Dear reader,

We are opening a call for submissions for the 3rd issue of TT journal.

The theme remains broadly centred on the role of the senses in making sense of our world and our place in it. By extension this also includes the impact of the pandemic on this relationship and the growing role of technology in mediating our everyday encounters. What is being gained and what is being lost? How can we creatively counter-balance this ongoing tendency by harnessing our embodied knowledge and our imagination?

The forms for expressing this can be varied: we are open to essays, subjective reflections, academic articles, interviews, but also audio-visual material, such as moving image, animation and podcasts, as well as all things in-between.

The journal remains an online one for now, mainly due to practical reasons. However, as things begin to open up (and hopefully they will keep doing so), there will also be associated events in physical locations in London and in Prague as well as South Bohemia, which I will notify you of.

One of these is an exhibition I am preparing at the Czech Centre gallery Vitrinka, London to launch in October. This exhibition with a working title “Being in between states” will present an art installation which will explore some of the themes of TT journal, within a physical space and with physical objects as well as screens. It will also include events.

The concept of the exhibition is centred around a character of Ophelia, a fictional woman who became trapped inside a computer screen, a kind of a sterile space devoid of touch or smell. Ophelia is a version of each of us, as we appear on the other side of the screen, when we communicate on video calls, or us isolated in our homes, perhaps deprived of smell by the virus. The pandemic has accelerated the existing move towards a virtualisation of our experience and over prioritisation of the audio-visual senses. We are all floating in ether, looking for a way back home.

The computer/phone with its screen has become a modern-day shrine, our most favoured window, a portal into other realities, representation of the world that is out of reach, as well as a mirror reflecting to us our own image. In this new world, we are all little bit like Ophelia, deprived of touch, disconnected, only virtually present. How can this strange state of being be explored creatively? Questioned philosophically? Examined scientifically? How is Ophelia feeling and how can she be helped? What would you propose for Ophelia to have inside her sensory toolbox, what would you send her and why?

I am therefore also inviting you here to enter into a dialogue with Ophelia: this can be done by submitting a response which can become part of the exhibition, either through a written text, recorded voice over or video, or some sort of other, multi-sensory response.

I am hoping to open up a space to explore these questions through a dialogue with you. This is an experiment and part of a creative process and as such, its final destination cannot be fully predicted. I am open to ideas and to creative dialogue.

The deadline for submissions is 16^th August 2021.

In the meantime, please feel free to email me with questions, suggestions, ideas.

Thank you.

Tereza

Ophelia behind the Screen: