Composures

A collection of brief contributions on the theme of care by members of the Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, in the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, Brock University. It includes: - Artworks (acrylic and mixed media, 2006-2008) by artist Shawn Serfas; - two short short stories (Derek Knight; Catherine Parayre); - three short essays (Natalee Caple on dialogical art and queer comics; Nicholas Hauck on translation theory; and Alexander Christie on digital prototyping in reference with Mina Loy’s novel Insel, 1991). 2020 will be remembered as the year of the pandemic. On 17 March, the Province of Ontario declared a state of emergency and went into shutdown. What followed was (pleasant) silence, as car traffic almost came to a standstill. Within days we could breathe better and feel the briskness of the air in a way we no longer knew. Over the course of one week, the university adapted to online operation; campus was closed; students left town; and, working from home, we were tasked to reinvent pedagogy and learn new technologies. As researchers, artists, and writers, we were suddenly confronted with the cancellation of scholarly, artistic, and cultural events for an unknown extended period. Again, we had to reinvent, and this time it was ourselves. Composures is a tiny reinvention. It replaces a colloquium initially scheduled for 16 April 2020. As we could no longer meet, we wrote a book. For the theme, we chose a word that is currently on everyone’s lips: care. The topic and a desire for concision were the only constraints given to contributors, and this at a time when constraints were being applied to all aspects of life, interactions were drastically limited, and we were asked to say home. However, “care” is such a broad notion that it can hardly be envisioned as an unyielding guidepost. From art and creative writing to scholarship, the six contributions in this volume bear witness to how constraint can be understood felt as the freedom to share one’s work