Inviting proposals for issue 15.2

un Projects is now calling for proposals for un Magazine issue 15.2, edited by Snack Syndicate (Andrew Brooks and Astrid Lorange) to be published October/November 2021.

‘As we re-emerge from a period of isolation, we are confronted by ongoing and intensifying crises that pose a threat to a collective vision of the future and reproduction (of the body, the environment, the social sphere).’
— Snack Syndicate

This issue of un takes metabolism as its theme. Metabolism refers to the process through which food and drink is transformed into energy. Metabolism names the material relation that links a body and its world. Bread, milk, fat, and water turn into blood, labour, desire, and breath. Metabolism always implies social reproduction; the activity of living requires the conditions of livelihood; energy requires sustenance; effort requires rest; and the working body depends on the body under care and in nourishment. The history of the wage relation and the structure of the working day have changed the way we eat, store fat, and go hungry. This history includes the introduction of sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other commodities that are inextricable from the working day and labouring body.

For Marx, metabolism describes the relation between humans and nature as it is mediated by the labour process and the capital relation. His term ‘metabolic rift’ refers to the fundamental (yet always dynamic) disturbance between humans and nature that is the product of industrial capitalism. What processes (large and small, economic and industrial, material and aesthetic) remain ‘indigestible’ and how do they amplify ecological and environmental catastrophe? How might we rethink the concepts of consumption and transformation so that we can reclaim a vision of the future? What relations sustain us, and what ones destroy us? What is the energy required to resist the terror of capital accumulation (which always implies the terror of colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism)

For this issue, we invite artists, writers, educators, and activists to explore the theme of metabolism. We are interested in submissions of all forms, styles, and registers. We offer the following list not to over-determine submissions but to provide points of departure:

• – How might we think of art and aesthetics as metabolic processes?
• – How does art engage with food and drink?
• – How does art engage with energy and waste?
• – How does art deal with the reproduction of the body? What enables the body to keep going and what exacerbates fatigue and exhaustion?
• – How does art respond to ecological catastrophe?
• – What substances (sugar, tobacco, tea, corn, palm oil, etc.) tell the stories of colonialism, enclosure, and subjugation?
• – How do practices of care collectively attend to the provision of energy?
• – What role does imagination play in shaping the body and the material world?

To submit your proposal download and complete the application form.

DEADLINE Monday 5 July 2021 (5pm AEST).

un Magazine is a biannual contemporary visual art journal. un Magazine publishes essays, interviews, artworks, creative commentary and experimental works. All contributors are paid, with rates varying from $150 – $550. To submit your proposal, download and complete the application form.

un Magazine aim 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 contact un Projects General Manager Kathryne Honey with any queries.