Call for submissions ideas and prompts

Metapsychosis journal
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I asked chatGPT for 10 ideas. My only direction was to scan the Metapsychosis Journal and also, the Weirdosphere page (tied to the Weird Studies community). This is what it spat out:

(these are of course in addition to Genniefrey’s call)

After looking at both communities, I think there is a very fertile overlap between them.

  • Metapsychosis tends toward consciousness, literature, philosophy, spirituality, poetics, visionary art, and cultural transformation. It has a strong literary identity and welcomes work that sits at the edge of philosophy, mysticism, and artistic practice. (Metapsychosis)

  • Weirdosphere tends toward the uncanny, philosophy, religion, art, imagination, myth, technology, the numinous, and serious play. Rather than horror or genre fiction, it cultivates the Weird as a way of thinking—a mode of inquiry that preserves mystery instead of explaining it away. (Weirdosphere)

The sweet spot is serious intellectual work that is also imaginative and aesthetically adventurous.

Here are ten themes I think could attract both audiences.

1. The Return of Enchantment

Premise

How does enchantment survive in an age of algorithms, AI, bureaucracy, and disenchantment?

Possible contributions

  • essays

  • fiction

  • poetry

  • visual art

  • photography

  • comics

  • interviews

Questions

  • What does enchantment actually feel like?

  • Can modern life still become sacred?

  • What practices cultivate wonder?

  • Is enchantment discovered or created?

2. Strange Ecologies

This feels particularly timely.

Premise

Explore relationships between consciousness, landscapes, animals, fungi, machines, weather, ruins, and invisible ecologies.

Think:

  • forests

  • abandoned places

  • oceans

  • parasites

  • ghosts of ecosystems

  • AI ecologies

  • symbiosis

This theme could attract artists, philosophers, and environmental thinkers simultaneously.

3. Thresholds

One of my favorites.

Premise

Everything interesting happens at boundaries.

Contributors might explore

  • waking and dreaming

  • life and death

  • human and machine

  • sound and silence

  • visible and invisible

  • memory and imagination

  • sacred and ordinary

Thresholds naturally welcomes interdisciplinary work.

4. The Intelligence of Things

A beautiful bridge between philosophy and Weird Studies.

Questions include

  • Do objects think?

  • What memories do places hold?

  • Can architecture dream?

  • What agency belongs to materials?

  • How do tools shape consciousness?

Influences could range from animism to phenomenology to speculative realism.

5. Cartographies of the Invisible

Instead of maps of geography…

maps of

  • dreams

  • spirits

  • symbols

  • memories

  • psychic landscapes

  • imaginal worlds

  • forgotten cities

  • impossible architectures

Artists could literally create maps.

Writers could invent them.

Scholars could interpret them.

6. The Beautiful Monster

A Weird Studies classic.

Rather than horror…

ask contributors to investigate

  • beauty inside monstrosity

  • the sublime

  • sacred terror

  • holy grotesques

  • angels

  • tricksters

  • hybrids

  • impossible beings

This has enormous artistic potential.

7. Listening to the Unknown

As someone curating Acousmatic Crossings, this immediately struck me.

Rather than making it about sound alone…

expand listening into a philosophical practice.

Possible topics

  • deep listening

  • silence

  • voices

  • dreams

  • landscapes

  • music

  • spirits

  • AI

  • memory

  • prayer

  • impossible conversations

This would fit perfectly within Metapsychosis while remaining broad.

8. The Future Mythic

Instead of asking what mythology was…

ask

What myths are being born now?

Topics might include

  • AI

  • UFOs

  • internet folklore

  • memes

  • simulation

  • posthumanism

  • digital ritual

  • crypto mysticism

  • virtual pilgrimage

This could become one of the journal’s most shared calls.

9. Impossible Encounters

Everyone has experienced moments that resist explanation.

Invite stories, essays, poems and artworks exploring encounters with

  • strangers

  • doubles

  • forgotten places

  • impossible coincidences

  • dreams

  • saints

  • monsters

  • gods

  • animals

  • machines

  • artworks

  • music

The emphasis would be phenomenological rather than paranormal.

10. The Art of Orientation

Probably my favorite conceptually.

Modern people are constantly asking

How do we orient ourselves?

