"Storm: A Haiyan Recovery Project"

Call for Submissions to CA+T's Next Virtual Exhibition

Deadline August 1, 2014

The Center for Art and Thought (CA+T), a web-based arts and education nonprofit organization, announces a call for submissions to its virtual curated exhibition, Storm: A Haiyan Recovery Project. The exhibition is expected to premier in November 2014 on CA+T's website.

To commemorate the first anniversary of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, a storm of epic proportions that hit Central Philippines from November 2-11, 2013, this exhibition seeks to reflect upon its social, political, cultural, psychological and spiritual impact. In addition to forging a virtual gathering space to recognize the history, tragedy and mass loss incurred by Haiyan/Yolanda, the exhibition also seeks to archive the actions of global solidarity and of local mobilization through arts and culture amongst Filipinos, particularly Filipino Americans in North America.

Storm welcomes artistic and intellectual contributions that consider the social history, cultural politics, and symbolic dimensions of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, including works that compare and relate it to other environmental catastrophes and cultural crises. We are interested in submissions responding to any of the following questions and beyond:

What remains significant about the storm in the lives of Filipinos in the Philippines and broader diaspora? In the wake of the storm, how do Filipinos make sense of the catastrophe? How is the Haiyan storm part of a larger discourse on global disasters both natural and manmade?

How does the storm expose the historical, cultural and political conditions of social inequality in the Philippines? For example, what does the government response in terms of resources reflect or reveal about the political structures of the Philippines?

In response to the storm, a unified Filipino diaspora as well as intra-island solidarity seemed to emerge. Under what terms or through what logics did the storm occasion this galvanization? Alternately, in what ways did Haiyan/ Yolanda also reveal the complex diversity among multiple Filipino communities or exacerbate underlying divisions?”

What do storms signify within Filipino cosmologies and spirituality? What role(s) do water, wind and natural catastrophe play within Filipino cultural frameworks in terms of recovery, struggle, trauma, survival, memory and loss? How are these cosmologies operating in the wake of Haiyan/Yolanda? How are they working to explain or negotiate the storm?

How might responses to Typhoon Haiyan mark a moment of transformation, revolution or dystopia, or apocalypse as captured through cultural production? And how might art, culture and community continue to shape its place within the contemporary historical memory of the Philippines?

How does Typhoon Haiyan fit within the discourse of environmental racism, climate change, globalization and imperialism? What are the potential transnational links between Haiyan and other historical catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina (US Mississippi Delta, 2005) and earthquakes in Japan (2011) and Haiti (2010)?

How did the media (in the Philippines and abroad) characteristically represent the storm, the country-in-crisis, and Filipino people? How does the history of colonialism and imperialism in the Philippines inform these visual representations?  How have artists (literary, visual, music, performance) engaged these representations?

​We welcome submissions from a range of perspectives and across media. CA+T’s virtual platform can accommodate digital images, sound files, film and video, creative and scholarly prose and poetry, PDFs, and more. The deadline for submissions is August 1, 2014.

Please send submissions to submissions@centerforartandthought.org with the subject line “Storm.”