The imaginings dialogues
dialogues, poetics and spoken invitations
Dialogue and conversation is at the heart of Unpsychology Magazine’s DNA. We – and – have been dialoguing over a number of years on our Medium platform and in our magazines. We love the format as a way of exploring ideas, and finding ourselves somewhere new, yet often far from our starting points!
You can click through to find our dialogues on Healing, Climate and Emergence, Changing Times and the Other-Than-Human.
Below, we are republishing two dialogues that top and tail the latest issue of Unpsychology Magazine - the first of our 2023 Imaginings issues. They introduce imaginings, and trace a path through the meandering and innovative offerings that the magazine contains. There are also invitations to respond, to be involved in the conversations – here and elsewhere – about the imaginings needed to respond to the troubled times we live in.
In future weeks we will be publishing articles and extracts from Unpsychology 9.1 in anticipation of the publication of volume 9.2 in the next month or so. In the meantime, you can get a FREE PDF version of Imaginings 9.1 HERE and purchase a print copy HERE. Free downloadable back copies of all Unpsychology magazines are available from HERE.
Beginning dialogue
JULIA: A very warm welcome to all our community of readers and supporters, exploring this ninth issue of unpsychology. This year we invited submissions on the theme of Imaginings, and received so many wonderful responses that we felt compelled to take a unique approach to this year's project: an issue in two parts!
But this is not just a double issue, it is a dialogue between two entities: volume one and volume two. We hope that our readers' imaginations play with the interface between a volume published in summer and one published in autumn.
STEVE: Yes, we like a good dialogue at unpsychology — or a broader conversation – and this issue-in-two-parts has been born out of a series of weekly conversations between the four of us editors. When we put out the call for the issue, I think I envisaged something radical in content, perhaps radical in form — however what happened was that the magazine emerged out of something radical in process! Every word, every image, every piece of sound or video has flowed through these dialogues and conversations between us, and between us and our contributors. It’s something we’ve seen in previous issues, but these Imaginings seem to be part of something purely relational!
JULIA: I love the idea of the magazine content flowing through these relationships, and I am so looking forward to sharing each volume when they are published. The issues themselves are in relationship, with pieces that reach out across time and space to converse with one another. And we hope that our readers come to these Imaginings with curiosity and playfulness. Like being pulled by the hands into the circle of a dance: come, join us! Come see, come read, and listen to this, and look at that! Share your thoughts and responses – with us and with one another. We hope to inspire a conversation about what is possible, and how and why. The possible is only ever born through imaginings.
STEVE: An ongoing playful dance of possibilities — a great image! I think, with this issue, it’s the first time that the editing and curation has felt like that. Each editorial session we’ve had has been rich, relational and often surprising. The images and ideas that come from the imaginings of our authors and artists have taken the four of us on a series of journeys, that are definitely not straight lines from here to there! The steps we have taken together make and follow patterns and are embedded in deep creative ecologies — but I really don’t know where they might be heading. It’s good, sometimes, to not have a destination in mind. So, I really hope you, our readers, will enjoy and feel part of these meanderings...
JULIA: Absolutely. We invite all our readers to participate in the experience of unpsychology — please do bring your comments and ideas and feedback along to join in the conversation between the two issues of Imaginings. And of course, we always welcome involvement in unpsychology voices, our online space at Sub- stack. We hope that the birth of this issue 9.1 will create a welcoming space for mutual explorations and imaginings. Let's create this together!
Beginning poem from our editorial conversations
The thing is us — or rather it’s between us.
It's always combining,
always moving, like boats on the water.
The clumps and boxes are moving and shaking,
always clumping and boxing.
Yet, meeting with our windows behind us,
we can see the colours changing.
Listen to the poem read by Steve below:
Ending dialogue
JULIA: here we are at the closing stage of Imaginings 9.1 — with the issue in layout and the final copy edits and proofing underway. Today I printed out the issue in full draft — it is so exciting to see it in hard copy. Behind the scenes you and Patrick are organising QR codes for sound files and coordinating with Lesley where they will land, and I'm preparing to do a wee reading from the opening pages.
The last threads are being pulled together and we are all stepping one to the other in a sort of final dance, as though we have been choreographed in the lead up to publication of this beautiful magazine. We've each of us been through ups and downs over the past six months, over the course of this issue's preparation, so it's taken a bit longer than we originally envisioned. But here we are, approaching the finish line, and very proud we are too.
