Call for papers | Vol. 10, No. 1 | Communication and Mediation in/of Art | Closed
Editors: Zara Pinto-Coelho (CECS, Universidade do Minho, Portugal), Helena Pires (CECS, Universidade do Minho, Portugal) and Jean-Marie LaFortune (Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Publics de la Culture, Université du Québec, Canada)
In the current (tensive) framework of contemporary art (Jimenez, 2005/2021), given the complexity of its formal, compositional, procedural codes, but also its imbricate entanglement with the social and political (Bishop, 2004), and economic dimensions (Afonso & Fernandes, 2019), the imperative of communication and mediation has been accentuated. Communication and mediation, between (and within) art, artists, artistic and cultural institutions, and its professionals (critics, curators, strategic communication experts, cultural journalists, researchers) and the publics, is justified by the influence the principles of accessibility, democratisation, participation or collaboration, or even art education, have in opening the "art worlds" (Becker, 1982) to the multiple spheres of communalised (or, desirably, made common) aesthetic experience (Stiegler, 2004/2018). Thus, understanding the multiple roles, displacements, (re)mediations operated by the actors, (non-)places and different devices in this phenomenon of closer relationships is critical. The risk of a growing communication gap, identified in recent research (Anastasiya et al., 2020), motivates many of the existing practices and experiments committed to transforming the paradigms that persist in the field of art and culture. However, in the debate on mediation, its normative and utilitarian dimensions, as a technology aiming at changing behaviours, is more evoked than its political nature, as a technology of social transformation (Fontan, 2007, p. 12). Moreover, the practice seems to show that this is a pitfall since contradictory interests converge in the project of establishing a common ground, those linked to institutions and those arising from populations and individuals (LaFortune, 2008/2016, pp. 10-12).
This thematic section of the Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies welcomes articles, reviews or interviews committed to the topic under consideration in its various facets. Admitting the relevance of "post-literary" media and the plurality of forms of artistic expression, ranging from visual arts to music and performing arts, including the media arts, we welcome proposals that rethink the role and dynamics observed in criticism and curation, artistic education, cultural journalism, strategic communication (namely in the relationship with the media or with the markets), among other professional areas of mediation, instanced by galleries, museums, independent venues or different contexts. How do the discourses, in their various media, from exhibition catalogues to technological devices — supporting the digitalisation of archives and collections, collaborative or social media platforms, distance mediation, and even including interactive mechanisms in the places of art exhibition and production — produce today circular and multicentric models of interaction? What place, for art, in mediating with the communities and organisations, public and private, with whom one negotiates the conditions of their practical life (Cruz, 2018)? How to inter-mediate new understandings, perceptions, and interpretations regarding artistic production anchored in marginal geographies and populated by the effects of post-memory (Pinto Ribeiro, 2021)? Are artists increasingly aware of their responsibility in sharing the most fundamental concerns, of the common life, that concern individuals and groups in their condition as citizens of the world-in-between (alluding to the social or inter-interest sphere Arendt describes)?
Particular attention to contributions from researchers in the social sciences and humanities on one or more of the following topics:
- curation and criticism
- cultural journalism
- practices of consumption and participation in cultural life
- Socio-cultural animation practices
- mediation and community art
- technological/digital mediation of art
- strategic communication in cultural and artistic organisations
- mediation between the art world and the art market
- the third sector in art
- art education/artistic education
- art therapy
- care through art
- publics and non-publics
IMPORTANT DATES
Submission of full manuscripts | new date: September 5 to November 25, 2022
Editor's decision on full articles: January 8, 2023
Deadline for submitting the full version and translated version: March 31, 2023
Issue publication date: June 2023
LANGUAGE
Articles can be submitted in English or Portuguese. After the peer review process, the authors of the selected articles should ensure translation of the respective article, and the editors shall have the final decision on the publication of the article.
EDITING AND SUBMISSION
Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies is an open-access academic journal that adheres to the stringent standards of peer-reviewing and blind peer reviewing. After submission, each paper will be distributed to two reviewers previously invited to evaluate it according to its academic quality, originality and relevance to the objectives and scope of the theme of this issue of the journal.
Original articles are submitted on the journal's website at (https://www.rlec.pt/). When submitting for the first time to the Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, please register here.
Publication guidelines are available here.
For further information please refer to rlec[at]ics.uminho.pt
References
Afonso, L. U. & Fernandes, A. (2019). Mercados da arte. Edições Sílabo.
Anastasiya, B., Svetlana, M., & Nadezhda, Z. (2020). The significance of art mediation in bridging the communication gaps. KnE Social Sciences, 4(2), 374–389. https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v4i2.635
Becker, H. (1982). Art worlds. University of California Press.
Bishop, C. (2004). Antagonism and relational aesthetics, October, 110, 51–79.
Cruz, H. (2018). Práticas artísticas comunitárias: Uma visão transversal. In A. G. Pinto, P. R. Pinto, & T. V. Furtado (Eds.). Cross media arts. Artes sociais e transdisciplinaridade/Social Arts and transdisciplinarity (pp. 22–35). Caleidoscópio.
Fontan, J.-M. (2007). De l’action à la médiation culturelle: Une nouvelle avenue d’intervention dans le champ du développement culturel. Cahiers de L’Action Culturelle, 6(2), 4–14.
Jimenez, M. (2021). A querela da arte contemporânea. Orfeu Negro. (Original work published 2005)
LaFortune, J-M. (2016). Da mediação à mediação: o jogo duplo do poder cultural em animação (D. Kerchove, Trans.). Periódico Permanente, 6, 1–15. (Original work published 2008)
Pinto Ribeiro, A. (2021). Novo mundo. Arte contemporânea no tempo da pós-memória. Edições Afrontamento.
Stiegler, B. (2018). Da miséria simbólica. I. A era hiperindustrial. Orfeu Negro. (Original work published 2004)
