Call for submissions: EXIT Signs
Stagnation can rot you from the inside out.
"Haunting, then, can be construed as a failed mourning. It is about refusing to give up the ghost or – and this can sometimes amount to the same thing – the refusal of the ghost to give up on us." - Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life
"Haunting... is an animated state in which a repressed or unresolved social violence is making itself known... unlike trauma by contrast, [haunting] produces a something-to-be-done." - Avery Gordon, "Some thoughts on haunting and futurity", Borderlands 10 (2).
Growing up in a town whose only identity is ex-everything attunes you to stagnation, makes you notice its warning signs. Whether it was the rusting boats, the aching high streets, or the flooded chalk pit, we found out what it meant to be be left to disrepair. To be met with no care or maintenance. Circling the drain.
If you're not careful, stagnation can rot you from the inside out. Make you long for some ancient time when you swear things were better than this. Make you stare at the blackening walls of your one-bed-£900-a-month-flat and blame someone other than the landlord. Make you dive deep into anything or anyone to try to escape the itchy borders of your self.
What if there was a way out? Some sense of possibility, some exit from this endless race to the bottom?
Submission info
EXIT Signs is now open for submissions on a rolling basis, interested in anything that helps us to understand how we got here, the cost of staying here, and how we get out. We want to hear about hauntings, failed mournings, and the something-to-be-done. We want to hear about brutalist shopping centres that keep appearing as if from nowhere, the vaporwave music that's chillingly familiar.
If you knew us as LOST FUTURES, you know the sort of thing we like to see or publish (take a look, if not). The hauntological, the weird, the ghostly. The bizarre, the nostalgic, the excessive. Experiments with time, lost memories, or the huge void at the centre of everything. Grief, rage, modern folklore. What does it mean to be you, now? What is the cost of being you, now? What possibilities and new worlds lurk ahead?
We love publishing artists who haven't been published before. We're always thrilled to be someone's first step in the publishing world, to help bring their work to more people and to help them believe that actually, they are good enough. First timers, we’d love to hear from you. Take it from Mat:
EXIT Signs takes submissions in any format. That might be art, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, design, stories about your life, photography, documentation of exhibitions, music, personal essays, anything. No matter the format, we are looking for weird, interesting, haunting content – particularly long-form pieces. If you're submitting something shorter, or a piece of visual or audio work, consider telling us about the creation process, or providing commentary on the work itself. We believe art exists outside of the intentions and biography of its creator – but the creator can give people a good opening into the work, and you should do this where appropriate.
We will never publish anything oppressive. No hateful, misogynistic, racist, ableist, transphobic, classist content. We understand creators may need to include content of this nature in their work in order to explore it artistically. If you are doing this, we ask you to do so only if it is about something you have lived experience of and that your work is not reperpetuating these oppressions.
Submit your work here. We look forward to publishing you.