CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – Full Bleed Journal
Full Bleed, an annual journal of art and design, seeks submissions for its fifth issue, forthcoming in May 2021. We publish criticism, belle lettres, artwork, design, illustration, fiction, poetry, and graphic essays.
For Issue Five, we are especially interested in submissions on the theme of adaptation. In this time of accelerating change, we invite artists, designers, and writers to reflect on the various ways that ecological, technological, and social conditions have necessitated and will necessitate reinvention, hard resets, or new modes of coping, working, living, and thinking. How might art and design imagine, critique, or facilitate the adaptations that will surely be required of us–and of other creatures–in the years to come? How does this time compare to other periods of disruption? How do artists, designers, and creative people persevere? We welcome critical essays on art and artists concerned with ecological change, mass psychology, mental health, and personal, socio-economic, or political adaptations–those that have occurred in the past, and those yet to materialize. We also invite designers and educators to share socially inclusive innovations for the future, and ideas regarding the transmission of adaptation as a skill for coping with rapid change. Send us, too, your personal essays, poetry, and fiction about survival and somehow finding joy or comedy in the struggle to adapt to the changes afoot in our lives.
In addition to essays and stories of up to 7000 words, Full Bleed publishes shorter, recurring columns of approximately 800 to 2000 words. These include “Close Looks”, in which writers offer in-depth appreciations of individual artworks; “Design Futures”, in which designers propose new ideas relevant to contemporary challenges facing their discipline; “Cities”, which examines urban conditions, innovations, and tendencies; and “Studio Visit”, in which the writer visits with and interviews a contemporary artist or designer.
Please submit previously unpublished work along with a brief biography and cover letter through this form by January 10, 2021. Keep in mind that we are an annual publication and will not be making final decisions about the content of issue 5 before February 2021. If your work is accepted elsewhere between now and then, please do let us know by writing to fullbleedjournal@gmail.com.
Published annually by the Maryland Institute College of Art, Full Bleed is committed to cultivating aesthetic experience and progressive design while furthering understanding of contemporary conditions. We favor criticism that emanates personality and experiments with form. We encourage contrarian argument and ambitious critical essays on cultural phenomena that are of active concern to living artists and designers. Issues One (Migration), Two (Crisis), Three (Machines), and Four (Archive) are available at www.full-bleed.org.
