MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture  |  postcollapse.art

OPEN CALL Postcollapse Art: Art Since 1989

We are pleased to invite artists, writers, and scholars to submit work for inclusion in Postcollapse Art: Art Since 1989,  an anthology that seeks to explore contemporary art and visual culture since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.

Postcollapse Art: Art Since 1989 is an art and theory book that assembles a vast range of creative and critical work that has emerged since the collapse of the Soviet model of socialism in 1989. The book begins with the end of the Cold War and questions the declaration that the triumph of capitalism has marked “the end of history.” In doing so, the book collates and presents a diverse array of artwork, artist interviews, essays, memoir, poetry, archival material, found footage, and experimental practices to demonstrate the complex dialectics of the promises and failures of ideological worldmaking. The book’s “eastward out” vantage begins in “the east” through the specific examples of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the carving of new nation-states across East Europe and Central Asia; it ventures outward to East Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as to the sweeping reach of global diasporas to help picture, if not process, contemporary art and theory amidst ever-shifting and volatile grounds.

Not simply geographic therefore, we seek to define postcollapse as a porous temporal space in which to grapple with the psychic life of normalized instability, the fractured human experiences, widespread dispossession, renewed nationalisms, war profiteering, resource extractions, climate catastrophe, and the overwhelming dread that define our global contemporary. Ultimately, the book proposes “postcollapse” as a critical framework for rethinking human relationships and responsibility so that we might imagine otherwise.

We invite creative and critical work from artists, writers, and scholars that chronicles, reflects on, challenges, and otherwise engages the broad spectrum of social, political, economic, and ecological shifts in the decades following the collapse of the Soviet model of socialism. We welcome work that responds to overt social and political happenings, but we are also equally interested in works that investigate the ways in which artists rethink formal aspects and conceptual implications in response to the changing world. Personal accounts, memoirs, and works based on lived events are especially interesting. Please be sure that your work is written in a style or approach that can appeal to a wide audience. We welcome works that challenge Eurocentric humanism through “other-than-western” and decolonial approaches, and invite proposals that enable a comparative or dialogic vantage to rethinking the global contemporary.

Possible topics include, but not limited to:

1989

Linguistic Pluralism

Abandoned Spaces

Major Events

Abstraction, Figuration

Neocolonialism and Decoloniality

Beyond PostHumanism

Neoliberalism and Economic Models

Bio/Necro-Politics

Network Society

Bio/Necro-Politics

Performance Art

Citizenship, Migration, Exile and Diaspora

Political Aesthetics

Dispossession and Displacement

Surveillance and Algorithmic Culture

Environmental Justice and Climate Crisis

Techno-militarism

Information Politics

Urban Decay

Land Art

Video and New Media Art

Important Dates:

• Open Call Announcement: November 15, 2024

• Submission Deadline: January 15, 2024

• Notification of Selection: February 01, 2024

• First-Round Drafts due: April 2024

How to Apply:

Please upload your proposal as one PDF file using our online form: https://forms.gle/ducB7822N2PEzqtq7 

 The PDF should include the following: 

• Name and contact information

• Your proposal
  For artwork proposals, please provide 5-10 images of your work. For video, performance, or time-based projects, include still images with links to video documentation. Remember to include the password if the link is private. Please also Include an artist statement or a brief text that outlines how your work aligns with this book.
  For written work proposals, please include a 300-word abstract of proposed work together with a list of 3-5 other relevant publications. You are welcome to include links to where we can read your work, however, if links are not possible, please include at least one writing sample in your pdf file.  

• CV - up to 5 pages 

Please note: We use Google Forms to enable direct uploading of your submissions. If you are unable to access Google products, please contact us via email to arrange an alternative submission method.

For all inquiries, please email Dr. Vuslat D. Katsanis at vuslat@postcollapse.art. We look forward to reviewing your proposals.

About MPAC:

MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture is an art and research space dedicated to  exploring our global contemporary from the vantage of postcollapse art and theory. Our frames of reference begin with the human experiences from Eastern Europe and Western and Central Asia since the fall of the Berlin Wall but permeate to every corner of our diasporic world-presence. Formalized in Portland, USA, MPAC relocated to Zürich in 2023.