Dandelion Network

Call for Submissions: lost generations

2015-04-08T17:08:53.538Z

Different Skies publication is looking for essays, criticism, creative non-fiction, free prose and poetry for its fourth issue, on lost generations.

Download the call for submissions here -

http://differentskies.net/call-for-submissions/

Deadline 20th April

Submissions to [email protected]

10,000 maximum word count

'.docx' preferred format

Below is an extract from the PDF linked above, which also includes an amazing collection of quotes from the likes of Mina Loy, Langston Hughes, Jean Genet and Keston Sutherland.

"To talk about generations already implies a level of historical and collective consciousness. It means crystallising an image of the past, which might be rose-tinted, fogged up in greyscale, or crudely drawn in black and white, but still manages to inspire some kind of action in the present, or at least a survival instinct. It means thinking beyond atomised individuals stuck in an eternal present.

But the idea of a generation - X, Y or Z - can’t help glossing over internal schisms and inequalities, whether to do with class, race or gender. Thinking in terms of generations does nothing to undermine the postmodern reduction of history to a series of styles available for consumption (the 60s, the 70s, the 80s), each one following quicker and quicker on the heels of the last."

We're happy to receive proposals and queries.

First World War study group

2013-10-12T21:48:32.604Z

Hi I have just started a group that will investigate the cultural and social impact of the FIrst World War. If anyone is interested please join.

Thanks
Gary

Navigate

2013-10-09T18:19:58.302Z

Hello,

I've started a new reading and discussion group with a broad focus on all sorts of travel writing. Please join if you think this may be interesting for research (or personal) inspiration.

Alexis

https://dandelionnetwork.org/group/navigate

iconoclasm and the destruction of art

2013-10-04T13:44:15.113Z

was wondering if there was anyone out there interested in starting a discussion (group?) about iconoclasm / art destruction

I notice that the tate has just started a new exhibition on this (link at the bottom). Perhaps we could visit it and use it as a jumping off point for discussion? maybe alongside the intro and first chapter (about 15pp in total) of Dario Gamboni's 'The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution'.

Lemme know what you think

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/art-under-attack-histories-british-iconoclasm

Is There Anyone Out There?

2013-06-11T20:51:58.642Z

[sound of tumbleweeds rolling by]

Can we get the discussion going again? o_O

Different Skies - Call for Submissions

2012-12-05T00:06:36.185Z

http://differentskies.net/

http://www.facebook.com/DifferentSkiesPublication

DIFFERENT SKIES, ISSUE 2: INDEFINITE LEAVE TO REMAIN

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Different Skies is looking for submissions for its 2nd issue, 'Indefinite Leave to Remain'. Copied below is a draft of the editorial. We're looking for writing that responds to the spirit of the title and editorial rather than following them to the letter or treating them abstractly as a theme.

We recommend having a read of the 1st issue to get an idea of what kind of writing the publication is concerned with (visit www.differentskies.net). Broadly speaking, Different Skies is a home for hybrid writing, publishing texts that fall between the categories of the critical and the creative, the personal and the political, with a focus on experimental prose and the essay form. However we don't exclude poetry and we're open to writing that pushes the limits of any of these categories.

The deadline for submissions is December 10th, with a further deadline for revisions and final drafts following in early January. The issue will be released in January/February 2013.

Please email submissions as attachments in '.doc' or '.rtf' format to [email protected] . The word limit is negotiable and we're happy to hear proposals and ideas.

------------------------------------------

DRAFT EDITORIAL

Do you remember when we watched Bicycle Thieves? When it finished we couldn't stop crying. It wasn't the same as crying at a sad film (because what you're seeing is sad). The sweet respite of catharsis was pretty much absent. Maybe you could say that some films make us believe in a fiction, whereas others show us that reality itself is unbelievable. Rather than suspending disbelief, we are brought crashing back down into it at every moment.

It's not that we were as poor as Antonio Ricci, who sells his wife's meagre valuables to get his bike out of the pawn shop, is overjoyed when he gets work as a bill poster, then destroyed when his means of transport and work is stolen, and finally humiliated when he tries to steal someone else's bike. We were obviously not in quite such a bad way. It was more about feeling only a few steps away from this situation, feeling that life was being lived on a countdown.

Someone might say that there is nothing very strange or unnatural about this situation. But what's peculiar about our world is that the natural immediacy of survival - where necessity and will coincide - has been sublimated in the pure, abstract necessity of time itself: 5 days till payday, 4 days till rentday. At a more basic level, isn't it a pretty robust indictment of our present system that it cannot keep people from starving? Of course we have a name for this - alienation, the creation of a hostile second nature.

But this isn't the whole story. What made us crack up at the end of the film was also a historical sadness. After the film, we had the feeling that the countdown on life was also a historical countdown.

Do you remember, only a few weeks ago you were in the bank trying to explain why the name on your account was different to the name on your passport. You were trying to find out where the money from your work had got to (was it somewhere in the Atlantic, condemned to endless laps of fibre optic cabling?). I remember when you were granted Italian citizenship it was such a joy and at the same time a relief - like the expectation of unwrapping a gift and opening the results of a medical examination all rolled into one. Now it was as if the cashier (poor them, it wasn't their fault) had discovered some secret clause to deny you the benefits of being a European. They kept saying that if you change your name you have to tell them. But you hadn't changed your name. But you have to tell them. But you hadn't changed your name, and so on.

