Color me...itchy

LA-based itch is at it again. Hot off the email, here's their latest call for submissions!

*****

Calling all writers, dreamers, bunnies, drifters and drawers...

Please find below the call for submissions to itch #13. We hope that you will share something with us. The submission deadline is April 15th.

Feel free to send questions to us (submit@itchjournal.org)

in love,
team itch

*****

For 2011, the Year of the Rabbit, we present
itch #13 -- The Magic Rabbit: a coloring book of expulsions for embracing radical vibrations


You underdog you... Ahem,"rabbit". You never really wanted to fight. You taught us to expel murkiness and fear, and in exchange embrace the bizarre and irreconcilable things that we love, that give life to our living.

Your hidden teachings taught us to take to our curiosity. That living by our own wits can be an act of protest in and of itself... To approach living and art-making the same way we did our favorite coloring book: draw big bold outlines around the things that matter and turn it all polychromatic.

Besides, we never stopped loving coloring books. They provided us the important exercise of recognizing grossly oversimplified (for better or worse) visions of the world and the opportunity to place our colorful mess within it. Crayons were our first lesson in a type of intervention that was about dreaming up a world we wanted to see and inserting the details that mattered.

How did you color?

In this year of the rabbit and itch's 5th anniversary, we offer up an invitation to talk about celebrations, new modes of protest and approaches to making a mark in the world. Let's bring back the soft, meandering clarity of our childhood minds as a force for re-conceiving the past, present and future. Dream us up a fable, a drawing, or share your research, first-hand experiences or future fantasies.


Some rabbits/suggestions we've pulled out of the hat:

how do you mark space to honor your capacity to occupy, do, love, create and act as you desire?

In what (magic rabbit) ways do you wander across templates, borders, language, policy, etc?

What frames do you create, recreate, or otherwise make visible the world you want to live in?

How do you personalize/magical-ize/colorize your surroundings?

How do you mess with the codes of art-making, living, socializing, political action, etc?

What does play mean? How do you maintain play in your life?

What irreconcilable things can't you live without?

Lover but not a fighter? Discuss.

What's making you happy these days?

Alternative modes of competition...

What acts do you expel in the quest for magic?


Also: Coloring book illustration portfolio contest
draw, steal, dream up an image that you'd like to have colored in.

Let’s make a mess together.

Submission deadline: April 15th, 2011

 
Send submissions, questions and provocations as attached, uncompressed word files or pdfs to submit@itchjournal.org
 
No pre-published submissions, please.

Please include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and your mailing address with your submission.

itch is an evolving art project in the form of a journal that aspires to serve the community of dancers and other artists of the Los Angeles area and beyond. Practice participation in the developing LA dance culture: insert your thoughts, your body, your voice. help itch grow should you be enhanced by it...

submit volunteer donate distribute subscribe participate!

Itching to write about competition?

Just in from the editors of itch, this provocative call-for-submissions of writing about dance and competition:

itch #12 -- Com(petition): The Big Throw Down

The stench of competition seems to be everywhere thanks to the infiltration of prime-time competition reality dramas. Many of us thought the art world was immune to the play of juvenile and canned rivalries, but five years deep into So You Think You Can Dance, followed by Bravo's Work of Art, even non-commercial ventures are employing contest tactics as a P.L.A.U.S.I.B.L.E(!) means of supporting emerging artists. In the aftermath, audiences become collectives whose supposed "voting power" turns them against work that doesn't offer instant gratification, and the veneer of the artwork itself gets shinier and shinier.

While we all know that the politics of art are never immune to popularity contests, what do the unapologetic turns to the "spectacle of the contest" do to the aesthetic discourses and conversations that we value, struggle for, establish and teach?

And what about you? Do you play the game? Does it play you? What are you competing against? (something real, imagined, personal, artistic, conceptual, political, psychological, tactical, choreographic...your last piece???) When does competition inspire you to dig deeper and question your methods, motivations, and desires; and when does it just blow up in your face? What or who motivates you to throw down and where does it go from there?

