[ecrea] CFP - PUBLIC 51: Colour

Call for Papers / Entries / Visual Contributions
Public 51: Colour

Edited by Scott Lyall and Christine Davis
Publication Spring 2015

Before the most primitive dyes could be developed – before ink – there 
must have been colouring agents. There must have been wonder as colour 
saturated the tissue for thought. There could never be grey matter (as 
Marcel Duchamp described it).

But is it really still possible to wonder about colour? Does colour 
still empower and give significance to the world? Does colour command 
emotion, creativity – even a soul – in ways that liberate productive 
energies, conscious thought, and forceful signs? How does colour record 
the who and what of our epoch, and how might it be fixed and given over 
to posterity? How is colour changing – technologically and culturally – 
and how does changing colours change difference for the arts?

Beginning from discussions between collaborating artists, this special 
issue of PUBLIC seeks partners and correspondents from all milieus where 
colour is currently changing, and being rethought. From philosophical 
deployment to bio-chemical induction, from environmental evidence to 
spirits and mythologies, and from art historical objects (traces of 
colour preserved as artworks) to the manufacturing sectors that develop 
new techniques for color production, distribution, organization, and 
consumption.

Our premise is that colour has a future in the arts if it affects 
significant contrasts in contemporary perception. Accepted contributions 
will record these effects, and – borrowing a term from cinema, will 
function as RUSHES: image-capture (retentions) that have yet to be 
installed within synthetic cultural theories, abstract models, or scored 
codes. The conditions of these rushes cannot be deduced from general 
‘theory’, a scientific norm, or philosophical first principles. They 
depend on transformations of sensible experience, of ways of perceiving, 
being affected, and recording. Colour rushes appear as either facts or 
fictions, or as fantasies, erasures, spirit energies, and forces. 
Sometimes, they appear by way of literal documentation, but they are 
never fully abstracted from figures (that is, metaphors). Colour records 
effects of colonization and resistance, of technical euphoria, and 
environmental fear. Colour can be fast (like rushes fixed on recording 
media); and it can move in flickering images that circumnavigate our 
globe. (Of course, colour can also hang in the air like an atmosphere – 
the strange feeling of global drift beneath the grey of (computing) Clouds.

We are looking for changing colour as condensed in written aphorisms – 
or allegories, affirmations, confessions and sorrows, margin notes, 
postings, poetic licenses, and shared files. We seek descriptive words 
on any colour, of any kind, of any length up to 1,200 – 1,500 words. 
Contributors will be individual, collective, or anonymous – and are free 
to propose more than one entry for this volume. We also encourage 
extracts from broader research projects, without regard to whether the 
focus of this research is colour, or if the author otherwise intends to 
build a bridge to the visual arts. Images, with captions, may also be 
proposed – although “Artists’ Projects” will not be specifically 
differentiated.

PUBLIC 51 will be a rush of changing Colour. Please send proposals of no 
more than 300 words along with a short bio to the Managing Editor by no 
later than October 1, 2014.

TIMELINE:
Proposals (300 words): October 1, 2014
Invitations sent out: October 15, 2014
Full contributions due: January 5, 2015
Publication: late Spring 2015

CONTACT:
Aleksandra Kaminska, Managing Editor
(aleks /at/ publicjournal.ca) <mailto:(aleks /at/ publicjournal.ca)>
www.publicjournal.ca <http://www.publicjournal.ca>