STEVE: The practical stuff of creating — well, anything — always comes down to bits and pieces at the last minute. However, there’s a bigger picture. It’s not just the content of the work (which is wonderful) and the curation of it (which is a big responsibility that we’ve always taken seriously), but the context of it, and the way that unpsychology always seems to get to somewhere unusual — even strange — even though we never plan it that way.
At the beginning, I usually have something in my head about what it might look and feel like (cultural training right there!), but this all seems to dissipate once the editorial conversations begin! It’s important because our world is also built like that — see the problem, see the structure of the solution, build the response — and it almost never works. And taking your metaphor on board — even finish lines are only there for one race! The athletes are back in training for the next one!
JULIA: So true, it's a different finish line every time. I have a friend who runs ultra-marathons which take her on stretches of up to thirty hours. I personally can't get my head round it — but she loves it, and it moves her into what she calls ‘the zone’ which I imagine is a spiritually-infused meditative groove. This is a bit like what happens in our editorial journey, when we are absorbed with the creative process.
We lose ourselves in the call-and-response, the shared conversations and subsequent decisions, and in all the beautiful playful details of the finished layout and sound links. It's really fascinating to me, how it all comes together. This morning your promotional postcards arrived in the mail, and I'm just really excited now about getting the word out: issue 9.1 is nearly ready to be born!
STEVE: We’ve certainly been in the zone, and there’s more to come. Once this first issue is out in the world, we will be back into the ebb and flow of the second volume. It’s the first time we’ve made two magazines out of one theme and, like everything else in the project, the outcome is unpredictable. I want to get serious for a moment too — we had a message from a new subscriber on our Substack recently who summed up what they saw as the aim of unpsychology to “endeavor to publish a magazine that depends on human imagination, curiosity and a willingness to explore using many/any form of art”.
I think this summed things up nicely — but I would also add that this task takes place within the context of everything that challenges us as human animals at this time, and against a civilisational reality that all our frames are basically broken. Can unpsychology continue to offer the space for imagining that this issue and the next one have done? And what difference will it make – if any at all – and does that really matter? I guess, at the base, unpsychology is, above all else, an invitation for art and writing (of all kinds) and for artists and writers (of all kinds) to be in relationship and conversations with each other. And perhaps that is enough for now...
JULIA: unpsychology extends an invitation, yes, and not just for artists and writers but also for readers and subscribers – a community that is more than just an audience, and greater than the sum of its parts. We hope that our community loves this issue 9.1 in all its summer glory and also enjoys playing with the forthcomingness of issue 9.2 germinating and preparing itself for autumn harvest. We hope too that our community engages with both these issues via commentary, social media interaction and on the unpsychology voices space on Substack.
Please do join us in our imaginings!
Listen to Julia extending the imaginings invitation…
Imaginings 2 is currently being formed and will be with you soon
Meanwhile you can listen to it being formed HERE:
Imaginings 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 : a new unpsychology forming in space
(Authored and read by Steve Thorp. Music improvised by Patrick Carpenter)
unpsychology, imagines…
a shift beyond transformation, a move from magical thinking towards tentacular animist materialism, a messy and playful socialism of the mind, an anarchic soul-making, slip-sliding through the layers – interdependencies, non-determinisms, neurodiversities, indecipherabilities
unpsychology, imagines…
reaches back and forward, touching time, follows human minds – how they are co-present with the lives and minds of non-human kin – with the Earth itself
this relational ‘now’ is a difficult place, yet only through the spaces between people, places and multispecies companions will imaginings emerge that can take us to the foggy time we call our future
our future here is in the imagining to come: stories and strong words, brush-strokes and improvisations, conversations and collaborations, confusions and conjurings
unpsychology, is an invitation - always - to imagine, create, allow, enable into being – imaginings…
unpsychology, imagines…
new ways through tunnels in our minds, like sciences that form and coalesce around the heart of the matter; and stories set on never-to-be-imagined worlds, like sandworms burrowing deep in endless dunes; and moments of insight and humble wisdom, alternative, interdependent, diverse ‘nows’ and ‘thens’, starting from where we are – not just starting over…
these are our imaginings… you are invited to join… these are our unpsychologies, you are invited to dream…
to imagine…