Axel Bruns on 3 Oct 2000 01:25:07 -0000 |
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[Nettime-bold] M/C Calls for Contributors for issues through to the end of 2001 |
M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.api-network.com/mc/> Call for Contributors The University of Queensland's award-winning journal of media and culture, M/C, is looking for new contributors. M/C is a crossover journal between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and peer-reviewed journal. To see what M/C is all about, check out our Website, which contains all the issues released so far, at <http://www.api-network.com/mc/>. To find out how and in what format to contribute your work, visit <http://www.api-network.com/mc/contribute.html>. Below, you'll find the issue topics we're planning for the rest of 2000 and 2001, along with the article submission and issue release deadlines. Take the topic descriptions as a guideline only: if you've got a different approach to the topic, we'd love to see your article! Please spread this call far and wide, and remember to archive it for future reference... 'renew' article deadline: 13 Nov. 2000 issue release date: 13 Dec. 2000 M/C is turning three. Well, not quite, but we're at the finish of our third volume, and that's a good time to pause and take stock of what and where we are and what we want the future to hold for us. The M/C operation is going through a number of changes at the end of 2000 -- editorial collective members are stepping down from their jobs, others are taking up the challenge --, and this infusion of fresh blood is bound to renew our impetus. To mark this changeover, we're getting the band back together, with articles from the original contributors of M/C 1.1 ('new'). But the 'renew' issue is not about self-congratulary navel-gazing. Our outlook in this issue is to the future, not to the past -- to the ongoing study of media and culture rather than the contributions we've been able to make in our own brief existence. At M/C, we've always seen ourselves as part of a wider movement towards the crossover between the popular and the academic. To that end, we're also inviting your contributions to 'renew'. How does renewal take place -- for individuals as well as for groups, institutions, or whole societies? What causes renewal, what hinders it? Where is renewal most needed, and how may it be brought about? To be part of the renewed M/C, send us your articles... 'sorry' article deadline: 22 Jan. 2001 issue release date: 21 Feb. 2001 Simple two-syllable word, defined in its most rudimentary sense as apologetic, remorseful and humbled. Yet its application is often diverse, contradictory and complicated by contextual, political and historical factors. To say 'I'm sorry' as opposed to 'I apologise' is to make a small but significant distinction between degrees of ownership to guilt and responsibility. Perhaps the problematic of using 'sorry' then in contemporary culture is best understood by being reflexive about the power, politics and practices of being sorry or being represented as sorry. For example, in Australia, there is a performative tension between the ideological requirements of National Sorry Day and the associated need for contemporary Australian governments to consider on National Sorry Day the question of respondent 'sorriness' -- too often, though, the government of the time does not advocate being 'sorry' -- it does not perform a sense of sorriness. From an analyst's position, if we place ourselves between these positions of being sorry and not being sorry (is this possible?), can we discern a method of sorriness? What is the relationship, on a national or cultural level, between political subjectivities in power and the repressed imaginations that seek a acknowledgement being sorry from them? What is the relationship, on an individual or personal level between determining being sorry or apologetic? At which point does a sense of responsibility advocate a degree of sorriness? 'mix' article deadline: 19 March 2001 issue release date: 18 April 2001 To mix is to transform, combine or blend to create something new. Within this transformation process, there is breakdown, renovation, reinvigoration, novelty and often strangeness. Flour, water, butter, and sugar in their original forms lack sufficient engagement -- yet, when located within methods of food preparation, can produce shortbread, biscuits and scones. Here, the uniqueness of these elements is in their combination, in their placement within something greater as a whole -- the final product can be distinguished as unique in style, texture and taste from the materials that make it. Yet to alter one element changes the mix -- to alter the regime of the preparation transforms the result. In what other ways might the idea of 'mix' work this transformative power through the tapestry of worlds? 'Mix' can be applied to many goings-on in media and culture -- from visual and fictional representations of racial and gendered mixtures, to the mixing of music, the combining of literary genres, and the creating of multimedia. 'Mix' can also be subject to various desires and political uses, and can be observed as a deep cultural process guiding interpretations of change, transformation, components of social movement, and ethnic mixtures within nations. Think of a mix you would like to unravel: What kind of mixes challenge established forms of media and culture? How do ideas of the 'global melting pot' make their way into media and culture, and what is their impact? How is the rhetoric of the multicultural mix used and produced? What beliefs do these uses of 'mix' foster and encourage? Is this 'fusion' or 'hybridity' full of constructive and creative potential, or can it be destructive and sterile? This issue will get amongst the mix and look at what is being mixed, and how, and what this is doing to boundaries within media and culture. We invite articles that delve into the mix and write about its methods, meanings and products. Put together your words and ideas and create something for the mix... 