EXTENDED DEADLINE SEPT 30 FOR ISSUE 5
**EXTENDED DEADLINE NOW SEPTEMBER 30, 2015
CONTEMPORANEITY 5 CALL FOR PAPERS:
AGENCY IN MOTION
In the 2013 documentary The Missing Picture Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh revisits his own painful
memories and experiences of the Khmer Rouge genocide by creating miniature dioramas from a deeply
personalized account of historical settings and personages. As Panh said in an interview, "these aren’t just
figurines, they are something else, they have a soul.” Panh’s traumatic experiences relay not only a very
personalized account of the grainy historical record, they give a particular agency to artistic objects.
In its 5th edition, Contemporaneity will focus on the concept of agency in visual culture. As a method, agency
examines the dynamics of visual culture and human relations, questioning the work, its makers, its audience.
The concept of agency has enjoyed increasing currency within multiple disciplines—the humanities and social
sciences among them—opening up new avenues for understanding social and aesthetic interactions,
including anthropologist Alfred Gell’s conception of the art object as embedded in a system of action, Michael
Baxandall’s examination of artistic intent, and the extension of relational and contextual artistic practices by
Claire Bishop. Contemporaneity is seeking submissions that cover a wide range of issues, topics, periods,
and disciplines with an emphasis on the complexity of human and non-human agents interacting in the visual
world. These topics may include, but are not limited to:
• Historiographical/theoretical models of agency
• Virtual agency, avatars, self-fashioning, branding
• Indigeneity, mestizaje, hybridity, trans-/cross-culturation
• Gendered, queer, ethnic, classed, race/racialized identities
• Embodiment, cult objects, iconoclasm
• Curation, patronage, collecting
• Artist intention, artist workshops and collaboration
• War, counter-histories/memories, politics of testimonial and memorial practices
• Political agency, activism, riots
• The disappeared, the dead, the missing, the absent
SPECIAL SUBSECTION: REENACTMENT
We are further seeking papers for a special subsection that address, problematize, or work through the
conceptual issues surrounding “Reenactment” as a mode of artistic production. What may be lost, what
may be gained, when one reenacts? Who is allowed to reenact, when, where and to what purpose? How
does one begin to assess the innovative work of artists, like Panh, who seem motivated by alternative
historiographical values such as resurrection, embodiment, and vivification? This includes but is not
limited to the following issues:
• Trans-multi-inter media considerations of reenactment in visual art, film, or theatre and
performance
• Formal strategies of recursive processes
• The body as a means of generating and preserving history
• Paradigms of ritual, re-performance, and altered states
• Revisiting traumatic acts of institutionalized violence
• Techniques of historical staging in curation and exhibition studies
The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2015. Manuscripts (6,000 word maximum) should include
an abstract, 3-5 keywords, and adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style. To make a submission, visit
contemporaneity.pitt.edu, click Register and create an Author profile to get started. Proposals for book and
exhibition reviews, interviews, or scholarly discussions will also be considered, and we recognize that these
submissions may take many forms. Proposals can be directed to the editors at
contemporaneityjournal@gmail.com.
Contemporaneity is a peer-reviewed online journal organized by the History of Art and Architecture
Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Visit contemporaneity.pitt.edu and constellations.pitt.edu.
