The plant revolution is in full swing. Seven years have passed since Antennae published two issues on the subject of plants in art and culture. Today, academic presses, as well as magazines and newspapers, regularly publish ground-breaking articles and thought-provoking books providing new perspectives on the botanical world. Michael Marder's books have rectified continental philosophy's chronic plant-blindness, while Stefano Mancuso's research on plant neurobiology has laid the foundations of wholly new conceptions of plant intelligence. Page after page of contributions from botanists, artists, and scholars are broadening our understanding of vegetal life and its multifarious abilities to shape our world.

Plants have been an enigmatic and inexhaustible source of representational reinvention throughout the history of art. But they have more often been relegated to the background of our imaginative prowess. They have been allowed to play sidekick roles but very rarely, if ever, plants have been given the opportunity to take center stage.

The recent emergence of the vegetal world in contemporary art is the symptom of a new cultural shift. No longer just interested in their aesthetic beauty, artists now look at plant-agency and intelligence, or focus on new considerations of plants as key players in historical, biological, and ecological contexts. As humanity begins to grapple with the urgency imposed by climate change, reconsidering human/plant relationships can reveal the importance of ecological interconnectedness and lead to a more nuanced consideration of the variety of living organisms and ecosystems with which we share the planet.

Pressuring resilient anthropocentric and perhaps, surprisingly, even zoocentric attitudes, the plant-turn in the humanities proposes an unmissable opportunity to uproot ontological conceptions and with that, to rethink our certainties.

With the collaboration of Michael Marder, pioneer of Critical Plant Studies, this issue of Antennae will aim to consider a wealth of perspective including but not limited to:

Plant Sentience
Plant Neurobiology
Plant-thinking
Plant agency
Plant movement
Herbaria
Herbals
Vegetal timeframes
Darwin and plants
Plants and non-western cultures
Plants and gender normativity
Plants and colonialism
Greenhouses and botanical gardens
Grafting
Selective breeding
Botanical Illustration in contemporary art
Plants and photography
History of Botanical Art


Academic essays = length 5000 words max
Artists' portfolio = 10 images along with 1000 words max statement/commentary Interviews = maximum length 6000 words
Fiction = maximum length 7000 words
Roundtable discussions = 5000 words

Deadlines:
Abstracts: 1st of May 2019 (Please submit a 350 words abstract along with a CV and no more than two images)
Selection process is finalized and feedback sent by: 1st of July 2019
Submissions of final pieces: 1st of February 2020

Please email any questions to: Giovanni Aloi: Editor in Chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture antennaeprojectgmail.com (www.antennae.org.uk)