Pluripotential

6 janvier 2010

Shifter 16 : Pluripotential

Editors: Sreshta Rit Premnath, Warren Neidich
Deadline : February 7, 2010

We seek scores, scripts, instructions and syllabi for Shifter's 16th issue entitled “Pluripotential”.

Here we invoke a term, which describes the innate ability of stem-cells to differentiate into almost any cell in the body, to think through the possibility of criticality and cultural change through aesthetic strategies.

The skin that we are born with is transformed as a result of its life of touches, caresses and trauma and becomes flesh*. While on the one hand each of us experiences a unique set of circumstances, our common knowledge also shapes this flesh. Analogously, the brain becomes the mind through its history of experiences: A British child growing up in Tokyo speaks fluent Japanese, something her parents having arrived later in life to Japan may never be able to do. The brain is prepared for a multiplicity of cultural and linguistic conditions, within certain biological limits of malleability. Furthermore, as Agamben has noted, "the child [...], is potential in the sense that he must suffer an alteration (a becoming other) through learning."**

These limits of malleability may fall within the paradigm of what Ranciere calls the distribution of the sensible: “the system of self-evident facts of sense perception, that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common, and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it.”*** Does art have the pluripotential ability to produce events in the cultural landscape, which in turn produce a redistribution of the sensible: a shift in public consciousness concerning how and what we see and feel, and furthermore a reconsideration of who constitutes the public “we.” Here the contradicting ideas of a homogeneous people, versus the singularities that produce differences within the multitude become relevant.

This play between structural constraints and a potential for continuous change is seen in forms such as scores, scripts, instructions and syllabi which hold within them the potential to be performed and reconstituted in ways always unknown. It is therefore through these forms that we seek explorations for Shifter 16 : "Pluripotential". Strategies including the Situationist "detournement" and remix, which remap or reconstitute pre-existing topographies in order to produce new experiences and even entirely new cultural products fall entirely within our criteria.

In addition, we seek procedures that may help reveal the apparatus that structures this publication itself. How can we self-reflexively consider the nature of the journal as material for reconstitution?

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*"The Merleau-Ponty Reader", Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ted Toadvine, Leonard Lawlor, Northwestern University Press, 2007; Pg. 405
**"Potentialities", Giorgio Agameben, Standford University Press, 1999; Pg. 179
***"The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible", Jacques Rancière, Gabriel Rockhill, Continuum, 2006; Pg. 12

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Guidelines

Please email submissions to shiftermail@gmail.com
large files must be sent via sendspace.com, yousendit.com or a similar service.

Images and Layout Specific submissions:

-Format your pages for a 6.25inch X 9.25inch page size.
-Images should be at 300dpi.
-Fonts and layout will be changed in order to fit the overall design of the issue. Keeping this in mind we appreciate submissions in InDesign, Illustrator, or layered Photoshop formats, so that they can be copy-edited and streamlined to fit the issue.

Text Submissions:

-Texts can be up to 3500 words.
-Format the texts in Word or InDesign or any file that can be opened by these applications.
-We use footnotes rather than endnotes, so please format your text accordingly.

Notes

Shifter Magazine is unfortunately not able to pay for accepted contributions. Accepted contributions will be included in the free online version of the magazine as well as the print version of the magazine. While everyone is able to access the online version at no cost, complimentary copies of the print version are not available even to contributors - they are available at cost to everyone.

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Shifter

Shifter is a topical magazine that was founded in 2004 by Sreshta Premnath. Premnath continues to edit the magazine in collaboration with guest editors.

Finding that the internet was the only inter-continental “commons” not policed by immigration policy, Shifter began as an online magazine. It was conceived as a topical magazine so that dialogue remained centered around ideas that were not in themselves culturally specific, and could be approached from different directions. It attempts to create a platform where individuals engaged in various fields including visual art, experimental writing, cultural theory, philosophy and the sciences can view their work in relation to each other without any hierarchy. The online magazine has always been free, once again to circumvent the inequities of the global capitalist marketplace.

For Roman Jakobson, a “shifter” is a term whose meaning cannot be determined without referring to the message that is being communicated between a sender and a receiver. For example the pronouns “I” and “you”, as well as words like “here” and “now”, and the tenses, can only be understood by reference to the context in which they are uttered.

As this suggests, Shifter’s topics have often focussed on issues of subjectivity and rupture in language, and contributions reveal an equal emphasis on visual and textual strategies. This is a project open to change and failure and does not depend on revenue. Each issue creates a community of artists and writers who may not have seen their work contextualized together, and in this way hopes to open a dialogue amongst them.

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