Kasa Galeri
Bankalar Caddesi 2, Karaköy,
34420 Istanbul
Turkey
ocradst.org/visions-of-contemporary-cuts
kasagaleri.sabanciuniv.edu
Operational and Curatorial Research, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Cuts, Kasa Gallery and the International Association for Visual Culture, is pleased to announce a new refereed issue titled Visions of Contemporary Cuts for the Journal of Visual Culture.
The issue is guest edited by Lanfranco Aceti, Sabanci University, Istanbul; and Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Theme
What are the images of today that represent the contemporary economic crisis and symbolize the financial cuts that are being enforced across the arts, education and public health systems? What are the realities of these cuts in the context of societies in crisis such as the United States and Western Europe? What is the impact of the images and contextualized discourses that we as academics, practitioners, curators, and cultural commentators are constructing?
Workers, pensioners and those who receive benefits and subsidies are presented and portrayed as if they are ‘leeching’ from a healthy productive private financial sector. Workers, people on benefits, poorer students who receive financial aid, and poorer pensioners all are compiled within a definition of burdening and burgeoning social costs that deserve to be cut from the rest of an ‘efficient and productive society.’
The word cut is charged with connotations and meanings that represent the destruction of a whole: it is a maiming of an entirety, it is a slashing, an axing, a separating, dividing, carving, slicing, dissecting, lacerating, etc., of the body of our society. Nevertheless in contemporary discourse, cuts have come to acquire a ‘positive’ (albeit deeply ideological) terminological aura: that of a saving grace, the last resource to re-create a new and healthy society. But are the cuts inflicted onto the social body exercising a positive function, if the cuts are affecting only the lower strata of society? Or are they representing the final ideological enforcement of ideas of post-capitalism that by substituting its ideology with that of the state’s ‘social contract,’ transforms 99% of the citizens into commodified laborers with no rights?
This issue of Journal of Visual Culture seeks to address these questions from the perspective of contemporary visual culture theory and practice in order to find the characterizing imageries of the Great Recession that provide an insightful understanding of the current social turmoil beyond institutional narratives. In particular we seek papers that address, although are not limited to, the following themes:
1. Cuts and their visual mythology in contemporary discourses
2. Cuts, protest and resistance
3. Narratives of cuts
4. Lives cut: suicides in the economic crisis
5. The visual politics of cutting
6. Cuts and social justice
7. Dreams cut: the failing of upward social mobility
8. Creative finance and art cuts
9. Comparative analyses between historical images of poverty and contemporary poverty
10. The role of media technology in distributing imageries and in creating narrative of cuts
11. How to curate the visuality of cuts and its social impact
12. Artistic practices in a time of crisis
Dates
May 10, 2014: submission of article of 1,500 words.
June 1, 2014: review of full papers and final acceptance
June 1, 2014: request signature of copyright agreement and image copyright clearance
September 1–October 1, 2014: evaluation of revised and finalized papers in the context of the full issue
October 1, 2014: evaluation of the issue.
January 1, 2015: work on the final version copy-edited and design ready of the issue.
May 1, 2015: submit for publication in fall/winter 2015
Submission
Please, email your submission as a Word document (.doc or .docx) to: info [ at ] museumofcontemporarycuts.org with subject heading: JVC Visions of Contemporary Cuts.
Editorial team
Editor: Lanfranco Aceti
Editorial Managers: Ozden Sahin and Jonathan Munro
Editorial Assistant: Caglar Cetin
Other important information
The issue will be followed by a multi-authored book (publisher to be announced), which will draw, in large part, from the authors published in the first instance within the Visions of Contemporary Cuts journal issue.
Operational and Curatorial Research (OCR)
Visions of Contemporary Cuts on OCR
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