[Commlist] CFP - Disrupting Surveillance: Media Arts Practice for a reimagined future

Call For Papers

Special issue of Media Practice and Education Journal (March 2023)

Disrupting Surveillance: Media Arts Practice for a reimagined future

Guest editors: Patrícia Nogueira, Ana Carvalho and Joana Pestana 
((disrupting.surveillance /at/ ismai.pt))


We invite submissions for a special issue of The Journal of Media 
Practice and Education on the topic of Disrupting Surveillance

Deadline for 500-word Abstract Submissions: 15 March 2022

Deadline for Full Papers: 31 July 2022

Expected date of publication: March 2023

Surveillance in the 21st Century is characterized by ubiquitous data 
collection, storing and analysis, both visual and algorithmical, leading 
to a world of networked media and to diagnoses of surveillance and 
platform capitalism (Zuboff, 2019; Srnicek, 2017). In contemporary 
screen culture, namely with the omnipresence of surveillance devices, 
society has become a space of control (Pisters, 2012). Besides the 
ubiquitous surveillance, materialized by the proliferation of CCTV 
cameras scattered everywhere - in indoor and outdoor, public and private 
spaces - each one of us carries a personal camera, daily capturing 
everything around us, including ourselves and others, sharing our 
interests, the places where we go, the daily activities we do, the 
products we consume… actively contributing to a self-monitored society, 
or more precisely, to “societies of control” (Deleuze, 1992).

Therefore, surveillance is not just an external act, it is a voluntary, 
embodied everyday practice, which increasingly becomes an integral part 
of everyday life. It presents new sorting and controlling practices that 
promote new forms of visibility and control, new modes of power, as well 
as unintended consequences and disadvantages. Whereas such a scenario 
seems unavoidable, scholars and artists have been raising numerous 
questions to critique and reimagine the social and political landscape 
of contemporary surveillance society, refusing to indulge “technological 
determinism” (Jordan, 2008; Smith & Marx, 1994). While some artists and 
practitioners appropriate and repurpose surveillance images and 
technologies to interrogate the realm, others question the surveillance 
status quo by proposing strategies of disruption and escape.

The special issue therefore aims to provide a space for discussing 
strategies of subversion and alternatives concerning various forms of 
surveillance through technological means, relating to the crossover 
between artistic practices and technologies. The themed issue encourages 
bringing together a range of artistic, critical and scientific 
perspectives, affording visibility to recent artistic practices and 
research works, and exploring, broadly, the interdisciplinary frameworks 
for understanding contemporary surveillance and, particularly, how 
surveillance practices intersect with visual technologies, visual 
culture, and moving image studies.

The issue aims to interrogate a manifold of perspectives, from the 
aestheticization of surveillance to networked images, by exploring their 
intersections and derivations. We propose to discuss the way in which 
contemporary visual arts are contributing to the creation of new 
approaches and perspectives to interrogate the societies of 
surveillance, re-imagining and proposing alternative futures.

As so, we are seeking contributions of full papers that explore the 
intersection of Surveillance, Arts, and Technology from various 
perspectives. We are particularly interested in papers focusing on the 
practice-based media-arts research and analysis, its communication and 
circulation that respond to one or more of the special issue strands:


 1.

    Film and Moving Images: the use, re-use, manipulation, and
    re-contextualization of surveillance, sousveillance, and
    self-surveillance moving and still images in contemporary film,
    video art and art installations, namely:

- The art of CCTV cameras / Cultural plays with CCTV;

- Drone images and aerial perspectives of control;

- Anthropocene and non-human gaze / imagery;

- Panopticism and cinematic surveillance: theories, practices, and 
representations;

- The relationship between voyeurism and surveillance;

- New visibilities of surveillance / Changing temporalities and spaces 
of surveillance;

- Surveillance art and the aesthetics of surveillance;

- Surveillance in post-colonial and decolonial film and art.


 2.

    Digital Art: How the arts, and in particular the digital arts, the
    philosophy and theory of art and the reflection upon the arts from
    other areas of knowledge, has been critically reflecting the
    contemporary networked landscape of surveillance:

- Photography, film and personal strategies of production and 
distribution through social media;

- Performance and the technologies for online communication;

- The relationship of bodies to surveillance technologies;

- Interactions, creativity and aesthetics of and with A.I.;

- Individualization and the collective intelligence in times of digital 
surveillance;

- Artificial environments, personal devices, big data and networks of 
control;

- Sound ecologies of surveillance and the use of surveillance 
technologies for digital creation and production.


 3.

    Critical Design and Visual Culture: interfaces, structures and
    technologies revealed or concealed in critical design works, and
    visual artworks that aim to disrupt surveillance and knowledge
    monopolies, delving into design fiction and speculative design and
    approaching broadly the following topics:

  *

    Disrupting surveillance;

  *

    Performative design and surveillance;

  *

    Aesthetics and ethics of surveillance;

  *

    Interfaces of and against surveillance;

  *

    Wearable technology and interactive clothing;

  *

    Structures and systems of resistance in design history;

  *

    Alternative and speculative worlds.


To submit: Please send a 500-word abstract, and a 100-word bio per 
author to the guest editors at (disrupting.surveillance /at/ ismai.pt) by 15 
March 2022. Authors of accepted abstracts will be contacted in mid-April 
and invited to submit full contributions by 31 July 2022

Style guide for authors: 
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rjmp21 
<https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rjmp21>


Issue Schedule:

  *

    15 March 2022: 500-word proposals to be submitted
    ((disrupting.surveillance /at/ ismai.pt)).

  *

    15 April 2022: Response from editors and, if successful, invitation
    to submit contribution.

  *

    31 July: Full Papers submission (5000 to 7000 words, incl. references).

  *

    August to November: Peer review period.

  *

    31 December: Submission of reviewed final papers.

  *

    March 2023: expected date of publication.

About the journal: Media Practice and Education is an international, 
peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality, original research. Please 
see the journal's Aims & Scope for information about its focus and 
peer-review policy.

Please note that this journal only publishes manuscripts in English.

Taylor & Francis is committed to peer-review integrity and upholding the 
highest standards of review.


There are no submission fees, publication fees or page charges for this 
journal.


References:

Crawford, Kate (2021). Atlas of AI. Yale University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (1992). “Postscript on the Societies of Control”, The 
MIT Press, vol.59. pp.3-7.

Jordan, Tim (2008). Hacking: Digital Media and Technological 
Determinism. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Foucault, Michel (1991). Discipline and Punish - The Birth of the 
Prison. London: Penguin.

Pisters, Patricia (2012). The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy 
of Digital Screen. Stanford University Press.

Smith, Merritt Roe & Marx, Leo (1994). Does Technology Drive History? 
The Dilemma of Technological Determinism. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Srnicek, Nick (2017). Platform Capitalism. Cambridge, Malden: Polity.

Zuboff, Shoshana  (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight 
for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs

*

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------