Imagination as a Site of Struggle

Johannes Bruder, Ines Kleesattel, Lucie Kolb, Shaka McGlotten, Helen V. Pritchard
BRAND NEW LIFE REIHENBILD

Inspired by Ruha Benjamin’s reflections on imagination and the question about what re-tooling the future, or the development of future oriented practices, demands, this special issue approaches writing as a site of struggle against attempts at formalizing imagination through what academia considers legitimate forms of research and writing. The issue explores forms of critical speculation that help us take the personal seriously and connect it to forms of public engagement. Building on a panel organized by the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW’s Make/Sense PhD program within the framework of MESH Festival (2024), this issue assembles contributions by early career researchers in the field of art and design. In a conversation, the editors reflect on ways of transgressing academic writing.

Editing for a Decolonized Wikipedia

Reimagining the Black British Sonic Archive

Jess Rowley
Editing for a Decolonized Wikipedia
The institutional archive as a vessel for historical Black British sonic histories is one of precarity, absence and loss. Its failures are the catalyst for communal gatherings and the expansion of alternative research activisms such as the DWN (Decolonising Wikipedia Network), collectively using Wikipedia to reframe and add to the database under the «lens of anti-racism and decoloniality.»

Against Metaphor

Silhouettes of speech

Mariana Tilly
Against Metaphor
Figures of speech are a tongue’s gift to the excessive. Some languages rely on this gift enough to turn its usage into an addiction, speakers into addicts, and poetic metaphors into national history. Consider this: is it possible to argue against metaphors—or some other linguistic devices like analogies or similes—without resorting to the thing itself, in some shape? If we can’t stop shaping (and figurating) or stage-designing with words, there can be no incorrect way to formulate such figurations. This is an appeal to use it all gloriously wrong.

The Phantoms of the Opera

tales, prayers and spells to cast evil away [v.1]

Túlio Rosa
The Phantoms of the Opera
One day, walking in the streets of Milan, the Brazilian composer Carlos Gomes happens upon an Italian translation of Il Guarany. The love story between an indigenous warrior and the daughter of a Portuguese nobleman seemed a perfect plot for a new opera, aligned with the imperial desire for compelling national narratives and the European fascination for everything exotic. But what the maestro didn’t know is that going back in time can have consequences, and together with the sixteenth characters he evoked, other forces came into play.

Closed Surveillance Circuit

Writing in a Life Shattered by Work

Mayte Gómez Molina
Closed Surveillance Circuit
Scientific research and its communication are usually forced into a mold to be considered rigorous. How can poetry serve as a healer, to mediate between the cryptic language of academia and the rest of the world? «Closed Surveillance Circuit» merges poetry with an essayistic approach, exploring themes such as hardware, software, image theory, the obsolete natural-artificial binary, and the experience of life mediated by contemporary technological devices. The poems were originally published by the Barcelona-based publishing house Cielo Santo in 2024.

Transgressing Academic Writing

Editorial Conversation

Helen V. Pritchard, Ines Kleesattel, Johannes Bruder, Lucie Kolb, Shaka McGlotten
Transgressing Academic Writing
In this conversation, the editors of the journal issue «Imagination as a Site of Struggle» reflect on intersectional writing on art, media, and technology, thinking through ways of transgressing academic writing. Based on their respective backgrounds and practices, they discuss weaving together creative modes of critical knowledge production and engagement to look beyond the content of the writing to the practice of writing itself.