SEQUENCE One: Planet Melancholia is the first issue, or instalment, of SEQUENCE: Serial Studies in Media, Film and Music, an experimental, peer-reviewed, sequential edited-collection format. Each new scholarly SEQUENCE begins with the publication of one valuable contribution to research in the fields of media, film or music on a particular theme named in the issue title. But we, as editors, don’t necessarily know what the next in the series will be, or when exactly it will come. Each SEQUENCE could, theoretically, turn out to be ‘infinite’, or only as worthwhile as the first, self-contained contribution – a hopefully interesting and worthy, if possibly melancholic, monograph.
In any case, each contribution, and each evolving SEQUENCE will go onto be published in a variety of eReading formats, with the web version only the first in a series of digital iterations. Please follow this blog, or our Twitter and Facebook pages for updates about those.
We are very honoured that the first contribution to the Planet Melancholia SEQUENCE (1.1 [2012]) is film theorist and philosopher Steven Shaviro’s long essay ‘MELANCHOLIA, or, The Romantic Anti-Sublime‘. His work is a great and very wide-ranging study of Lars von Trier’s recent film, one that touches on object-oriented ontology, feminist representation, contemporary film melodrama, the Sublime, non-normative filmmaking, as well as the end of the world. What a tremendously fitting beginning. We thank him for that.
As we are sequentially inviting responses to the first entry in this the inaugural iteration of SEQUENCE, Shaviro’s article also constitutes a novel Call for Contributions for further Planet Melancholia sequences. If you’re inspired to respond, especially if you have related research work in progress on any of the topics raised by his essay and our title, please get in touch with us at SEQUENCEserial[at]gmail[dot]com. Multimedia responses of all kinds are also very much encouraged. But it would be worthwhile to discuss any substantial response with us at an early stage in your planning. All contributions need to comply with UK copyright law and the current understanding of fair dealing.
If you’d like to offer a shorter response, there is also the option of leaving a comment in the moderated stream at the foot of each SEQUENCE One entry. SEQUENCES may be long and short in all sorts of ways.
We should be able publish ‘full-length’ responses quite quickly, although contributors should note that they will be formally peer-reviewed. But there are no editorial prescriptions on length or content, except that your work should be some kind of ‘sequential response’. If you don’t want to respond right away, you can still enter the ‘chain’ of responses later on.
SEQUENCE One is being produced by Catherine Grant and Russell Pearce, co-editors of the SEQUENCE project.
September 2012.