In tandem with our current exhibition Byproduct & Prototype — CoCA Seattle, we invite submissions for the publication of a new CoCA Journal exploring new perspectives on contemporary art. In the past few decades, for example, we observe a shift away from the production of luxury commodities toward a comprehensive practice that addresses social, environmental, political, and other applied contexts. Community-based projects that emphasize research or fieldwork are part of this shift, as artists find themselves “embedded,” often in non-art contexts such as ride-alongs with police. Just as journalists seek assignments as embedded reporters in armed conflicts, so too artists have expanded their presence away from the traditional studio and the gallery. Elena Filipovic calls these investigative approaches “fugitive operations” in her wonderful study, The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp (MIT, 2016). For Filipovic, Duchamp’s less obvious “work” becomes essentially curatorial as the artist leaves painting behind.

We are thus interested in artists that are venturing into public realms, infiltrating institutions, and pioneering across disciplinary boundaries. Rather than compartmentalizing their art practice as an entirely separate endeavor from their day- job, artists apply creativity and imagination to all aspects of their lives, raising important questions about the role of the artist: how might an artist’s labor in non-art contexts inform their practice? How might we value an artist’s contributions outside traditional art spaces?

The essays may focus on the artwork or projects exhibited in Byproduct and Prototype (which ends April 19), but we encourage expansive critical thinking that would perhaps begin with those examples and broaden out to encompass other ideas. We anticipate that some of the essays will offer insight into artistic ‘fieldwork’ or undercover ‘art-spy- ops,’ and other examples of infiltrating institutions and applied artistic thinking. Other topics may focus on identity or biographical details that help shape an artist’s worldview. In all of these sectors, we observe a prioritization of outcome, problem solving, and collaborative process rather than the production of a beautiful object created for an arts marketplace.