[Commlist] Call for Book Chapters: The Life and Death of Small-Scale Creative Projects

Call for Book Chapters:
Things We Lost in the Fire:The Life and Death of Small-Scale Creative 
Projects

Edited by Miranda Campbell

A quick gloss on this “Things We Lost in the Fire” title reveals its
overuse. There’s a 2007 film starring Halle Berry, a 2001 album by the
band Low, and a 2015 episode of Grey’s Anatomy with this title, just
to name a few.

Seems like a lot of things are in peril this century, and the
pervasive banality of this “fire” phrase might suggest the ways we’ve
accepted these forms of loss into everyday life. This edited
collection highlights the commonplace nature of the extinguishment of
small but mighty forms of cultural production: projects that have been
cut, imploded, faded away, or simply run their course.

Small-scale creative projects often serve equity-serving groups and
often lack recognition. In this context, this edited collection seeks
to name, celebrate, or document meaningful projects that have animated
social relations and creative practices. How might these projects also
be life-affirming “radical pockets” (Haileselaissie et al.,
forthcoming) within otherwise dominant systems that harm or oppress?
How can these pockets illuminate pathways for change, pedagogy, care,
love, or resurgence?

The stakes of the loss of these projects and spaces are often high. On
December 2, 2016, an electronic dance music party at a warehouse in
Oakland, California, called Ghost Ship, ended tragically with 36
deaths when a fire broke out. DIY spaces like Ghost Ship are a common
feature of small-scale cultural production, but these spaces are often
in jeopardy, not only due to physically unsafe conditions, but also
because they are frequently targeted by complaint, police
surveillance, rising rents, and eviction. Some collectives have been
able to anchor in their spaces, whether temporarily or long-term, such
as ABC No Rio in the Lower East Side, Holzmarkt in Berlin, and the
Wyers squat in Amsterdam. Whether or not these small-scale creative
projects occupy physical spaces, they can face the barriers of
structural racism, inequity, forced displacement, and neocolonialism.

While small-scale creative projects can face competing demands and
pressures, both external and internal, they are also often vital
spaces of learning, capacity building, skills development,
relationality, and joy. This collection seeks to find ways to document
these projects as rich pedagogical sites, without invoking longevity
and continued existence as necessary benchmarks of “success,” and
without simplistically casting these spaces as utopian havens away
from dominant norms.

This peer-reviewed collection seeks contributions that spotlight
spaces, collectives, and / or projects that have given rise to
small-scale forms of cultural production.

Contributions might anchor a case study of such a space, collective,
or project while extending concepts of pedagogy (e.g. Freire),
community care (e. g. Piepzna-Samarasinha); love (e.g. hooks), or
resurgence (e.g. Betasamosake Simpson), or another like-minded
concept. (Suggested word count, 6000 words)

Contributions might also provide a shorter descriptive account of a
space, collective, or project that serves to illustrate the qualities,
dynamics, or history of this entity. Contributions might take a
variety of forms, including photo essay, oral history, dialogue, etc.
(Suggested word count, 1000 words)

International contributions and intersectional focuses are encouraged.
This edited collection is intended for publication with Cultural
Production and Everyday Life, a pamphlet series with Concordia
University Press that is edited by Miranda Campbell and Benjamin Woo
that examines how culture, commerce, and policy knit together at the
level of the everyday. Concordia University Press publishes in-print
and open access books and pamphlets in arts, humanities, and social
sciences.

To indicate interest in publishing with the Things We Lost in the
Fire: The Life and Death of Small-Scale Creative Projects edited
collection, please send an abstract of up to 300 words and a 100 bio
to Miranda Campbell ((miranda.campbell /at/ torontomu.ca)) by December 13,
2024. Please indicate interest in a longer, conceptually-anchored
piece, or a shorter, descriptive account.

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