This special issue of PARSE Journal is the result of a collaborative project, with “conviviality” and “contamination” as inspirational but not delimiting concepts. It has been carried out by an international group of twelve artists and academics, writers and researchers, who came together in the autumn of 2022 to generate the body of work presented in the volume.
The project began with transversal forms of writing as its main focus, with the original cohort of contributors all active at the interface of literary and academic writing. However, as the process developed and more participants were drawn into the project, sound emerged as a secondary focus and an alternative angle from which to approach the themes of conviviality and contamination. Overall, the contributions perhaps represent the contributors' own “hot compost pile” of voices, art forms and perspectives.