Competition functions to pit peers against one another, but does it have to? What happens if we instead petition the competition, question its mechanics and tactics, thwart the rules of the game, and refuse its authority?

For this issue of itch, (Com)petition: The Big Throw Down, we're interested in the many ways in which you wrestle with the notion of competition, turning it into a clause of action, a site of inquiry or an avenue for confronting fears of failure. Yes, we're talking about fighting the system, but we're also talking about recognizing and usurping the format of winning and losing altogether.

What's really worth fighting for anyway?

Submission deadline: November 30

Send submissions, questions and provocations as attached, uncompressed word files or pdfs to submit@itchjournal.org

itch is an evolving art project in the form of a journal that aspires to serve the community of dancers and other artists of the Los Angeles area and beyond. Practice participation in the developing LA dance culture: insert your thoughts, your body, your voice. help itch grow should you be enhanced by it...
submit volunteer donate distribute subscribe participate!

Itching to write?

Call for submission for itch 9: Before/After:a small book of predictions, outcomes, and paradigm shifts

Once again, itch invites you to contribute your words, images and ideas to our upcoming issue:

itch 9, Before/After: a small book of predictions, outcomes, and paradigm shifts.

Please find the call for submissions below. The deadline is December 1st. As always, feel free to contact us at submit@itchjournal.org if you have any questions.


(vote! vote! vote!)
yours truly,
team itch

Taisha Paggett, Sara Wolf, Meg Wolfe



CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: itch 9

Before/After: a small book of predictions, outcomes, and paradigm shifts


Poised on the political razor's edge of the looming election, the soundtrack for change is running—but, for better or for worse? As we sit on the cusp of this, one of the most important—and symbolically loaded—U.S. presidential elections... and begin drafting yet another list of resolutions as yet another new year approaches... and witness a baby boom big enough to transform the demographics of our local dance population, we can't help but consider those moments in ours lives in which we hover on Big Decisions that, once made, have the capacity to radically change the compasses we use to locate ourselves—for better or for worse. This, in turn, reminds us of making art: the initial brilliance of an idea, the dread we encounter when we can't figure out what the hell we were thinking, artist's blocks, unforeseen circumstances, production nightmares, getting out of our own way... and what happens when the work is finished, when we are left with the reality of what we created / exposed / elected / capsized / deconstructed / demolished / uprooted?


We the people of this After Christ/After Common era, post-9/11, post-tsunami, post-Katrina, pre-apocalypse (you think?) live on a timeline of events. itch 9 is on everything having to do with Befores and Afters. For this issue, we're interested in hearing about those events, decisions, and moments in life and art-making that have constructed (or will construct) a 'before' and 'after' in your sense of how you live, move through, and have a voice in your world.


We encourage submissions in a range of forms and tones: narrative, poetical, ruminative, theoretical, and visual; pre- and post- charts, scores, and project photographs—on such possible tangents as: mental/emotional renewal; create your own adventure stories; "the transition"; presidential elections; private or public/natural (or not) disasters; unforeseen acts of god(desses) or foreseeable consequences; the fashionable and the not; flights of fancy vs. Important Work; break-ups, break-throughs, breakfasts, and break-outs; tectonic shifts in your artistic/political/social/spiritual/conceptual practice; "giving birth" to… ; resolutions, predictions, hopes and wishes; temporality: past, present, and future; and (make your own) timelines.


And, since we're looking ahead, humor us: send us your IN/OUT, HOT/NOT lists.



*For our rolling dialogue section, please submit your responses to issue 8: Pornocracy*


(As we ruminate on these ideas, here is a toast to the now, the unknown, and the unknowable...)



D E A D L I N E: DECEMBER 1, 2008


send submissions, questions, and provocations as attached, uncompressed word files to
submit@itchjournal.org


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itch is an evolving art project in the form of a journal that aspires to serve the community of dancers and other artists of the Los Angeles area and beyond. Practice participation in the developing LA dance culture: insert your thoughts, your body, your voice. help itch grow should you be enhanced by it...

