Working Criteria [Issue #6]

The theme of the upcoming issue is:

Furniture Music

“I took to my room and let small things evolve slowly.” — Erik Satie

Selections will be made based on the following criteria:

a) Theme-appropriate yet thematically over-arching
b) Self-reflexive
c) Critical of metaphor, especially in the case of inter/transdisciplinary concepts
and generally,
d) Rigorous
e) Strange…/Subversive…./Destabilizing…

What motivates this publication you ask? Influenced by schizoanalysis as a method of subverting progressive liberal politics, its language, and its academics, we aim to incite others who suffer forced assimilation of their alterities into expressing their singularity transversally.

It’s been a century since the death of Erik Satie, who introduced the genre of musique d’ameublement or “furniture music.” In our next issue [Furniture Music], we travel to turn-of-the-century Montparnasse to hang with Satie, the father of minimalism in music, who was once jailed for “cultural anarchy.”
From there, we travel forward in time discovering new modes of abstract sonic art from musique concrète to ambient to power electronics. Rather than uphold generic divides, our aim here is to get in touch with an anti-style [hors norme] translating sound into “minoritarian becomings.” 

As with furniture music, our references are not so much direct interactions as a climate of inspiration—the thought produced by that which is “meant to be ignored.” To turn towards furniture music is to turn towards that which sits unassuming and habituated to. But Satie’s music, notably his love of repetition in melody and pivot chordal changes, are not to be undervalued. Like a favorite armchair it allows you to imagine new worlds you wouldn’t otherwise.

 

So furnish your room with music, sit, and let things start to evolve. 

We are looking for essays, visual, and multi-media submissions. We are also considering sonic or sound-based submissions as well. Collaborators as always receive 2 complimentary copies.

The deadline for submissions is 2/28/25.

"Transversality is a dimension that strives to overcome two impasses… [and] tends to be realized when maximum communication is brought about between different levels and above all in terms of different direction."

Félix Guattari, Psychanalyse et transversalité (1972)

If you have any comments or questions or would like to collaborate, please email us at transversals.journal@gmail.com. We are based in Buffalo, NY and Binghamton, NY.