And then the same night I was out flyposting when suddenly a white van pulled over and two men jumped out. They wore hoods and jeans and flashed badges that I couldn't make out in the dark. They positioned their bodies so that although they didn't lay a hand on me, I was hustled up against the wall. I had done this route several times before and not had any trouble. Even if the police stopped you they just moved you on, or 'seized your equipment'. But these ones were different. They were cruder, more aggressive, heavier built. They looked like mercenaries. In the end I thought it better to pay the fine - which was not that much - than risk running and get charged for something that really would have made life difficult.

It was only on the train home that the feeling caught up with me. Do you know what did it? Walter Benjamin. 'How well he would have integrated his talents with those of the other Institut members can only be conjectured. [...] What can be said with certainty is that the Institut was sorley disappointed and upset by his premature death.' The way the book carried on in the same academic tone maybe had something to do with it. You know how he died? He got stuck at the Spanish border fleeing from France. A week earlier and he would have made it through. He lost his life to bureaucracy and bad timing. The irony of it is that when the border guards learned of his suicide they were so shocked that they let the rest of his party go.

Someone might say that to compare our situation with his, or with the bicycle thief's, is self-pityingly macabre and makes a mockery of the unassimilable, irreplaceable loss of an individual, as much as the historical events they were a part of. In so far as these are risks, they would be right. But the real danger is when this gesture works to smuggle in the renunciation of its own historical responsibilty, by refusing the weight of its own agency in determining the outcome of the present.

Yet still we feel it creeping up on us like a premonition: the fear and the sadness, that the world is a trap, sprung and taught, ready to close around us.

If the feeling is still there, it's not in spite of the risks but because of them. And if there is anything worth holding onto, then it is precisely this risk: Our sense of danger in the present is only the dark side of our sense of hope in the future. Because we can see it for what it is - not just in its facticity, in its commonsensical actuality, but in its terrifying and incredible potentiality - so we can imagine how it ought to be, how it could be.

http://differentskies.net/

http://www.facebook.com/DifferentSkiesPublication

Deleuze: The Fold

2012-11-07T00:11:26.857Z

If there is anyone interested in exploring Deleuze's The Fold, our reading group will be starting 'Part 1: The Fold' on Monday 26 Nov 2012 at Birkbeck (room to be confirmed). Please join the group on Dandelion.

Critical Texts

2012-10-21T20:38:03.060Z

Continuing on from a recent discussion about resources, etc., I stumbled across what looks to be a very promising bibliographic resource on the MHRA web site. That's right, the Modern Humanities Research Association, the one that publishes the MHRS Style Guide. Just go to the MHRA website and search for the MHRA Critical Text Series. They have 39 volumes available, mostly about French poets/playwrights/philosophers, but it's worth a look. Here's one of the titles:

A Sixteenth-Century Arthurian Romance:
L’Hystoire de Giglan filz de messire Gauvain qui fut roy de Galles.
Et de Geoffroi de Maience son compaignon.
Edited by Caroline A. Jewers

BiblioVault

2012-10-05T05:57:19.132Z

This looks like a great place to connect with other students in the creative arts. I'm happy to be part of a new PhD cohort and look forward to learning great things. Just wanted to share a research source called BiblioVault. Most of you probably know about it, but if not, it looks very useful.

MarineLives Call for Project Volunteers

2012-07-26T15:04:57.993Z

Recruiting volunteer project experts, project facilitators and project associates for MarineLives, a project using collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of High Court of Admiralty primary manuscripts, 1650-1669.

MarineLives is an innovative academic project for the collaborative transcription, linkage and enrichment of primary manuscripts, which were originated in the High Court of Admiralty, London, 1650-1669. The end product will be a publicly and freely available online academic edition.

The project is being conducted with the support of The National Archives, Kew, and will work collaboratively on high quality digital images for a complete volume of the court's records, selected from the period 1650-1669.

The C17th High Court of Admiralty in London dealt with a range of maritime and commercial issues, including ship seizures during times of war, and wage disputes involving ships' crews, captains, owners, and freighters. The court's records provide a rich source of commercial, material and social history, as well as a source of maritime detail. They cover English, Scottish, Irish, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Flemish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Genoese, Tuscan, Venetian, and Ottoman merchants, mariners, ships and trade.

We are now seeking academics to join us as part-time volunteer project experts and project facilitators (twenty to fifty hours commitment between August and December 2012). Project induction and training will be provided in August 2012, with full project kick-off in early September 2012. Current team members include postgraduates and academics at the University of Cambridge and King's College, London.

Project associates, who are asked to volunteer fifty hours of research time between September and December 2012, will be drawn from interested postgraduates, graduates, school students, and amateur local and maritime historians, both within and outside the United Kingdom.

Volunteers for all three roles (project expert, project facilitator, and project associate) are welcome from both within and outside the United Kingdom. We have a particular interest in recruiting English speaking project volunteers from Barbados, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.

This project offers participants an opportunity to acquire and deepen their digital editorial, project management, semantic markup and data mining skills.

Please contact the project team ([email protected]" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">[email protected]), if you would like further information, or access the project website (www.marinelives.org)