OFF- CONDITION: EXPERIENCES, IMAGINATIONS, AND PRACTICES

CALL FOR REFLECTIONS

This Reflection Series is organized by Off-University to explore a range of concepts across diverse perspectives. Off-University was established for and by persecuted academics who have been purged from their institutions to create much needed strategies to uphold and sustain free academia and democracy in the face of authoritarianism.

The Reflection Series attends to and brings together different ways of understanding and generating knowledge – scholarly analyses, artistic expressions, activist practices, lived experiences, and testimonies. It aims to create not a coherent narrative but a participatory and open-ended debate around diverse concepts.  

The first issue of the Reflection Series is devoted to experiences, imaginations, and practices that emerge from the off-condition. In our understanding, off- resonates with so many meanings: departure, dislocation, uprootedness, expulsion, dismissal, exile, exclusion, escape, refusal, disaffiliation, relief, withdrawal, exit, resistance and a search for alternatives, among others. In this issue, we aim to explore and expose the condition of taking-off or being taken-off from established places, main routes, and conventional ways of doing things;

What does it mean to be off? 

How does the off-condition affect creations, expressions, and relations? What forms of togetherness and separation does the off-condition bring about? 

What kind of political imaginations and practices can emerge from the off-condition? 

How is hope involved with the off-condition?

We invite contributions that reflect on the off-condition from academic, literary, artistic, and activist perspectives. Contributions can be in any format including but not limited to articles, essays, images, videos, and sounds and in one of the following languages; Turkish, German, English. This first issue of the Reflection Series will be published/exhibited online by Off-University. Please send a short description of your contribution (about 300 words) to reflections@off-university.de .

Important Dates

Abstract Submission                     13 December 2019

Acceptance notification                20 December 2019

Submission of full contributions 1 March 2020

Online Publication/Exhibition       31 March 2020

Off-Condition editors: Duygu Gürsel, Hakan Altun, Melehat Kutun, Özlem Savaş