Not politically.

Existentially.

Invite work exploring

  • pilgrimage

  • wandering

  • maps

  • stars

  • inner compasses

  • rituals

  • attention

  • navigation through uncertainty

It feels both ancient and contemporary.

Three ideas I think could become signature Metapsychosis issues

The Secret Life of Attention

Not mindfulness.

Attention as

  • magic

  • devotion

  • perception

  • aesthetics

  • contemplation

  • artistic practice

  • philosophical method

This intersects beautifully with phenomenology, mysticism, psychology, and art.

Worlds Within Worlds

The premise is wonderfully simple.

Every artwork opens a world.

Every dream opens a world.

Every myth.

Every game.

Every ritual.

Every piece of music.

How do these worlds intersect?

Strange Hospitality

This may be the most original.

What does it mean to welcome the unknown?

Possible “guests”

  • ghosts

  • ideas

  • strangers

  • future selves

  • impossible animals

  • divinity

  • dreams

  • artworks

  • silence

The issue would become an exploration of openness itself.

If I were choosing just three

These strike me as the strongest blend of literary appeal, philosophical depth, and “weird” resonance:

  1. Thresholds

    • Broad enough for every medium.

    • Philosophically rich.

    • Instantly evocative.

  2. Cartographies of the Invisible

    • Strong visual identity.

    • Appeals equally to writers and artists.

    • Feels distinctly Metapsychosis.

  3. The Future Mythic

    • Timely.

    • Bridges ancient myth with emerging technologies and cultural forms.

    • Likely to attract both established and younger contributors.

Each of these themes aligns with the shared sensibility of Metapsychosis and the Weird Studies community: they invite contributors to explore mystery without reducing it, to approach philosophy as a creative act, and to treat art as a mode of inquiry rather than mere illustration. (Weirdosphere)

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I kinda think calls for submissions should be areas which we are passionate about, rather than an AI-generated list. If one of these topics appeals, then go for it. But let’s solicit suggestions from our community first?

For instance, a subject that appeals to me is Transgressions. But I am already managing one call, so don’t pay any attention to me :slight_smile: I had lots of feedback on my recent posts on the forum, so I think calling out to our community could be effective. The issue is placing the topic in right category. Maybe not the Metapsychosis Journal category but rather the Commons?

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Hi Michael and Gennifrey,

The AI suggestions are not bad at all , I guess because they’re a reframing of existing themes in Metapy and Weird Studies. Strange Hospitality and Worlds Within Worlds are promising. My favorite among these might be Thresholds, but I think we already put out a Thresholds call last year.

Transgressions might be the call most in tune with the cultural moment, since the meaning of the term has shifted about 180 degrees since I was in art school, along with the political alignment of many of those who define themselves in terms of transgression. Over the past ten years or so, the term and practice has been appropriated by those who seem to take delight in acting out the most offensive and violent of their Shadow contents while somehow claiming that they’re the only ones who have integrated their Shadows!

Like the idea of sex as liberation in the first half of the 20th century, which was a reasonable enough response to Victorian taboos–even this dreamed-of freedom led to the triumph of eroticised advertising and what Marcuse called “repressive desublimation”-- this appropriation of Transgression by those who are simply acting out their fears and biases is, no doubt, an inevitable overcorrection from the too mechanized formalization of liberal pieties. This has also allowed the Right to position itself as the heroic defender of mystery, psychic depth, ritual, and the esoteric–in a way that actually seems to have convinced serious practitioners of the occult–even as it has allied itself with Christian extremists who detest all of these things.

I’m often shocked to see where various friends from Evolver Boston–a group I helped to organize from 2007-2013–and the alternative health and yoga communities have ended up. Some portion of my own work could be considered transgressive, in a way that has sometimes annoyed or offended people across a wide spectrum, and I would like to see the term, concept, and practice reclaimed for general use.

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I agree that the AI suggestions are “not bad,” but somehow none of them feel “quite right” either. They are suggestive, but with the flavor of cardboard. Like Gennifrey said, I don’t feel the connection with some personal passion.

In the big picture: I think we’re truly in a moment of disarray, just barely being held together by spectacles such as the World Cup. Between the ways that AI is scrambling and reconfiguring our cognition at scale; the wars in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and elsewhere; the climate weirding; etc.—in this creative catastrophe, what is worth our sincere attention?

