Foundry Open Call: Boiling Point
We reside at the intersection of multiple contemporary crises: domestic terrorism, the resurgence of nationalism, the migrant border crisis, receding coastlines, seismic upheaval, and depleting resources. Confronted by problems such as rapidly changing climates, global inflammation, and the spread of economic insecurity, we must find sustainable ways of thinking and being.
If humankind has already reached a boiling point, where certain bonds have been broken and matter must be drastically reorganized, how can the humanities reflect on such erosion and shapeshifting even as they are implicated in them? What tools do humanists already have to analyze such shifts, and what mechanisms must we quickly develop in the midst of global erosion? Amongst this volatility, what will be the look and feel of analysis under duress?
Boiling Point is an opportunity to make energetic use of disaster; to not only come to terms with the precipice upon which we teeter, but to harness our present-day balancing act to script new methodologies and new approaches; to manifest new systems of inquiry for a humanities at the end of the human. If our quotidian is growing ever more away from the mundane into an everyday emergency response, what effects might this shift in tenor have on the humanities and academic practice at large? How can we embrace a poetics of disaster and triage to facilitate a new cracking open in humanities scholarship? Is it possible to turn discourse away from crisis response towards something more reparative? Can we envision more sustainable systems of thinking, analysis, and resistance, or are we better off joining in the disorder?
Foundry seeks contributions to the theme of Boiling Point. Work can take the form of poems, essays, provocations, artwork, interviews, and the like. Pitch ideas to foundry@hri.uci.edu.
Potential areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to:
Volatility • Inflammation • Triggers • Rage • Anxiety • Analysis under pressure • Blockages • Escalation • Radicalization • Paranoia • Borders • Migration & immigration • Militarization • Counter-terrorism • Disinformation • Surveillance • Seismic shifts • Bubble economies • Echo chambers • Climate change • Burnout/Blackout
