Deadline 10th January 2025

Submission link: https://forms.gle/yNhkShf9YYDpFoXr9

This series of online events aims to explore the role of negation in drawing. By this we suggest that negation is inherent to drawing as a verb and noun.  

Before the first gesture, before its leap, before the best shot of intention casts its arc, there is perhaps a reverence to be found as witness to the surface in advance of the mark. A suspension of dis/belief. An arrest on a groundless ground of the here and now, haunted by the yet to be and the yet to be otherwise. This is the not here, not now, and we await the dehiscing of that which brings to be in the augenblick. Where is it that negation runs untied to its positive opposite in dialectical trajectory? As an unsublated radical, a remainder, always and forever out of reach of the totalising grasp of concepts. Or as an interior otherness, a ghost. An empty origin for this trembling before the page. To place is to displace, and then we leap and the mark is made. A trace of that which it is not.

Each session of presented papers aims to provide a space for discussion, dissemination, and the exchange of knowledge. With the intention of promoting fertile interactions that explore this conceptually rich terrain, we suggest the following as starting points and as possible themes, prompts and provocations:

• How can negation be absorbed into personal practice? 
• In what ways can negation be co-emergent, co-creative, or multi-disciplinary through drawing? 
• How can the relation between negation and the accidental or unintentional be investigated?
• Can negation be politically transformative through acts of drawing? 
• In drawing, does the space around meaning construction present positively, or negatively, or something other? 
• How can gaps, spaces between, and discontinuities be explored beyond the binary of positive and negative?
• How can the relationship between mark and surface be investigated with or without negative space?

Each event will take the form of 2/3 presentations, which address the call’s theme, followed by a Q&A session. We would like to invite proposals for a 20-minute presentation which addresses the theme from practitioners, theorists, and practitioner-researchers. To apply please submit one word .docx document, labelled as follows: surname.forename.presentation and include the following:

• 250-word abstract detailing the research question and proposed presentation
• 1 or 2 supporting images of personal practice
• 50-word biography
• If appropriate, a link to your personal website

Submission link: https://forms.gle/yNhkShf9YYDpFoXr9