“unpsychology magazine publishes writing, art, video and music related to the broad theme of how humans see and experience the world in complex and troubled times.“
I attended a creative workshop with the magazine’s editors and about 20 individuals from around the world who were interested in submitting writing, artwork, or music to be considered for issue 10 of unpsychology magazine. We discussed what the concept of edges suggested to each of us. The responses ranged over a wide spectrum of interpretation from the geographical to the metaphysical, including numerous psychological perspectives. Your own ideas are encouraged…
Many of our members submitted work for the 10th anniversary issue.
Editor Steve Thorp explained the theme, “We’d like to hear from those whose voices come from the edges – and those whose creativity and experience resonate with ideas of ecology, mind, culture and the edges that appear, shift-shape and dissipate in these times.”
“Edges” will be published in the Summer of 2024.
Back in 2014, when their first issue came out, they used the tagline: ‘A journal of post-civilised neurodiversity and wild mind’; the perspectives underpinning it emerging from the edges of our psychological culture. Now, they’d like to explore these ideas further: ideas of diversity, relationship and identity; neurodivergence, wild mind and madness; and what the edges of these experiences might mean in our troubled, broken world.
- What is it like living on the edge – psychologically, culturally, creatively – in these times?
- What do edge and edges say to you with your particular voice, experience, community and history?
- What is it like to be an ‘edge-dweller’? …
- …Or someone who is drawn to the edges of things? …
- …Or feel that you are forced to the edge, or have little choice in the matter?
- What and where are the edges in living systems and societies:
- Do these edges actually exist and, if so, how are they created and sustained?
- What are the consequences of creating and living with and within edges?
- Where and how do our edges meet; and what do edges do when they meet each other?
- What does it mean to be in community with others who share these edgy perspectives?
- What might it mean to be between communities?
- What is it like to be living with the identities and experiences of edge worlds?
- How does complexity, inclusion and relationally respond to edge and edges?
- How might Warm Data, as one example, provide insights in this space?
- How do edge and edges relate to our ideas about the crises we face and ways of responding?
- What does change do to edges and edging – and vice versa?
As always, the response to the theme was for each participant to decide. They welcomed divergent, innovative creations; experimental in form as well as content.
During the process of making this new issue, they wanted try a kind of exploration of the edges within their publication, in some quiet way, and with our involvement.