From New Media to Old Utopias: ‘Red’ Art in Data Capitalism?, Leonardo Electronic Almanac
Senior Editors: Lanfranco Aceti (LEA Editor-in-Chief), Julian Stallabrass (Courtauld Institute of Art) and Susanne Jaschko (prozessagenten)
Editor: Bill Balaskas (Royal College of Art)
Call for papers
From the early stages of its development, New Media Art readily adopted a variety of means of artistic engagement and expression that aim at serving modes of utopian social being: from multi-modal collaboration to public participation and from open software applications to hacktivism, the germs of leftist political thought seem to abound in the art of the Digital Age. Prompted by the economic crisis, New Media Art appears to increasingly employ the tools provided by new technologies in order to penetrate all aspects of global social living and propagate such apparatuses as catalysts for socioeconomic change. New Media artworks and art projects have gradually formed a common practice whose objectives allude to utopian theories of social organization lying closer to certain visions of communism, direct democracy and anarchism, rather than to the realities of neoliberal capitalism within which new media are produced and predominantly operate.
The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) is inviting proposals from academics, critical theorists and artists for an issue investigating the relevance of communist utopianism to New Media Art’s ideological dispositions. Relevant areas of interest addressed by the issue’s contributors could include, but are by no means limited to:
• Art, technology and social media
• The rise of New Economies and the rise New Media Art
• The working class and affective labour in data capitalism
• New media artworks as commodities: “use” and “exchange” values
• Digital Art and symbolic or cultural capital
• New Media Art’s reaction to the global economic crisis (2008-2012)
• Legal issues and new concepts of intellectual property in Digital Art
• The online democratization of art
• The art of protest: from anti-globalization to the “Facebook Revolutions” and the “Occupy” movement
• The role of New Media Art in ex-communist countries
• Hacktivism as art: a revolution for the Digital Age?
• Tactical Media and its progeny
• The institutionalization of radical New Media Art
• Histories of leftist aesthetics
Through the synthesis of such diverse points of view, the issue will attempt to demystify whether and to what extent the art of the Digital Age is, or could be, the result of the seemingly paradox combination of capitalism’s products and communism’s visions.
Guidelines for paper proposals:
(a) Subject heading: Red Art
(b) 500-word abstract for articles, in doc format
(c) Deadline for abstracts: August 31, 2012
(d) Length for full articles: around 5,000 words
(e) Deadline for submission of full articles: November 30, 2012
(f) 2 images at 72 dpi resolution no larger than 800 pixels width
(g) Links to previous work, videos or personal websites
• For scholarly papers, please, submit the final paper ready for peer review. Your contribution will be reviewed by at least two members of the LEA board and revisions may be requested subject to review.
• For themed and pictorial essays, please, submit an abstract or outline for editorial consideration and further discussion.
• Please keep your news, announcements and hyperlinks brief and focused; include contact details and a link to an external site where relevant.
• We reserve the right to sub-edit your submissions in order to comply with LEA policies and formats. Where material is time-sensitive, please, include both embargo and expiry dates.
• In all cases, specify special system considerations where these are necessary (platform, codecs, plug-ins, etc.)
Call for artists’ portfolios and biographies
The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) will produce an online and print on demand issue, as well as present artists, artists’ groups and art collectives online. Also, LEA envisions the co-production of an exhibition in a gallery space, based on the contributions collected through this Call.
We particularly welcome manifestos and polemical texts of all forms, political and artistic statements, accounts of art projects and presentations of online platforms and artists’ networks related to the areas of interest delineated in the Call.
Guidelines for artists’ proposals:
(a) Subject heading: Red Art
(b) Manifestos, Artists/Curatorial Statements, Resumes of Practice, or other texts: 3000 words maximum, in doc format (larger text can be discussed and approved by the senior editors)
(c) CVs, in doc format, no more than 3 pages
(d) Portfolios or accounts of artworks (links are preferred), should you email material no more than 12 images at 800px width x 514 height at 72dpi
(e) Links to previous work, videos or personal websites
(f) Deadline: August 31, 2012
All proposals should be sent to: info@leoalmanac.org
Our publication formats allow for full-colour throughout and we encourage rich pictorial content where relevant and possible. Note, however, that all material submitted must be copyright-cleared (or due diligence must be evidenced). For online publication a wide variety of media content may be considered (animation, mp3, flash, java, etc.)
For further information or image submission, contact: Ozden.Sahin@leoalmanac.org
We look forward to hearing from you!