[Commlist] CfP: NECSUS Spring 2021_#Solidarity

*REMINDER*
*NECSUS Spring 2021_#Solidarity *
*Call for submissions *
*Deadline: 01 July 2020*

How do things hold together? The highly complex, capitalistic world that 
we have built is held by supply chains and financial circuits, digital 
infrastructures and information streams. It is also held together by 
individuals and groups that share and support, that give and distribute 
in ways different from a purely market-oriented exchange of goods. Both 
forms of connectivity have come under considerable duress during the 
current COVID19 pandemic - this is also a crisis of and for media, 
mediation, and mediators. At the moment, life seems to be reoriented 
toward the more immediate values of home, health, family, and 
neighborhood where one can discover vast and untapped potentials for 
solidarity: a sense of interdependent belonging not grounded in logics 
of exchange but moved by a desire for collective well-being as 
individual well-being. At the same time, media play a crucial role in 
how we come together during times of social distancing, allowing for the 
invention of new modes of assembly, intimacy, and expression. The Spring 
2021 issue of NECSUS intends to explore how media - today, in the past, 
and even in the future - may facilitate expressions of solidarity in the 
face of watershed moments such as the current health crisis, or indeed 
how it might have rendered inequalities and the lack of solidarity more 
glaring. Does media help us come together across our differences, and if 
so how and for whom?

Solidarity is a fundamental social experience, a shared concern that 
connects individuals to each other and that also forms bonds among 
groups, collectives, and communities.  Solidarity becomes more urgent at 
times of unrest, change, and social shifts. Our current Covid-19 
situation, informed by a new ubiquity of mediated communication and 
social connections, is such a watershed moment for experiencing and 
thinking about social fabric and the role of media in particular. Other 
historical moments with impact on a larger social level, such as the 
1989-90 fall of the ‘Eastern bloc’ and its repercussions for a global 
world order, or the 1968 student and peace protests in its various local 
forms, also brought forth their specific formations of solidarity with 
specific media politics. These moments also influenced media production 
and reception, or can trace memories of solidarity.  For this issue we 
are looking for research articles that connect reflections of solidarity 
with the specificities of media, be it in the form of memory work and 
media archives, media influences on community or a revisiting of 
identity, (self)positioning and collectivity, media technologies and 
infrastructures, practices and affordances.

Submissions might address modes of im/mediated solidarity that have 
emerged during the ongoing health crisis, but also prior iterations that 
need historicisation. This includes the crystallisation of new 
infrastructures, led most prominently by video conferencing software, 
and how they reassemble the sociality of, say, the workplace, but also 
of nightlife through something like a Zoom dance party. This might be a 
way to address more fundamental questions regarding media use: what are 
the limits of the tools deployed in the face of widely divergent access 
to media? Does the current health crisis reduce the differences that 
many still perceive between ‘real life’ and digitally mediated 
experience? How is our sense of solidarity impacted by the absence of 
co-presence, the sharing of a physical space with others? Other topics 
include new and old practices of media-related (self-)care. This could 
be in terms of how media have been enlisted for practices to increase 
individual and collective well-being or, in contrast, how collective 
care practices have been developed to protect against unhealthy 
influences of media. Solidarity is also a key term in relation to the 
ongoing debate around the migratory regime of the EU and the current 
‘leave no one behind’ activism. Last, but certainly not least, 
solidarity might also be considered in relation to the recent boom in 
studying community-oriented media practices.

Other topics may include (but are not restricted to):

# Collective media action and its specific forms in history and in the 
current moment

# Solidarity and technology/infrastructure - what are the affordances 
and possibilities opened up by media technologies that might allow for 
expressions and practices of solidarity? How does the unequal 
penetration of infrastructures prevent or thwart attempts at solidarity?

# Solidarity and viewing practices; interrogating and/or disrupting 
media consumption habits and forms of spectatorship defined (wholly or 
in part) by social atomisation and/or solipsism, in the past and/or the 
present (e.g. responses to the closure of public spaces designed for the 
consumption of media, such as cinema theaters; digital film festival 
debates, etc)

# Solidarity, media and phenomenology: how do we experience the lack of 
physical presence and its ‘replacement’ by dematerialised communication?

# Solidarity and new forms of collective labor, including analysis of 
media practices that respond to neoliberal models of education and push 
for a rethink of such models in times of unprecedented crisis

# Mediated networks of care: how does the notion of care change if it is 
largely practiced at a distance and/or through media?

We also invite submissions on the intersection between academic research 
and artistic practice. Submissions may address the audiovisual essay as 
an old and new method of doing media studies; also, practice-based 
research or research-creation as evolving methods of knowledge 
production and performance.

We look forward to receiving abstracts of 300 words, 3-5 bibliographic 
references, and a short biography of 100 words by 1 July 2020 to 
(g.decuir /at/ aup.nl) <mailto:(g.decuir /at/ aup.nl)>  On the basis of selected 
abstracts, writers will be invited to submit full manuscripts 
(6,000-8,000 words, revised abstract, 4-5 keywords) which will 
subsequently go through a double-blind peer review process before final 
acceptance for publication.

NECSUS also accepts proposals throughout the year for festival, 
exhibition, and book reviews, as well as proposals for guest edited 
audiovisual essay sections. We will soon open a general call for 
research article proposals not tied to a special section theme.  Please 
note that we do not accept full manuscripts for consideration without an 
invitation. Access our submission guidelines at 
necsus-ejms.org/guidelines-for-submission/ 
<https://necsus-ejms.org/guidelines-for-submission/>


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