Got an itch? Get one!

itch journal (issue #8)
sweet release party and reading

Tuesday, September 16th, 6-9pm, in the REDCAT lounge!
Readings begin at 7pm, come early for music, $3 drinks, and your own copy of itch!

Fresh off the presses, the much-awaited itch journal #8: pornocracy
arrives at the REDCAT lounge on Tuesday, September 16
631 West 2nd Street @ corner of Hope Street, Los Angeles, CA'

Be among the first to pick up this hot and heavy special issue, in which our contributors get emotionally and sometimes physically naked as they take an up-close and unabashed look at the line between choreography and pornography; the metaphoric capacity of dancing bodies vs. the explicitness of actual flesh; moral valuations and intercessions of/in bodiliness; and the politically efficacious and tactical use of the particular, the graphic, and the carnal.

team itch (editors Taisha Paggett, Sara Wolf, Meg Wolfe) invites you to come celebrate with us as issue contributors give a taste of this delectable issue and revisit highlights from past itches.

itch journal #8: pornocracy is a limited edition special issue featuring 50+ pages of artists writing from Los Angeles, NYC, San Francisco, and Berlin, plus a full-color portfolio with our centerfold contest winner(s).

copies of itch #8 will be available for sale, $6 per copy. past issues also available for sale.

click here for more info and more ways to get itch.

itch is an evolving art project in the form of a journal that aspires to serve the community of dancers and other artists of the Los Angeles area and beyond.

Practice participation in the developing LA dance culture: insert your thoughts, your body, your voice. help itch grow should you be enhanced by it...

submit
volunteer
donate
distribute

The (un)raveling of Dance's Public Discourse

[Editor's Note: For further information about the following announcement, write to submit@itchjournal.org.]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: ITCH #6

The (un)raveling of Dance's Public Discourse

Journalism--albeit selective and to some extent limited by the needs of the larger publication that prints the material (including ITCH!)--is an important product of dance culture. It's what is written, dictated, interpreted, and recorded of a dance for the purpose of public consumption. To some extent, it is a dance's second life, its public face.

It's also a tool. For some artists, getting "written about" is as important as having a live audience. (Where else might you get the bodacious "dynamic athleticism!" quote to validate your production packet or grant application?) Still others anticipate having their work acknowledged in contexts that are more scholarly.

While all perspectives are valid, when we look beyond the concerns of our individual work, it is hard to ignore the fact that the vibrancy of the vast dance culture rests, in part, on a certain level of visibility that journalism provides.

But journalism itself is changing. While dance editorial space in the print media has been slipping, the use of electronic media forms like myspace, youtube and blogs have broadened the prospects for those interested in maintaining dance's presence in the public arena. This
change has raised important questions about the accountability of mainstream journalism to represent the performing arts community (especially considering the authority and reach they have within the public sphere) and the necessity of artists to become the reviewer/pre-viewer/moderator/scholar/critic/journalist, etc of their own community.

We Ex*perts

Artists have the capacity to push dance culture forward, in part determined by the manner in which we engage with, add to, respond to, rebut, oppose, and create alternatives to the production of the public discourse surrounding dance. For this issue of itch, we would like to focus on 1.) artist-initiated projects that seek to broaden the public discourse on dance, and 2.) initiate a dialogue concerning the state of dance journalism starting from your direct experiences, thoughts, concerns and observations.

We welcome your submissions in a variety of forms including critical theory, prose, faux-reviews, documentation, brainstorm, line drawing, haiku, interview, self-analysis, fluff, lists, archival material and manifestos.

*Also, for our rolling dialogue section, please submit your responses to issue #5: fiction and fictions

Deadline: Saturday, September 1, 2007

Send submissions, questions, concerns, provocations, etc. to submit@itchjournal.org.

PS: coming soon: itchjournal.org

itch is an evolving art project in the form of a journal that aspires to serve the community of dancers and other artists of the Los Angeles area and beyond. Practice participation in the developing LA dance culture: insert your thoughts, your body, your voice. help itch grow should you be enhanced by it...