FOLIOS
In short, a FOLIO is a community effort to draw together a raw & uncensored collection of voices—of poetry, visual art, voice memos, fiction, & nonfiction alike—that grapple with a given prompt or issue.
We publish each and every submission that we receive.
Claudia Andujar's Caraja, Ilha Do Bananal, Brazil (1960), from MoMA
Each FOLIO is led by a prompt, concept, or issue; for instance, TECH SUPPORT addresses the impact of the Internet and social media's advent. To submit, simply create something that encapsulates how you feel about the issue. That can be as simple as a short paragraph or a poem, to as experimental as a video essay or painting. There are no guidelines for length, format, etc. Just send us what you can with a quick email (and perhaps a request for anonymity)—and we'll listen.
Because we want your voice to be a part of this global collaboration, we accept each and every submission we receive. As submissions accumulate, we add them to an interdisciplinary gallery on our site.
TECH SUPPORT
TECH SUPPORT
Think of the mark, be it ruinous or positive, the advent of the Internet & technology is leaving on us. Tell us how you feel, no matter how tangentially to the prompt: with anything from the simple pen & paper, to a video essay, to a painting, to a short story—and we'll listen.
WHAT
The internet: a corporate space, an experimental space, a teeming network. A hive. A point of reference through which we contemplate reality. A panoply of platforms, servers, sites. Video killed the radio star; the internet killed the mainstream.
The web upended history. The Information Age is more than a double-edged blade. It’s a many-fractaled torrent of change, of growth and ruin, and all we know for certain is that nothing has been the same since. The growing issues—and benefits, too—of humanity's newfound connection to cyberspace have long been discussed, studied, and attacked. To name a few: the 71% surge in mental distress in just the past decade. 64% of Americans finding social media negative. The newfound accessibility to research tools. The burgeoning swirl of good information. The family connections Skype has drawn across oceans.
WHY
That’s why our goal is to crowdsource all of your voices, from digital natives to digital newcomers, in all their whimsical, emotional, or solemn forms, in this folio, TECH SUPPORT. We take each and every submission, adding them gradually to a folio on our website. By creating this raw and uncensored collection of voices, we hope to initiate a new approach to this issue—something past a repetitive survey in a study, something past a Twitter brawl over clashing views.
We want your voice contributing to this community effort tackling the age-old question of media & the Internet.
HOW YOU CAN JOIN & SUBMIT
1
Think of the words tech and support. How has technology inspired or smothered you? In what ways has emotional support been refracted through pixels (social media, Zoom, etc.)? Even more broadly, what feelings do the words invoke in you?
Grab a pen and a sheet of paper. (Or anything else you feel you can express your creativity with.)
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3
Put these thoughts down on paper, canvas, video, etc. Remember, no genre restrictions. No page limits. No censorship. We just want to hear your voice in its purest, rawest form.
Think of Let’s chat! I’m Emma. What would you like to ask me? flickering at the bottom of your phone screen. Tell us what you would say—and let us listen.
Submit at brackmagazine@protonmail.com. Just let us know if you'd like to remain anonymous. Be sure to title your email "TECH SUPPORT - [name] - [title]." Remember that there are no genre restrictions, no length limits. Just send us whatever you create.
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Note that none of the genres we accept are limited to grappling with only the humanities. We are fond of work that dwells in the space where STEM and the arts intersect, and welcome submissions that imagine ways to incorporate both (for example, creative essays engaging with mathematics or JavaScript-based interactive poems) as well as work that engages only STEM (for example, news features on the latest findings in chemistry).
SOME PROMPTS
Remind us of how faces and people wrinkle through Zoom. Paint us graphs of addiction. Show us where our devices come from; show us the damage in human lives and biosphere health. Voice memo how social media raised or ruined you. Share your cyberbullying story under total anonymity. Pen a love song to the friendships kept intact by technology. Find the dadaism in auto-generated subtitles. Spin us autocomplete routines for “how do I live softly” and “when do you know your hands.” Don’t forget to like and subscribe. Shudder us echo chambers. Infect us with fake news. Glitch us into revelation. Tell us what Alan Turing would say on Twitter. Gamble. Gambol. Make us hold our breaths. Unravel the words Internet, socials, media, virtual, suicide rates, desktop, web, Google, e-commerce, trolls, pixels, mental health. Dredge up the history. Vent. Invent. Leave us rewired.
suicide rates
e-commerce
socials
media
community
comment & like
emotional support
spyware
fibonacci
confirmation bias
closed
captions
BLUE LIGHT
fake news
cryptocurrency