Perhaps as expected, editing a journal issue on the difficulties of “form” and the possibilities of informalisms means intentionally reaching toward uncharted territory while also spending time with objects, questions, and methodologies that feel familiar. That is, of course, the hope of a call for papers that asks contributors, “If ‘form’ is a way in which art knows itself to be art, then how does black art know itself? And how does it know that it knows?”
That knowingness is very important to us and a constant site of reflection, practice, and reflection on our practice. Thus, at the same time that liquid blackness: journal of aesthetics and black studies continues to expand its disciplinary purview and feature the work of emerging artists and scholars, this issue notably includes writing on films and filmmakers that have already received considerable attention: there is one essay on Barry Jenkins's 2016 Academy Award – winning film Moonlight (the fourth in the history of this journal) and two contributions about the most recent release from the oft-analyzed oeuvre of Jordan Peele, Nope (2022). Coming back to these two films after they've been so thoroughly considered by scholars and fans alike is deliberate—it is an opportunity to reflect upon objects that hold collective attention and to revisit these works with new and challenging questions. Ultimately, we're considering the purpose, function, and practice of making “formal interventions” to ask: What does returning to the same objects or creators mean for processes of canon-formation? But also, how does it help us understand practices of canon-informality? How might a return to the same object, in itself, engender an informal intergenerational gathering?
We always start with the second and third questions, with the aim of discovering how the practice of informality can be practiced again. Editorial informality—the ways publishing can be an invitation to think with others—takes may forms, too invaluable and too many to count here. Thus, even as this issue prompts us to think more “formally” about all these practices, the decision to dedicate an entire issue to “informalisms” returns us to yet another fundamental question that appeared in this issue's call for papers: “Under what circumstances can form be a principle or a strategy of/for socialization?”
Perhaps “informalisms” is our name for a conspiracy without a plot: the conspiracy to gather to figure out how to better gather again, next time, and next time.
To be continued . . .
