Call for Pitches for EXTRA LIFE

C160—Spring 2025

Accepted until: October 25, 2024

What does it mean to access “extra life”? In video game worlds, extra lives are taken for granted, where death is not an obstacle; it can be outmaneuvered and cheated, by loading from a previous save file. Relieved from physical impacts and linear time, players can experience multiple ways of being in these virtual worlds. Having extra life can apply in numerous other senses—from being a metaphor for moments of transition, to seeing outside oneself, to the actual extension or creation of a life.

For this issue, we invite interpretations of extra life through contemporary art—and ask how art practices might engage with, or function, as virtual worlds, which can both expand or denigrate life and its consequences. The impermanence of death in video game realms is one example, among many, that provides a lens to view the dissociation of life from the living, including in: the name of capitalism; the link between warfare fought in the virtual and warfare waged IRL by empire and settler-colonial states; the disposability of land, people, and resources; the melding of the digital and physical as experiences are dictated by AI and algorithms; the unreality of living life as a marginalized person. How does the virtual influence our reality? Who is afforded extra lives? Can art be re-generative?

Thematic feature, artist project, and column pitches accepted until October 25, 2024. Review pitches, not required to be on theme, are accepted on a rolling basis.

Send pitches to pitch@cmagazine.com, with a subject line that starts with the word PITCH and indicates the submission type (review, essay, interview, One Thing, for example).

Please include ~150 words about your subject and how you’ll approach it, including hyperlinks wherever relevant. An estimated word count is appreciated. If you have not written for us recently, include a link to your website—or a copy of CV—and one or two writing samples (ideally ones in a style similar to your pitched piece). We do not publish reprints or previously written pieces. Please see our writer’s guidelines for more information.