Call for Submissions – Art, Culture, and Literature at The Karachi Collective
The Karachi Collective invites authors, artists, and researchers to submit original works that explore the intersections of art, culture, and literature through critical inquiry and interdisciplinary engagement. We are particularly interested in submissions that examine Pakistan, South Asia, and related global trajectories with Karachi as a focal point.
Our platform aims to foster research, academic writing, and creative contributions that amplify The Karachi Collective’s mission: to serve as a vibrant force for critical engagement in the region. We encourage works that stimulate dialogue and critical thought, while bridging the gaps between disciplines.
We aim to bring together voices from academia, industry, and independent practice to explore how Authors can lead to new understandings, innovations, and collaborations in the region and beyond.
Modern
The predecessors and pioneers of Modern Art in Pakistan, and the influences of western art and ideals on the twentieth century landscape of Art in Pakistan:
- Activism and Multiplicity
- Political narratives
- Political cartoons
- Cataloguing and Exhibition
- Abstract representation and its positioning within the cultural realm
- Censorship and censuring
- Marginalization of historical conventions
Contemporary
The relationship of contemporary art with socially engaged practices, pluralism and globalization:
- Interdisciplinarity
- The gallery as a space of knowledge dissemination and active learning
- The practice of art in global communities
- South Asian diaspora in the global creative discourse
- Critical significance in South Asia and its diasporas
- Transnational diasporic communities and the placement/displacement of national art in a transnational world
- Political objectives and ethical responsibilities
- Questioning censorship and censuring
- Calligraphy and/or text as vernacular or abstraction
Object
A phenomenological examination and exploration:
- Evolution and contemporary manifestations of design
- Philosophies influencing and underpinning design in South Asia
- Histories and narratives around objects of design
- Documentation
Practice
Past and existing conceptions of design practice, ‘doing’, and directions for the future. To explore the practices of the past existing at the fringes now, and both those that seem to be disappearing as well as those metamorphosing into new or have emerged anew:
- Developments in practice – the process, outcomes, future possibilities
- Design and interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary design
- Disappearing practices and or Emergent practices
- Design Authorship, Design Patent, and Design Intellectual Rights
- Debate around Design and Craft
- Indigenous design practices
Discourse
Conversations around issues related to design and its practice in South Asia:
- Design as tool for social change: looking at the overarching ramifications of design in building communities and instigating social change.
- Intellectual responsibility: ethical practices within the design industry.
- Sustainable design: Digital versus Print design, carbon footprint, design materials, etc.
- The Design and Art debate: exploring boundaries between art, graphic and product design.
- Decolonizing Design and South Asia
- Design and Modernity
- Ontological Design
- Design Epistemology
- Design Education
Critical and creative inquiry around past and present practices. Production associated with navigation and transitioning of textiles and craft practices, collaborations and power narratives:
- Juxtaposition of critical concepts with making practice in Pakistan:
- Creative explorations on process – autoethnographic, phenomenological, writing as inquiry, other
- Pedagogical engagement within the field of textiles & fashion
- Material Culture & mass consumption
- Heritage craft / textiles / fashion
- Roles of contemporary and /or traditional craft
- Embodied & tacit knowledge of craft / textiles / fashion
- Textiles & craft as ritual and/or gift economy
- The perception/relation of gender and craft roles
- Methods of craft development/facilitation
- Discourse on the interpretation of ‘Creativity’ or ‘Creative’
- Methods of collaboration (e.g. design thinking, action research and participatory design).
- Discourse on privilege and power narratives effecting craft production or craft development
- Taste and aesthetics in dress in Pakistan
- Sartorial Activism
- Impact of foreign fashion on local consumption and taste
- The role of image and appearance in contemporary Pakistani society
- Gender and dress – femininity and masculinity in dress in the region for example
- Identity and Craft
- Any other debate about theory and practice of craft, textiles or fashion
Investigation and translation of interdisciplinary information and processes highlighting and featuring crucial works in humanities:
- Critical Aesthetics
- Culture, Society, and Literature
- Philosophical approaches
- Literature and the historical and cultural contexts
- Literature and other arts (music, film, visual, etc.) or sciences (linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology, history, sociology and political sciences, internet and new technologies, etc.)
- Creative Writing
- Translations
- Cross-cultural studies
- Education
- Language and Linguistics
- History
- Literature
- Philosophy
- Religion
- Visual & Performing Arts
- Anthropology, Area Studies, Archaeology
- Culture and Ethics Studies
- Economics, Ethics, Geography, History
- Gender and Sexuality Studies, Geography
- Industrial relations, Information Science, International relations
- Media studies, Methodology
- Music, theatre & dance
- Political science, Philosophy
- Psychology, Population Studies,
- Religious studies
- Social welfare, Sociology
- Women studies