Massa- call for papers and visual essays

Both origin and edge, beginning and end, ‘land’ can be seen as an abstraction on one hand, and as the most material of elements on the other. Its investigation requires a search for our origins, since land holds within it not only the ruins and memories of past cultures, but also the building materials of a future to come. As such, land allows more than a glimpse into the past, an observation into the present or a prediction of the future, but rather affords the examination of an the absolute edge, at the limit beyond which, and beyond land’s opaqueness, one cannot observe.

Whether through spatial, legislative, political, visual or ethical lenses, to name only a few, ‘LAND’ asks to examine, expose and discuss the various ways in which the land itself, supposedly universal, simple and legible, disrupts the boundaries imposed on it by human cultures, and finds unique expressions in the manners by which we grasp, formulate, represent, conceive and produce our surroundings.

We are looking for scholarly and creative texts, visual projects, and other proposals that aim to engage the multiplicity of meanings that the land encompasses, and offer unique interpretations in regards to the conflicted and controversial local context of the land of the people who express themselves as Israeli or Palestinian, and its surroundings.