One notion of “metapsychosis” is to inhabit a meta-perspective on the chaos. I think it is also to suggest a quality of spiritual transcendence and immanence simultaneously. In, and of it, but somehow beyond it through the power of the imagination.

I have been immersed in the practicality of organizing a cooperative arts platform. Why? As a response. As a kind of ark. As a vessel for strange creatures of the imagination. I want somehow what we publish to matter enough that it really does make people think. We should put out an intention to make these submissions ‘count.’

What do we really want to come in? What would be exciting, energizing, and enlivening to publish?

Let’s keep in mind also our books coming out (or being re-issued), and potential resonances: My I AM THE SINGULARITY, Gennifrey’s Messioph and Plenum re-issues, Doraine’s This Woman, Brian’s X: Revenge of the Autogenes, Maia’s See You In Our Dreams re-issue. Just as Gennifrey’s call for submissions will support Lamella’s book, how might we play off the others?

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Just a weird thought here: Transgressive Arks

What is a transgressive ark? It is a vehicle that crosses conventional boundaries in order to preserve carriers of precious genetic cargo (“animals”—god’s creations before humans) against natural/divine mass extinction events that otherwise wipe clean the slate. ‘Ark’ can also be read as “arc,” in the sense of a narrative trajectory, an up and a down over some length of time.

We might even with go with “transgressive arcs” and let some read “arks.” What is a transgressive arc? It is more than an isolated act. It is perhaps a more subtle series of movements, gestures, or trajectories. A roundabout way. It is the revolution you didn’t see coming until it bit you in the ass—or the one you can watch play out like a slow-motion train-wreck.

This is not AI talking. This is Marco. These are my mind noises in this moment.

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I really like that alot Marco and it can lead anywhere. Anyone that would remotely connect with it can spin it in their own special, personal way… it’s very open.

Given my recent thoughts on where I want to go with the AC project, last nite I was talking about the question of… does sound exhaust itself after recognition. So, leveraging that, what about something like “Beyond Recognition”?

Things are recognized everyday. We identify films, faces, ideas, places etc but, there are things that hold more secrets after their identity has been recognized. They are like gifts that keep on giving. Think for instance a film like Mulholland Drive, or a book like Dhalgren. A Rothko painting is a great example… you immediately recognize those color bands but, what’s beyond that? What happens if you stay with it, engage it, create an I/Thou relationship.

I can see poets and visual artists jumping on this as well as writers.

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One of the most memorable classes I took in college—a graduate seminar in comp lit—was called “the limits of representation.“

I think that’s what you’re talking about too, Michael—a kind of art that transgresses the limits of representation. Beyond recognition.

The ontological outshining the ontic for once.

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Looking at the list of AI generated themes, I’m like “Oh joy! I have stuff I could submit to almost all of these topics.” :smiley:

Trangressive arks/arcs… that too! I’ve actually been contemplating quite a lot lately about how people who “change their minds” through practicing, living, and studying regenerative ways / decolonizing / reindigenizing / systems thinking / right relationship, can serve as “storehouses” of really important, relevant patterning to their communities… but such people can also be perceived as “transgressive,” inscrutable and thus unsettling, to “normal people”—meaning, people around me (in the U.S. where I’ve always lived) who have never interrogated or reorganized their worldviews and instead unconsciously reproduce the lenses/philosophies of western materialism, dualism, capitalism, etc. In these communities, depth itself is treated as transgressive, depth itself is disturbing. I’m fascinated by this, frankly.

Could say more on a lotta themes touched on here, but I’ll save it for when the submissions call actually opens :smiley:

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So, realistically, whatever call for submissions we decide on won’t be going live till September, correct? If so, that gives us a month to decide on one or more. My proposal still stays for Beyond Recognition and Transgressive Arcs (or Arks).

Both of these will probably need a paragraph for clarification purposes so the public knows what we are looking for.

I’ll come up with another one shortly but we should decide soon so we can hit the ground in September, if that’s when this is going to go live.

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Love both of these : Beyond Recognition, and Transgressive Arcks. And this is a great discussion thread!