Call for submissions: Song of the Wind section of Hyphen Journal Issue 4: Socio-ecological practice
Deadline: 20 January 2025
Submission email: editorial@hy-phen.space
Hyphen Journal, Issue 4, has been inspired by curator Sunyoung Oh’s project Song of the Wind, an artist residency that took place on the South Korean island Yaksan-myeon, Wando-gun, where kelp farming is the main economic activity, the initiative sought to activate the social-ecological-practice nexus with which this issue of Hyphen Journal is concerned. The Song of the Wind section of the issue will be made up of contributions that specifically relate to this project, while the wider issue of the journal invites contributions from diverse disciplines on the theme of socio-ecological practice.
Song of the Wind (2022-2023) was part of a public art initiative conceived as a “socially collaborative art” project and an “anthropological exploration” through art, emphasising the interactions and shared experiences within the community where the project was based. It aimed to explore methodologies addressing environmental and social challenges through social participation in art practices, specifically those situated at the intersection of art and ecology. By taking art outside traditional institutions, it created a dialogic, or what Homi Bhabha describes as a "Third Space", where artists, audiences, and stakeholders could openly discuss different perspectives, including their views on the function of art in contemporary society.
In this project-specific call for papers for Hyphen Journal, Issue 4, relating to Song of the Wind, submissions are invited that relate to the perspectives and questions raised through the experimental method of social engagement put forward by the project. The call invites responses to the project from participating artists and researchers, members of the community who engaged with or experienced the effects of the project, and other observers who have studied the project from a distance, such as curators, scholars, and environmental activists exploring the relationship between nature, society, and community. In reflection of the main themes of Song of the Wind we particularly welcome project-related submissions relating to:
- interactions between ecology and art, including human-environmental relationships, and the role of art in ecological preservation;
- community and socially engaged art practices, including reflection on the outcomes of collaborations between artists and local communities and their narrative themes;
- sustainability, involving case studies of art practices that contribute to social and environmental change.
The call is for experimental, practice-based and theoretical research including, but not limited to, the following:
- experimental, personal, creative and discursive written pieces of varying length, including poetry, typographic pieces, field notes or reflections on fieldwork;
- collaborations across disciplines, between artists, writers, filmmakers, activists, architects, scientists etc.;
- video, animation, photography, illustration, drawings/sketches, sound, music, internet art, gifs, podcasts, computer games and other formats of creative media;
- pieces written in a standard academic format and adhering to academic conventions.
Guidelines for submission
- Deadline: 20 January 2025
- We are looking for submission of completed drafts.
- Please include a 100–150-word abstract and a 100-word biography.
- We recommend practice-based submissions to be accompanied by a text of at least 1000 words.
- The maximum length for academic texts is 8000 words (excluding bibliography).
- Media such as video, sound, photography, etc., can be submitted via an online hosting platform such as YouTube or Vimeo, or via online file transfer.
We welcome informal inquiries relating to the special issue or possible contributions. Please direct any inquiries to editorial@hy-phen.space.
Editor-in-Chief: Matthias Kispert
Guest editors: Sunyoung Oh, Tessa Peters
Editorial collective: Frankie Hines, monika jaeckel, Arne Sjögren