OPEN CALL

Dossier: Poetics of Entanglement
Volume 7, Issue 1 (2026)

In the book The Earth Gives, the Earth Wants, Antônio Bispo dos Santos develops a profound critique of the contemporary world from a countercolonial and quilombola perspective. He denounces colonialism as a force that disrupts organic ways of life, imposing logics of exploitation, accumulation, and disconnection from nature. Through the creation of new concepts such as “cosmophobia,” the author exposes the project of a society of Euro-Christian and monotheistic origin as promoting the artificialization of life, the commodification of knowledge, cultural standardization, and environmental destruction. Against this dominating tendency, marked by the ideas of progress and development, the author calls attention to the importance of the word “involvement” (here understood as entanglement).

Let us take the enemy’s words that are powerful and weaken them. And let us take our words that have been weakened and strengthen them. For example, if the enemy loves to say development, we will say that development disconnects, that development is a variant of cosmophobia. We will say that cosmophobia is a pandemic virus and set it loose against the word development. Because the good word is involvement (BISPO, 2023, p. 3; p. 27).

The word Anthropocene, coined in the 1980s by the American biologist Eugene Stoermer and popularized in the 2000s by Paul Crutzen, seeks to identify the current geological epoch, in which the planet has been fundamentally transformed by human actions. The term carries an awareness of a profound disconnection between humans and their environment. We may say that the movements culminating in the Anthropocene are characteristic of cosmophobic colonialism, for they “arrive subjugating, attacking, destroying” (BISPO, 2023, p. 62), imposing the idea of “development in spaces where people live through involvement,” such that “involvement is atrophied, rendered unviable, and weakened” (op. cit., p. 63).

When we are constantly urged to believe that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” it becomes urgent to invest in tactics for elaborating other ways of thinking and creating relationships with reality. In this sense, Donna Haraway argues that we must approach this moment of urgency beyond the “self-indulgent and self-fulfilling myths of Apocalypse” that guide projects of modernization and colonization. “It matters what thoughts think thoughts. It matters what knowledges know knowledges. It matters what worlds world worlds. It matters what stories tell stories” (HARAWAY, 2023, p. 66).

In contrast to the guiding stories of ways of life that produce the Anthropocene—permeated by “heavenly” and “heroic” myths—Haraway warns that world formation, what she calls “worlding,” is not produced solely by human agency. From the beginning, the planet has been formed through a complex field of entanglement among different beings and substances.

Based on these introductory reflections, the aim of this dossier is to think through the potentials of entanglement within a cosmos of multiple relations—a “poetics of entanglement,” a cosmo-entanglement. In what diverse ways can art be practiced and conceived as the creation of connections with the spaces we inhabit and with the other beings (animals, machines, spiritual entities, among others) that accompany us?

The “poetics of entanglement” outlined here must embrace the technodiversity (Hui, 2020) of modes of image and writing production in their relation to lived experience: not as prostheses of exteriorization, alienation, and distancing, but as possible agents of proximity and alliance-building. Beyond proposals for experiences to be offered to a specific audience, we seek to understand a type of artistic practice that functions in itself as a form of creating connection with reality. The exhibition experience is considered only one dimension of the “poetics of entanglement,” but not the primary one. Artistic practice, therefore, will be recognized as a way of inhabiting and creating new relations—a mode of existing within reality itself.

Thus, we wish to publish in this dossier articles and artistic experimentations that provoke reflections capable of dialoguing with and contributing to the conceptualization of what we may consider forms of “poetics of entanglement,” without necessarily illustrating or directly addressing it. Below are some of the themes we aim to bring into relation in this publication:

• Artistic practice as a form of entanglement with the body.

• Artistic practice as a form of entanglement with other beings.

• Artistic practice as a form of entanglement with spaces and places.

• Artistic practice as a form of entanglement with technicities.

Submissions may be sent until February 28, 2026, for the sections articles, reviews, essays, interviews, and translations (25,000 to 35,000 characters), as well as artistic authorships and curatorial proposals. The dossier will be published in the first semester of 2026.

The template and author guidelines are available on the website of the journal Estado da Arte:
http://www.seer.ufu.br/index.php/revistaestadodaarte/index

Prof. Dr. Eduardo Montelli
Visual Artist and Visiting Professor at IARTE/UFU
Editor and Organizer of the Dossier

HARAWAY, Donna. Ficar com o problema: fazer parentes do Chthluceno; traduzido por Ana Luiza Braga. São Paulo : n-1 edições, 2023

BISPO, Antônio dos Santos. A terra dá, a terra quer. São Paulo: Ubu Editora/PISEAGRAMA, 2023.

HUI, Yuk. Tecnodiversidade. São Paulo: Ubu Editora, 2020.