[Deadline Extended] Call for Proposals: Journal Submissions for Indent 2022

sketch by Simrat Dugal

We often recount the pre- Covid 19 epoch in terms of when we last did something, our responses ranging from the poignant to the despondent. Last hugs. Last salary. Last night out. Last performance. Last food ration. Last touch. Last job. Last hope. From the absence of touch, to the rapid co-option of the body into biometric regimes of state-led surveillance and suppression, the pandemic irretrievably changed how we accessed the body and made sense of it.

Indent is also driven by the other meanings that ‘last’ or ‘lasts’ might hold. A ‘last’ was a medieval-era unit of weight, mass and volume across European maritime communities. A ‘last’ is also a solid mechanical form in the shape of a human foot, used for shoe design and repair. The ‘last’, then, can reference time, weight, materiality, sensation, and the process of making.

In 2021, Switzerland’s Federal Office of Culture merged the Swiss Dance Awards and the Swiss Theatre Awards under the umbrella of the Performing Arts, to grow the visibility of the performing arts and account for the ways in which various disciplines in performance interact with each other. With each passing year, disciplinary boundaries in the arts are growing more porous, and this has also shifted how Indent considers the ‘performative’, and the act of writing, with each edition.

This edition of Indent invites practitioners to consider what ‘the last’ might open up for them, as temporal, material, sensorial and processual provocation. How do we channel all its meanings, old and new, into our imagination of performance? The ‘last’ may be the end of something. But might it also form the premise for new forms of making and doing?

Indent 2022 invites proposals for submissions. Submissions could take multiple forms – short and long-form essays (up to 5000 words), or video, sound, images, drawings, code, and more – with short accompanying texts (up to a 1000 words). All practitioners who think and work with/around the body are welcome to apply. Indent is peer-reviewed, but it views the peer review process as an enabling mechanism, a way of setting up support structures around work. Peer reviewing, in this sense, is not anonymous, and may be set up as an interactive process between the practitioner and reviewers, as personal identity might be central to artistic work. Accepted proposals go through a short peer review process. The tentative publication timeline is as follows.

Deadline for Proposals: Jan 31, 2022
First Draft: Mar 31, 2022
Peer Review: April 1 – April 30, 2022
Pre-Publication Draft due June 1, 2022

Essays will be published across June and July 2022. All contributors will be paid an honorarium of INR 12000. The deadline to submit proposals is Jan 31, 2022. All applicants will be notified by Feb 15, 2022. If you have any questions about the process reach out to us at https://www.indent.in/contact

Indent originated as a project by Gati Dance Forum. It is supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Submit proposals by clicking on this link.