, Amanda Hayman, Troy Casey, Jenna Green, Marisa Georgiou, J. Rosenbaum, Bhenji Ra, Madeleine Stack, Mick Klepner Roe, Ainslie Templeton, Destiny Deacon & Virginia Fraser, Logan MacDonald, Yasbelle Kerkow, Ella Benore Rowe, Therese Keogh & Jacqui Shelton, Sarah L. Thomson, Rosie Isaac & Liv Koh, Amber Wright, Sally Olds & Rosie Funder, Michael Spooner & Darius Le, Genevieve Trail, Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe, Single Brown Female, Diana Baker Smith & Kelly Doley.

Image: Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser, Walkover, 2004, wool carpet, 161 x 240 cms. Courtesy the artists and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.

un Projects is now calling for proposals for un Magazine 13.1, co-edited by Bobuq Sayed and Thomas Ragnar, to be published in May 2019.

In March 2002 the Bush administration’s new Department of Homeland Security introduced its color-coded terror alert system: green, “low”; blue, “guarded”; yellow, “elevated”; orange, “high”; red, “severe.” The nation has danced ever since between yellow and orange. Life has restlessly settled, to all appearances permanently, on the redward end of the spectrum, the blue-greens of tranquility a thing of the past. “Safe” doesn’t even merit a hue. Safe, it would seem, has fallen off the spectrum of perception. Insecurity, the spectrum says, is the new normal.
— Brian Massumi, Fear (The Spectrum Said), 2005

For issue 13.1 un Magazine roots itself into recent history and invites contributions that consider the bordering and aesthetic effects of the war on terror, anchored by - but not tethered to, the collapse of the Twin Towers.

From art objects to art institutions, we want to articulate the ways that the Australian cultural sphere has been informed by the paranoid instabilities of the ongoing global war on terror. We invite makers who can draw a line from the collapse of the Twin Towers to the construction of Manus Regional Processing Centre, who interrogate paranoia as an aesthetic response to mass displacement, who excavate art history and locate debris, who draw patterns of resistance between a new, and mostly Muslim, global class of refugees. We encourage molecular and aesthetic alliances between NGV and Saddam Hussein, for example, or the curatorial network of the Sydney Biennale and the private Australian military contractors stationed in Iraq in 2005. Was the collapse of the Twin Towers an act of vandalism? Did 9/11 have an effect on colour, line, shape, and form? Has the pervasiveness of the image of 9/11 enabled Australia to evade its complicity in the construction of post-9/11 aesthetics/policies/psyches? Is it too early to tell? Or too late for analysis? Are there twin towers in Footscray? In Indigenous contexts? In detention centres? In Western Sydney?

un Magazine issue 13.1 is an experiment in looking at the collapse of the Twin Towers as an imagistic form of knowledge production, and as a moment of material, energetic, and semiotic flux. We invite contributions from makers of all disciplines to analyse culture, aesthetics, and social movements under the temporal backdrop of September 11, 2001. We are looking for contributions that mark the Twin Towers in borders, bodies, images, and language.

Above all, we are looking for contributors that take risks. We are interested in documentary practice, theology, ficto-criticism, psychoanalytic research, artist interviews, queer readings, interventions, essays, and images that at once locate and negate the framework of critical art practice.

** Please note that this issue of un Magazine is devised as the first of a two-part sequence. Following the September 11, 2001 issue, we will reorient ourselves toward another vantage point anchored by a later instance of structural reconfiguration 13.1 charts the reinforcement of external borders and 13.2 looks at the dissolving of internal borders through another site of knowledge production. Our hybrid structure should be seen as a diagrammatic proposition, seeking to establish connections in both speculative and material ways.

un Magazine publishes essays, interviews, artworks, creative commentary, audio and video works, and everything in between. We are open to experimental approaches within printed and online formats. All contributors are paid, with rates varying from $150 - $350.

To submit your proposal, download and complete the following application form.

DEADLINE midnight Friday 30 November 2018

Questions? Email un Projects General Manager Sarah Gory: sarahgory@unprojects.org.au.

un Magazine hopes to publish a diverse range of voices. We always encourage submissions from writers and artists who identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, as queer and/or trans, as having a disability, people of colour, and people of all genders.

PLEASE SUBMIT ALL MATERIAL (inc. this form, images, etc.) AS A SINGLE PDF OR WORD DOC. FILE. If multiple files are submitted, your application will be returned.

un Projects is currently seeking Expressions of Interest for the role of Assistant Editor, un Magazine vol. 13. The position provides an emerging contemporary art writer/editor with the opportunity to assist in the publishing of two issues of un Magazine.

This is a unique and exciting opportunity to be a part of the development and production of one of Australia’s most respected contemporary arts publications, and the role will be supported and mentored by the 2019 Co-Editors, Bobuq Sayed and Thomas Ragnar - to see the structure for un Magazine issues 13.1 + 13.2 click here.

Applications for the role close 5pm, Friday 23 November 2018 and interviews will be held Monday 3 December 2018.

Please download the application form here for full details of the role, including renumeration here.

Questions? Contact Sarah on sarahgory@unprojects.org.au or 0401 210 641. Don’t hesitate to get in touch – we are happy to discuss your application with you prior to submission.

We're so pleased to announce Bobuq Sayed & Thomas Ragnar as the guest co-editors for un Magazine volume 13. Bobuq & Thomas will produce two issues of un Magazine, 13.1 and 13.2, to be launched in May and November respectively. Stay tuned...

Bobuq Sayed (1993) is a writer, artist and community organiser of the Afghan diaspora. They have a BA (Hons) in English from Melbourne University, and they have written and performed for writing festivals and publications internationally.

Thomas Ragnar (1993) is a curator and artist based in Naarm and New York City, by way of Singapore. His work as an artist is often underpinned by collaborations. Thomas’s work adopts diagrammatics as a mode of production. He has curated exhibitions and programs at Artists Space, The New Museum, CAGE 87, Lévy Gorvy Gallery, and Kilroy Metal Ceiling. Thomas has held solo exhibitions at The Bureau of General Services and Testing Grounds. His writing has been published in Women & Performance and the Performa17 catalog. Thomas received his BFA (Hons) in Fine Arts from Parsons: The New School of Design in 2016.