Runway: Issue 51: Translation
Applications now closed
Guest Edited by James Nguyen.
Applications close Monday 20 April, 11.59pm AEST
Issue 51: Translation
Guest Edited by James Nguyen
Apply now via text doc (download from here)
If you have questions or require support to develop your proposal, please email runway@runway.org.au.
Key Dates
Proposals open: March 31 2026:
Applications close: Monday 20 April, 11.59pm AEST
About the theme
Translation demands deep reading and attentive listening. It moves ideas across writing, speech, silence, image, and movement, and sits within an embodied practice of empathy, vigilance, and decisiveness.
The power of translators to colour how ideas are expressed and exploited opens up endless opportunities for new betrayals and violence.The wrong language can trick ethnic parents into thinking you are doing well at school, have caused contestants to lose the Miss Universe crown, validated colonial theft, and encouraged individuals to make devastating health decisions for themselves.
The daily responsibility to translate with care, competency, and compassion has always been an effective minoritarian weapon of choice.
We invite you to send in pitches on the many aspects and outcomes of good, bad and mediocre translations.
About the Guest Editor
James Nguyen works with video, writing, collaboration, and performance. Interested in broken languages of Modernist colonialism, cinematography, and diasporic larrikinism, Nguyen holds a PhD from the University of NSW, and trained at the Sydney College of Arts, the National Art School, and UnionDocs Centre for Documentary Arts (NYC).
He has exhibited at the National 2019, Next Wave Festival and ACE Open in Australia and has commissions from the Sydney Opera House, the Australian War Memorial and support from the Anne and Gordan Samstag Fellowship, Millumbuk Arts, the Clithroe Foundation, the Australian Council for the Arts, Create NSW, and Creative Victoria.
He continues to present and develop both highly acclaimed and lacklustre work locally and internationally, including in Footscray, Albury, Bankstown, Vienna, Berlin, Guangzhou, and Ho Chi Minh City.
About Runway Journal
Runway Journal is a free, open-access digital publication that cultivates critical, bold and experimental practice. We commission artistic and written works that respond to current ideas in Australian and international contemporary art. Runway is powered by a dedicated team of voluntary artists and arts workers based across Australia.
FAQs
What fees & timeframe do you receive to develop works for the issue?
Contributors will be supported to produce new works over a 6-8 week period by Runway Journal’s editorial and digital team members. Please consider this timeframe in relation to the scope of your proposed work. Each contributor will be paid $800 AUD plus superannuation for their commissioned work.
We encourage you to peruse past issues for ideas. As Runway Journal aims to support a variety of practitioners and new voices, applicants who have not been commissioned by Runway Journal in the past year will be favoured.
What is the selection criteria?
When evaluating each proposal, the selection committee will consider the following:
– To what extent does the proposal respond to the theme?
– Is the proposed work critical; timely, responsive, research-based or relevant?
– Does the proposed work experiment with form? Is it brave, does it challenge the dominant narrative?
– How does this proposal serve to develop skills and help to innovate the applicant’s practice?
What support does Runway Journal offer?
Runway Journal’s board members endeavour to offer support and share knowledge so that the work delivered develops a line of enquiry in your personal practice while remaining connected to the overarching theme of Translation.
We offer editorial support across fiction, critical essays and poetry. We can provide feedback across digital artworks and will work with you to create new ways to present work on our online platform. We do not see this relationship as a hierarchical one, and acknowledge that we will also learn from you in the process of developing your work.
What applicants are we looking for?
We are looking for bold and innovative submissions, such as visual art, film, photography, poetry, essays, multimedia, sound, and experimental practices, that speak to the theme of Translation.