“Paper or plastic?” Sustainably sourced or affordably manufactured? Organic or GMO? Every day, consumers are faced with small decisions marketed to make a big impact. ​​Choosing either paper or plastic puts the onus onto the shoulders of the customer rather than acknowledging that regardless of whether or not you leave the store with a paper bag, it’s the planned obsolescence of what’s inside the bag that’s left unaddressed. Opting out of paper billing feels great, until you realize that the WiFi bill’s gone up and an electric bill leaves you contemplating if your LED bulbs are a sustainability placebo. 

     Small decisions are navigated on an endless loop as individuals seek agency and consider the impact of choice against the dreaded future of ubiquitous Garbage Patches. Faced with omnipresent and overwhelming questions of personal consumption throughout each day means acknowledging that there’s no “right answer,” no escape from the double-bind of ecodread.

     Ecodread is a contradictory affect unique to our contemporary moment. We feel it while tightly gripping a reusable tote bag, crossing the threshold of a budget-friendly grocery store. We feel it coiled within tense shoulders as we reach for the cellophane-wrapped meal kits comprised of organic vegetables and free-range chicken. Ecodread is the omnipresent tension arising from the realization that the cost of living has to be paid from the ledger of sustainable measures. More than anxiety, ecodread is a state of consciousness in which the individual experiences and dwells within the double-bind of inaction and a tense attachment to an imagined apocalyptic future. Urgency and stalemate counter one another as a desire for agency, action, and relief hold the self captive. Ecodread registers the conditions of this impasse.

     Ecodread: Art and Ecology against the Double-Bind considers the theoretical and methodological intersections between art and ecology as sites that resist, critique, or alleviate ecodread. As an anthology, the varied forms and expertise of the collection offers readers moments of engagement that consider relief, distraction, remedy, practice, and more as methods for evading ecodread. The project will involve multidisciplinary works that can be read linearly or intuitively. By welcoming a range of creatives and academics to submit for this open call, I seek diverse responses that imagine how the affective burden of ecodread can be lifted from the shoulders of the individual. In the spirit of community building, I invite a range of contributions such as auto-theory, poetry, theory, methodological practice, academic research, and creative non-fiction. 

This project proposes a future otherwise from the double-bind of ecodread. Consider the following questions as preliminary methodological counterpoints:

• How do everyday practices, art practices, modes of community building, and so on work against the impasse of inaction? 

• How does a critique of ecodread entail a critique of the orientation to the future as inevitably apocalyptic? 

• How do the various practices of artists, poets, scholars, and others offer strategies of evasion?

• What are possible counterpoints to ecodread? Which communities activate or access these counterpoints?

• If we trust our imaginations to consider the future with a glimmer of optimism, what becomes possible? How can a consideration of such futurity be an antagonistic affect to ecodread?

Areas of research or creative practice may include:

• sites of salvage (goodwill, dump, your own storage, gift exchange/white elephant, estate sale)

• kitsch

• aesthetic theory

• object theory

• new materialism

• breathwork

• curatorial or artistic practice

• community engagement

• fieldwork

• performance 

• academic study

• environmental criticism

• creative nonfiction

• poetry

Proposal Guidelines:

Submissions for abstracts should consider contemporary criticism, artist practice, sustainability studies, and ecological thinking as starting points for inspiration.

• Essay contributors should submit an abstract of 300–500 words for a proposed final essay of 2000–8000 words (exclusive of notes and bibliography).

• Poetry contributors should submit a project statement of 200–300 words along with three writing samples. Poetic contributions could be anything from a single poem to appear individually, to a series of poems that either appear in sequence or distributed throughout the volume.

• For all contributors, please include a 250-word bio that details how the proposed contribution aligns with your creative or academic practice. 

Submissions should be submitted as PDF or Word Documents by March 2, 2024. Email your document to lead editor, Claire Spaulding (she/her), at cspaudling2@willamette.edu by 11:59PM PST.

If you have questions, please contact Claire Spaulding directly at: cspaulding2@willamette.edu

Submissions will be reviewed starting March 2nd and responded to by March 30th.