Artists working in any medium and writers expressing themselves in any form or genre are invited to submit work for the tenth issue of ITCH Online. The "theme" is: 

Not Equal To

 

The dictators and the freedom fighters, the princesses and the plain-janes, the CEOs and the cleaners, the surburban yuppies and the shanty-town dwellers, the diamonds and the destitute, the slumlords and the paupers - will the inequalities never end? Does social justice mean equality? What kinds of equalities are possible and desirable? In all things or in some things? Which types of equality should be guaranteed, and how? What are the struggles to make life more equal and what kinds of success can or have they achieved? What would equality look like if it happened? What does inequality look like while it's happening? Is equality true democracy or pure anarchy; a nice ideal or a workable reality-in-the-making? Which promises of equality were the most outrageous and empty: those of capitalism or communism? Even when the two lines are perfectly equal - exact in dimension, shape, weight and colour - isn't there always one on top of the other? Is inequality natural or constructed? What are the narratives and experiences of (in)equality that shape global culture and society (financial meltdown, cold wars) as well as the small moments of everyday life (its your turn to cook supper!)? Measuring portions of cake, those who get to eat it and have it, those who can do neither. Forget the cake, anyone fancy a game of master and servant? The typography of 'not equal to' has a Z embedded in there somewhere (and F and N, too, plus a couple of Ts). Two lines touched by an intersection that says: NO! A railway crossed, a highway bridged: a very simple map. A pair of crosses, an incomplete hashtag (no access to Twitter?), a record of days in a prison cell? A finger across lips: a culture of secrecy, a symbol of censorship (the ultimate show of power exercised)?

What does ≠ mean to you?

You are free to interpret this theme in any way that you wish, to speak to or against it, to explore or ignore it.

Submissions will be accepted until 29 February 2012. Contact the editor if you have any suggestions or questions.

 

ITCH Online Submission Guidelines

Don't send work that has been published or submitted elsewhere. We rely on contributor's good faith in this respect, but should we discover that a published piece has appeared elsewhere, we reserve the right to remove it.

Text submissions:

  • No longer than 3500 words. (We know the web is unlimited, but most web-readers attention spans are not!)
  • Please submit in a formatted word document.
  • Any form of poetry, prose, fiction or non-fictional, experimental, creative or journalistic, public or private writing is welcome.
  • An accompanying illustration may be submitted. Must be in JPG format, no larger than 900px wide and no larger than 3MB in size.
  • Audio files are welcome (recordings of your sound art, poetry, prose, song lyrics or opinions). Files should be submitted in MP3 format and should be no larger than 50MB.
  • Book reviews welcome. Please keep them to about 750 words and include full details of the book you are reviewing (author, publication date, publisher, etc.). Accompanying images are welcome but not necessary. If you woud like to contact a publisher to request a free copy of a book that you would like to review for ITCH, you are welcome to contact the ITCH Editor to request a supporting letter.
  • ITCH also welcomes in-depth interviews with any person of interest (writers, artists, activists, academics, community leaders, cultural and creative innovators).
  • Please ensure that your work is finalised and ready for publishing before submitting.

Visual submissions:

  • Anything from 1 – 10 images. If you are submitting more than one image, please ensure that they are part of some kind of series (i.e. no arbitrary collection of portfolio shots).
  • Must be in RGB colour, JPG file format, no larger than 900px wide and no larger than 3MB per image. Please ensure that each image has decent resolution (300dpi) for enlarged viewing.
  • Must be accompanied by a title (even if untitled), year of production, and a very short abstract/explanation. Please save each image filename as follows: "Surname_Title".
  • Multimedia files welcome (animations, short films, etc). Send the editor a weblink to the video for viewing. If it is accepted, delivery of the file should be in stand alone .FLV format and should be no larger than 50MB. Please send a jpg screengrab along with the video file, if accepted.
  • Submissions for the cover image are welcome. Please submit at least three images in a series (for rolling cover) at 940 x 400px in size, high resolution, no larger than 3MB per file. If you don't make it on to the cover the work will still be considered for a feature.

All submissions:

  • Must include name, e-mail and telephone number of contributor, and a short biography (no more than 200 words).
  • Feel free to include a link to your webpage.

Submit all work via e-mail to the ITCH editor.

What do I get for contributing?

An invitation to contribute to the "by invitation only" section of the next print magazine (once we raise funding to make this happen). This does not mean that the same piece of work that is published on the website will be included in the magazine, but that you will be invited to write/create something NEW for the magazine.

The inclusion of an e-mail contact or website published alongside the piece.

Sorry, but we can't pay. We hope that exposure to an appreciative community will help to advance your career, or simply give you an outlet for some ideas/thoughts/writings that might not really fit in anywhere else, or that you just simply wish to share.

Please note that submissions for the next print issue are NOT currently open. To subscribe to our mailing list in order to be informed of when the next print call for submissions will be open, click here.