lunch 13: MISCHIEF | Call for Submissions

Description

The STATE of THINGS is VERY SERIOVS.

The water is rising, the ice is melting the forests are on fire, and the land is sinking. The storm is coming! The océans are ACID! The fish are DYING! Trash is circling and circling in the widening gyre. Every day is a new catastrophe, we're rushing toward a précipice, we're out of time, we're out of luck, we screwed the pooch, dropped the bail, botched the delivery, broke the System, went hurtling down the road of good intentions — we're sorry, officer —

In design, we've been trained to respond with Solutions. So weVe scaled up, we've made maps, we've run the numbers, we've analyzed the data, and aha! we found the answer: a 40-story apartment building made out of responsive mushroom bricks that cleans the air, collects stormwater, and hooks into a régional transit system to create a network of disruptive makerspaces that in turn will get to work on solving poverty.

"I've gotyou this time, Brer Rabbit," said Brer Fox, jumping up and shaking off the dust. "You've sasscd me for the very last time. Now I wondcr what I should do with you?"

Throughout history mischief makers hâve plagued the over-powerful, puncturing the smug assumptions of Fat Cats, Big Cheeses, and High Muck-a-Mucks. From Coyote to Anansi to Shakespeare's fools, the trickster holds the trump card when the chips are down, the stakes are high, and the owner of the casino is the Président of the United States. We posit the wicked pleasures of the trickster taie as an enticing alternative to dreary disaster-capitalist narratives, technocratie solutionism, and universalist fictions of Authority, Progress, Unîty, and Truth.

The editors of Lunch13: Mischief cordially invite articles, letters, manifestos, anti-manifestos, quasi-manifestos, graphies, poems, comics, napkin sketches, recipes, games, and dirty jokes that approach design more impishly than urgently, that uproot assumptions that solutions are the solution, that wiggle under the garden fence and leave the farmer with a fistful of fur — but no bunny.

GENERAL GUIDELINES

lunch invites submissions from faculty, practitioners, artists, writers, and students that can bring critical perspective to the chosen theme. Inter- and extra-disciplinary submissions are welcome and encouraged.

Submissions can take a variety of forms including, but not limited to:

• Short Essays – under 800 words
• Longform Articles/Essays – under 2500 words
• Visual Essays – text under 500 words
• Design Criticism – under 2500 words
• Design Research – under 2500 words
• Original Illustrations, Artworks, Designs, or Photography
• Full articles are preferred at time of submission; however, abstracts may be accepted at the discretion of the editors.
• All submissions, including abstracts, should be accompanied by an author biography of less than 70 words.

ABSTRACT GUIDELINES

Abstracts should include an intended length for full submission, and should clearly demonstrate the intention and argument behind the author’s stated topic of investigation/interest. For text-based submissions, abstracts should be ~500 words. For image-based work, individuals should include at least three (3) representative images and explanatory text of up to ~500 words.