'sick' article deadline: 14 May 2001 issue release date: 13 June 2001 Sick I'm sick You're sick That's sick 'Sick' connotes: disease. Extreme disapproval. Commendation. Colloquially, even admiration. To be sick is to be biologically compromised, physically disrupted. To be sick is to pass beyond the limits of sanctioned discourse. In this issue of M/C we choose 'sick' as a site to investigate the complexities inherent in the passage beyond the cultural and ideological pale. If you want to be part of the sickness, send us your articles. 'creator' article deadline: 9 July 2001 issue release date: 8 August 2001 Creators 'act' -- they position and produce through processes of transformation. Within religious systems, creators are perceived to exist in an extra-discursive real outside perceived natural systems -- they are supernatural, capable of commandeering creations that break laws of nature. In other more scientific settings, creators are supra (above) natural, in that they are positioned at the top of nature, able to call forth, like a great commander-in-chief, epic acts that manipulate the laws of nature in novel ways while maintaining their coherency. Many schools, in a religious context, debate over the preferred interpretation of the act of creation, from theistic-evolutionists to creationists. But creators in religious and other contexts too (such as a worker of the arts) are, it can be argued, still subject to the cultural systems which represent them -- is there no real creator apart from what is perceived that way? Religious and spiritual innovation can be closely related in this manner with the production, combination and utilisation of selected images of a creator. Yet within the expanded definition that creator might indicate one who creates and practices acts of creation, questions of power and desire in creation inevitably connect with questions of public accountability and the material effects of creation. Depending on one's subjective relation to an idea of creator, do some creators appear more 'real' or carry greater cultural meaning than others? 'colour' article deadline: 3 September 2001 issue release date: 3 October 2001 'Colour', in its basic form, emits or reflects light, but when it is thrown into media and culture, it emits and reflects so much more. In visual and media culture, colour is a primary source to communicate thought and feeling. Colour is used for its connotations, its connections, its effects on the viewer. And colour is also used in word- based media and culture -- literary representations of race rely on it, mood and imagery is enhanced by it. Colours blend and slide, and meanings attached to colour can follow suit, changing with both time and place. Colour is used to invoke fear and comfort, represent change and stability, signify belonging or alienness. And in current racial theory the achromatic nature of whiteness is challenged, while the meanings of blackness are analysed. Colour is so often used as a metaphor in visual and literary representations -- what is it about colour that makes it so loaded with meaning? What are your thoughts on colour in media and culture? How is the media "coloured"? What colours culture? Send to M/C your (colourful) article that throws light on the colours of media and culture. 'work' article deadline: 29 October 2001 issue release date: 28 November 2001 In the bad old days, people lived to work: to produce enough food, to make enough money just to get by was hard enough, and there was no time to waste on the finer things in life. Things are so much better now -- or are they? Do we really work to live now, doing our work only to sustain and support our pursuits outside the workplace? Does the divide even apply any more -- in the days of teleworking, flexitime, and plug'n'play computing in the home office, where does work stop, and recreation start? What is the future of the workplace if neither the location of that place nor the activities of work can be pinned down with any accuracy? And what becomes of the worker, in both the general and the specific meaning of the term: if everyone's an information worker, does the working class become extinct (or is it simply pushed to the geopolitical outskirts of the Western world)? Perhaps these questions aren't even as recent as they appear to be. Consider 'work', the noun: it describes both the activity and its outcome - - so if you love (or hate) your work, do you mean the work you do or the work you've created in doing your work (which in turn may indicate that you love having finished your work and being ready to play)? And speaking of creativity, what about the artwork: is it work, is it art, can it be both? Where (in analogy to the work/play divide above) does work stop and art begin (a question of significant legal implications, as recent cases around the copyrighting of software as artworks have shown)? So, get to work on these and other ideas. Articles on the past and future of work and play, on individual works (of art, or otherwise), on the concept of work itself, and other labours of love are gratefully accepted for this issue of M/C. If they work for us (and our hard-working referees), we'll publish them. We're looking forward to your articles ! Axel Bruns -- M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture mc@mailbox.uq.edu.au The University of Queensland http://www.api-network.com/mc/ _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold