Our first issue, Existence as The End, is planned to begin distribution this August 2023. The New Rhythm Zine call for submissions is here!
Please send submissions to staff@newrhythmzine.com by June 15th, 2023.
This issue, Existence as The End, will feature artists, writers, and poets coming to terms with existence on a personal or interpersonal level.
Our first issue intends to lay the groundwork for this project going forward. Ponder our current state. Come to dream of unforced existence. What does it look like, to be free in a world of our making? If humanity had such drastic accomplishments in the past hundred years, must it remain as it is?
We accept submissions for the following:
- Poetry, both lyrical and narrative. Poetry Submissions are the backbone of our issued content
- Personal Essays, displaying drives for existence
- Zine Art, digitally transferable art for the cover, back cover, and features (stand-alone, or poetry frame)
The time for existing is now. If we must wait, then it must be in fervent search for it, in every now.
Some prominent ideas and concepts to explore may be:
- Mental health—its integrity, and what is compromising. How does mental health begin to play an integral role to inform what should be done?
- Trauma—generational, collective, and personal. Is trauma only addressable by certified attendants? Is there a part of the suffering that points to better things? Does all trauma cause mental health issues, or is it the frame in which the trauma occurs that disables the mind from processing through? Is there a common block?
- Morality and its role today in how problems are faced. What values are reinforced and what has that caused? What might prove worth reverence, and what is aversive? Especially interested in juxtapositions, what is right, but known as wrong now, and what is wrong, but known as right now.
- Coming of age or realizing your own part to play. How is that made difficult, and how might structure reinforce more instances of self-realization?
- Existing when how you might exist is alien. What are you held back from? How might you live if bare necessities were taken care of, and you could always find a space to be alone or with someone?
If there is something not quite within the parameters, feel free to pitch us the idea and we will see where we can place it.
Existence as The End… The quickest way to alienation is by requiring our existence more than its apparent ends. Too often our environment is demanded to conform to certain ends. Doing so turns existing into another brief resource to wrest value from. After responsibilities, we can exist—after the debt is paid and the credit is made—after we are certain things will end the way we’d project onto them, only then can we just exist.
At times, the darkness can show where the light is the best. Distinguish the light. The New Rhythm Zine call for submissions will likely be accepted on a rolling basis according to our timeline.
Future themes:
- November 2023: Evolution
- February 2024: New World, Its Rhythm
- May 2024: Techno—Art Applications
Still don’t know what the New Rhythm Zine is about? This is how utopia can form.