Founding Documents #4: When we came back to sending, we found our return address was missing

Call for submissions, [out of nothing] no. 3 / that there were some ah-ness to things
Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 7:33 PM
From: Joe Milazzo [JM]
To: [undisclosed]

Hi _______. I hope this message finds you well, happy, prosperous, all of the above.

I’m writing to you: 1) in the interests simply of saying hello and, perhaps catching up as time and bandwidth permit; 2) to invite you to send some work for my colleagues at [out of nothing] (Janice Lee; Eric Lindley) to read in consideration for our next issue (details below / on the other side of the fence).

Yes, ours is a small, online operation that cannot offer any renumeration beyond gratitude and, as Lester Young used to say, “eyes”. And you should definitely check out our first two issues to see if our overall aesthetic agrees with yours.

But I would not be writing you if I did not feel that we had some overlapping interests. After all, the theme we have chosen for our third issue is “that there were some ah-ness to things“. If you are familiar with the Japanese notion of mono no aware, that might supply one guidepost re: our interpretation of “the ah-ness of things”. Ditto Georges Perec’s “infra-ordinary”, the fetish, Benjamite [?] aura, body-as-thing-inhabited-slash-possessed-by-spirit, patina, handles / knobs / grips, the human and inhumane threads in the fabric of “the material”. All of which means that [out of nothing] is a bit all over the map. So we trust the writers and artists with whom we collaborate to inform us of matters outside of what we know and point our features of the terrain we did anticipate seeing coming around the next bend in the road. Ours is a kernel of specificity waiting to be crazed in a thousand cracking-open directions.

That being said, and although we continue to bill [out of nothing] as a “literary arts journal”, we are equally interested in theoretical and research-based investigations into systems of signification in general and language in particular. I know I’d be very intrigued to read any further explanation or account you could provide of the taxonomic systems you’ve developed (an mentioned the last time we spoke). How did you arrive at the your final decisions? What was and has been your experience in applying these taxonomies? What made you “notice” / pay attention to the phenomena that have been central to your recent work? We also publish multimedia work, and so would welcome images, sound-files, video, even dynamic web content (e.g., a Flash-based presentation).

We understand if our deadline and or other conditions are are not exactly amenable. And I cannot offer any guarantees of publication. But I can tell you that, if you do choose to favor us with a submission, it will be handled with the utmost seriousness and care.

Thanks much, and best,

JM

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call for submissions
[out of nothing] / http://www.outofnothing.org
no. 3 / that there were some ah-ness to things
deadline: 10/01/2009

Please view complete guidelines here:
http://outofnothing.org/809/

[out of nothing] (http://www.outofnothing.org) is an electronic publication featuring new works in image, sound, text and the digital arts, as well as works located at the intersections between these media.

In general, [out of nothing] is interested in works that address, in some manner:
* the vacuum
* salvage / remainders
* imaginary spaces possessed of imaginary dimensions
* darkness / lightlessness
* reduced or infinitesimal means
* the exponential
* self-abnegating symbols
* the blank
* obliteration
* the inconsequential
* refusal
* the contentless / general contentlessness
* the generic and / or undifferentiated and / or the contra-original
* adhesive agents in search of clients to bind
* none of the above or below

send all submissions, inquires, etc. to [email protected]

[out of nothing] is published in online installments, on an irregular but roughly quarterly seasonal basis that nevertheless remains chronically TBD. Each issue is theme-based, and is introduced by a special M.C.; or, emcee. Occasional print anthologies are also envisioned.

[out of nothing] is edited by Janice Lee, Eric Lindley & Joe Milazzo.