Special issue of Extrapolation (https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journal/extr)

 Call for Proposals: “Science Fictional Ecologies in Contemporary Art”

Due November 1, 2024

Please send abstracts and inquiries to both guest editors:

Guest Editors:

Emiliano Guaraldo, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland: emiliano.guaraldo@unisg.ch

Alison Sperling, Florida State University, USA: asperling@fsu.edu

In a moment defined by planetary transformations and crises, speculative and science fictional narratives have become crucial modes for imagining possible and alternative futures and realities. Across media, these narratives decenter the human perspective within the intersections of technology, the sciences, and social relations, offering critical tools for interrogating the present and speculating on the future states of humanity, technology, and the Earth. As environmental crises reach a planetary scale—with human activities ranging from industrialization and colonialism to various forms of exploitation and extraction fundamentally impacting Earth’s geo-physical systems—science fictions have become increasingly central to imagining possible futures on an altered planet and exploring embodied perspectives of non-human intelligences and more-than-human beings. 

In response to (and also co-forming) the crises and the critical debates surrounding the planet’s well-being, visual, performance, and media artists are increasingly in dialogue with scholars and researchers within environmental sciences, humanities, and social sciences interrogating the geo-physical and the socio-ecological dimensions of contemporaneity. By engaging science and climate fiction genres as source material, contemporary artists integrate, challenge, and expand associated conventions and narratives in their work. The prevalence of dystopian, utopian, catastrophic, and regenerative imaginaries—alongside reflections on current socio-ecological conflicts through science fiction tropes—demonstrates how global visual artists across mediums are substantively engaging with future-oriented discourse. 

 In particular, contemporary artists are increasingly imagining the aesthetic and political stakes of encountering and acknowledging non-human subjectivities and more-than-human phenomena, often building directly upon existent science fiction narratives, as in the case of artists such as Anicka Yi and Pei-Ying Lin. But at the same time, foundational science fiction texts and authors are being referenced and integrated within the contemporary curatorial practices across the globe. This is the case, for instance, of Formafantasma’s curation for the 2022 Venice Biennale of Art which was openly inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s seminal works, or Raqs Media Collective’s work for the 11th Shanghai Biennale (2017), which adopted Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem (2006) as its curatorial framework. 

The notion of futurity has become pervasive across global aesthetic production, with speculative future visions permeating creative disciplines like visual arts, media arts, design, architecture, and more. This growing lexicon often relies directly on the symbolic languages, motifs and semiotics canonical to science fiction traditions, evidencing a shared and collaborative creative ecosystem, as well as the central role of science fiction imagination in contemporary culture. This encounter is embodied by numerous recent artistic projects, like Liam Young’s The Great Endeavor (2023), Future Faber’s multimedia sculpture installation Museum of Symbiosis: science fiction storytelling from a symbiotic future (2023), Hito Steyerl’s Factory of the Sun (2019), Jakob Steensen’s VR experience Aquaphobia (2017), Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann’s multi-media exegesis of climate apocalypticism How Does the World End (for Others)? (2019 - ongoing), Emilija Škarnulytė video installations, GRANDEZA’s projects on extractive and epistemic violence, or Giacomo Costa’s post-human digital city-scapes, just to name a very few. 

The richness emerging from the overlap between science fiction imaginaries and artistic research adds to a growing interest in science fiction and the arts in sf scholarship, art criticism, and in exhibition spaces around the world (Butt 2021; Frost 2016; Jørgensen 2022; Mendlesohn 2022).[1]  It is evident that influential science fiction imaginaries now stem not just from literature, film or video games, but also from the speculative pursuits of contemporary visual and media artists active both in the Global North and South. 

 This proposed special issue aims to understand how contemporary artists utilize and transform science fiction elements to address concerns about the present, envision alternate realities, and critique current socio-ecological, technological, and political issues. It will explore the intersection of science fiction with visual arts, examining how this confluence shapes our understanding of the Anthropocene epoch and its associated challenges. 

 The proposed special issue will ideally host contributions from scholars and researchers working on science fiction studies, visual culture, art theory, visual studies, and adjacent disciplines, as well as research pieces by artist researchers, practitioners, and curators. 

Topics may include: 

• technologies of immersion, AR, VR and science fictional imaginaries; 
• counternarratives and countervisualities from the global south, non-western sf and arts; 

• speculative design; 
• Afro-futurisms and African Futurisms; 
• science fiction and time-based media; 
• AI in the visual arts; 
• bioart and sf; 
• other culturally-specific futurisms in the arts (Latinx Futurisms, Indigenous Futurisms, Asian Futurisms); 
• the inclusion of specific science fiction authors within the arts; 
• multimedia projects defying the boundaries between literature, film and visual arts; 
• curatorial practices informed by sf; 
• museum studies and sf; 
• rewilding the museum; 
• land art and sf; 
• decolonial art practices and land-based sf; 
• DIY sciences and futurity; 
• hacker methodologies in art and sf; 
• posthumanism in contemporary art; 
• petrocultures and imaginaries in the arts; 
• energy futures; 
• science fiction and performance art; 
• pluriversal ontologies, transitional design and the future. 

Proposed length: (including notes and bibliographies): 6,000-8,000 words

Extended timeline:

Abstract deadline: November 1st 2024
Deadline for first drafts for peer review: May 7th 2025 (6 months to write article)

Final revised drafts back from all authors: November 2025 (2 months for revisions)

Publication: mid-2026 

Please send abstracts and inquiries to both guest editors:

 Guest Editors:

Emiliano Guaraldo, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland: emiliano.guaraldo@unisg.ch

Alison Sperling, Florida State University, USA: asperling@fsu.edu

Works cited: 

Butt, Amy. 2021. “The Present as Past: Science Fiction and the Museum.” Open Library of Humanities 7 (1). https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.634. 

Frost, Andrew. 2016. “Possible Futures: Science Fiction in Contemporary Art.” Artlink, December. https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/ielapa.580788158343691. 

Jørgensen, Dolly. 2022. “Coda on Curation: Thoughts on Science Fiction and Museums.” Configurations 30 (3): 367–75. 

Mendlesohn, Farah. 2022. “Curating Science Fiction in the ‘Rainbow Age’: A Discussion in Several Parts: ICFA 43 Guest Scholar Keynote.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 33 (3): 22–68. 

[1]  See also the exhibitions Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of the Imagination (Science Museum, London 2023), the 2016 Sydney Biennale, the Afrofuturist exhibit Before Yesterday We Could Fly (MET, New York 2021), Conquest of Space: Science Fiction and Contemporary Art (UNSW galleries, Sydney 2014), Not of This Earth: Contemporary Art and Science Fiction (Boston Cyberarts Gallery, Boston 2017), Science Fiction(s): If There Were a Tomorrow (Weltmuseum, Vienna 2023-2024).