In 2019, the International Art Exhibition of Venice, directed by Ralph Rugoff, was titled May You Live in Interesting Times. The phrase has an uncertain origin and is likely the result of a misunderstanding that renders it ambiguous, as it may also be interpreted as a wish for living in dark, challenging, and uncertain times. Faced with the complexity of reality, the exhibition invited us to broaden our perspective. The wish came true. If, in the Fifties of the 20th century, the Internationale Situationniste pioneered the use of détournement to rewrite the modes, codes, and boundaries of art, today misappropriation, hijacking, diversion, deviation, and misdirection of meanings and things are actions easily traced in both concrete and virtual reality. In the summer of 2023 in New York, the orange sky and the unbreathable air caused by smoke from the Québec wildfires shifted the perceptual regime, producing a collective estrangement from the everyday environment. In the spring of 2025 in Germany, erroneous road closure reports on Google Maps rendered real space illegible, generating an induced mass drift. So, if the time we inhabit is disorienting even in its smallest details, if inhospitable houses and uncertain lands proliferate, if the surreal is the form of the real, how are we to traverse it?

Détournement thus moves from disorientation, but along a path that does not lead to the domestication of space, nor to returning dwelling to the ‘own’ and the ‘familiar’, thereby exorcising disorientation itself. In this interesting time, it is the country, the home, the familiar, and the self that await rethinking and redesigning, in order to give substance to the pantopia Michel Serres writes about, to traverse without having to stay, return, or ‘re-familiarise’.

“Vesper” is structured in sections; below the call for abstracts and the call for papers according to categories.
All final contributions will be submitted to a double-blind peer review process, except for the section ‘Tale’. Following the tradition of Italian paper journals, “Vesper” revives it by hosting a wide spectrum of narratives, welcoming different writings and styles, privileging the visual intelligence of design, of graphic expression, of images and contaminations between different languages. For these reasons, the selection process will consider the iconographic and textual apparatuses of equal importance.

“Vesper” is a six-monthly, double-blind peer-reviewed journal, multidisciplinary and bilingual (Italian and
English), included into the list of the National Agency for the Evaluation of the University System and
Research (ANVUR) of Class A journals in the competition sectors 08/D1 - Architectural Design, 08/E1 - Drawing, 08/E2 - Restoration and History of Architecture, 08/F1 - Urban and Landscape Planning and Design and 11/C4 - Aesthetics and Philosophy of Languages, as is included in the ANVUR list of scientific journals for the non-bibliometric areas 08 - Civil Engineering and Architecture, 10 - Antiquities, Philology, Literary Studies, Art History and 11 - History, Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology.

“Vesper” is indexed in SCOPUS, EBSCO, Torrossa and JSTOR.

Open access issues are available at the following link: www.iuav.it/en/node/1011.

Project. A contribution that establishes a close relationship between a set of images/drawings and a critical text with footnotes investigating the underlying reasons for a realised project after 2000.
Call for abstracts: maximum 400 words, maximum 3 images.
Final contribution: maximum 3000 words, maximum 10 images with written permission of the copyright holder.

Essay. A scientific essay with footnotes, bibliography and iconography.
Call for abstracts: maximum 700 words, maximum 2 images, selected bibliography.
Final contribution: maximum 4500 word (text, bibliography and footnotes), maximum 7 images with written permission of the copyright holder.

Journey. A written or visual report describing a real or imaginary journey and its development through time and/or space.
Call for abstracts: maximum 400 words and 1 image, or maximum 3 images with captions, according to the selected mode.
Final contribution: text of maximum 1500 words and maximum 3 images or a visual storyboard with up to 10 images (illustrations, photographs, drawings). The images submitted must be produced by the author or used with written permission of the copyright holder.

Archive. A selection of archival materials presented along with their sources and a comment.
Call for abstracts: maximum 400 words, maximum 4 images.
Final contribution: text of maximum 1700 words, footnotes of maximum 250 words, 10 images with archival record information and written permission of the copyright holder.

Ring. Critical text or images selection which explains different points of view facing each other on the same ‘playing field’.
Call for abstracts: maximum 400 words and 1 image or 3 images with captions, according to the selected mode. Final contribution: text of maximum 1700 words, footnotes of maximum 250 words and 4 images with written permission of the copyright holder or a selection of 8 images with written permission of the copyright holder, according to the selected mode.

Tutorial. A sequence of images and texts intended as a brief manual for performing practices and/or operations.
Call for abstracts: maximum 400 words, maximum 4 images.
Final contribution: maximum 15 images (illustrations, photographs, drawings) with a text of maximum 1200 words with bibliographical references quoted between relatives in the text (no footnotes allowed in this format). The images submitted must be produced by the author or it is necessary to have the written permission of the copyright holder.

Translation. Unpublished translation of a document in any language, to be published in Italian and English along with a critical review.
Call for abstracts: Text proposed for translation, critical review (maximum 400 words), 1 image.
Final contribution: Text proposed for translation: maximum of 1500 words; critical review: maximum 1200 words with 180 words of footnotes, 3 images with written permission of the copyright holder and preferably scans of the original document with written permission of the copyright holder.

Fundamentals. Critical texts on fundamental topics, always related to the theme of the issue, and each focusing on: An Author, An Idea, A Book, A Work, A Film, A Place, A Period, A Client, The section will be only in English, each author is asked to choose a fundamental for which to propose a short essay.
Call for abstracts: maximum 400 words, maximum 2 images.
Final contribution: a text with Chicago author-date style references (Author, year) and followed by a bibliography, for a maximum of 1500 words; 2 images in high definition with written permission of the copyright holder and the relative caption.

Call for paper by March 1, 2026

Tale. A narrative text (without footnotes or bibliography) or a visual narrative.
Call for papers: maximum 1500 words or a selection of 10 images (illustrations, photographs, drawings). The images submitted must be produced by the author who must be the copyright holder.

Timeline
Sections: Project, Essay, Journey, Archive, Ring, Tutorial, Translation, Fundamentals
Abstracts must be submitted by March 1, 2026
Abstracts acceptance notification by March 10, 2026
Papers submission by May 20, 2026

Section: Tale
Papers submission by March 1, 2026
Papers acceptance notification by March 10, 2026

Publication of “Vesper” No. 15, November 2026