What is unknown? What is unknowable? The future? The truth? The essence of things? God? Can we experience the unknown? Should we fear it? Should we embrace it? Are there limits to what is knowable? How are those limits constituted? By whom? To what end? Is it possible to know things that are unspeakable, unsayable, ineffable? Are there ways of knowing that cannot be contained in archives? What is the role of the unknown in advancing us culturally, politically, ethically, morally, aesthetically, scientifically?

In 2020/2021, FrameWorks will ask fellows to broadly interpret the theme "Unknown," to identify a cultural artifact that engages it. Cultural artifacts may include but are not limited to novels, poems, philosophical texts, sacred texts, astrological charts, cracks in tablets that obscure the text, political rhetoric, Billboards outside Roswell NM, missing pages, election polling, performances, paintings, sculptures, musical compositions, episodes of Stranger Things ... find the unknown in something about which you are passionate, and dig in.