[Commlist] CfP – NECSUS Autumn 2023_#Cycles

*Call for Papers: NECSUS Autumn 2023_#Cycles*
This special section invites submissions that engage with *questions of 
cyclicality, circularity, and recursivity in relation to media*. Film 
history is traversed by the serial logic of production (such as silent 
serials, B-movies, and ephemeral sub-genre cycles) as well as the 
embracing of tropes of circularity bound by the Deleuzian time-image. 
Well beyond this purview, the undoing of the finite work through the 
logic of migrating content also attests to the creative repositioning of 
authorship as rewriting and recycling across media, as the multiple 
rebirths of Irma Vep (as a character and as a concept in 1915, 1996, and 
2022) suggest.
More recent developments in predictive computation, algorithmic control, 
and machine learning have led to a renewed interest in cybernetics and 
systems theory among media scholars. One key interest in this area is 
how complex systems can potentially ‘regulate themselves’ through 
recursive feedback loops. In these accounts, the systemic feedback loop 
takes on a political efficacy that potentially undermines goal-oriented 
intentionality of the conscious human subject. This preoccupation also 
manifests in popular culture. The figure of the loop has become a staple 
technique of contemporary art. In streaming content such as Russian 
Doll, Dark, or Black Mirror: Bandersnatch time loops are often deployed 
to convey the slow violence of unsustainable habits and ‘history in a 
loop’. What is the meaning of these recursive aesthetic movements? How 
do the underlying principles of seriality enable these loops? Also: to 
what extent are serial production and consumption patterns themselves 
caught in unsustainable loops?
Moreover, the figure of the loop connects cycles of destruction to what 
one might call cybernetic subjectivities. The cultural figure and meme 
of the NPC (non-playable character) is a good example of such a 
cybernetic subjectivity in current media discourse. One may also think 
of the figure of the sleepwalker that Tony Sampson deploys to think 
about the nonconscious and repetitive patterns of social media 
consumption. Recursive media aesthetics are perhaps most clearly present 
in video games, where gameplay and progression loops buttress logics of 
optimisation and improvement. Of course, videogames have also begun to 
reflect on this core dynamic of theirs in titles like Deathloop, 
Souls-like games, and the increasingly popular genre of rogue-like/lite 
games (such as Spelunky, Rogue Legacy, Dead Cells, and Hades). Following 
yet another line of thought, this looped construction of subjectivity 
can be extended to the digital mediatisation of the so-called cycles of 
life, through apps that track physiological cycles, such as menstrual or 
metabolic cycles. What does it mean that subjectivity is produced in and 
through recursive systems? How does this transform our understanding of 
subjectivity? Do (digital) media contribute to the articulation of a 
new, recursive understanding of subjectivity?
If the figure of the loop (often, not always) has dystopian 
connotations, the notion of the circle or circulation tends to carry 
utopian potential. Re- or upcycling practices and designs for circular 
economies are often invoked as ways to ‘break the loop’ of environmental 
destruction. How and what do media circulate? In what circular movements 
are media themselves embedded? In what ways can cycles of media 
production and consumption be said to be open or closed? The cyclicality 
that underpins posthuman and decolonial thought has echoes in filmmaking 
across the world from Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017) to Memoria 
(Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021). But the aforementioned also suggests 
that recursive or cyclical processes cannot be easily distinguished and 
opposed to linear models of (Western) thought. Capitalism’s insistence 
on linear progress and persistent growth relies on the operations of 
extractive cycles which, in turn, feed on natural cycles of seasons and 
life more generally, for instance in agricultural and livestock farming. 
How are these linear and recursive logics articulated to function 
together? What insights – regarding ecological, social, and political 
problems – can be gleaned from a method that pays attention to the 
imbrication of cyclical and linear aspects of time? The critical 
re-assessment of Western and colonial knowledge formations thus involves 
a reckoning with the linear and nonlinear models of time that support 
modern extractive economies.
For this special section of NECSUS we welcome contributions on #Cycles 
in different media forms, including but not limited to:
# cycles of production, distribution, and consumption
# cycles of the Earth, social and political cycles in relation to media
# tracking metabolic, menstrual, circadian and other cycles
# cybernetic subjectivities
# circular (media) economies and re-/upcycling
# recursivity in media and media aesthetics
# time loop media
# gameplay loops and progression loops
# ‘smart’ infrastructures and feedback loops
# new forms of non-linear temporalities in narrative film and media
We also invite submissions on the intersection between academic research 
and artistic practice – especially ones drawing circularity and/or 
seriality conceptually or methodologically. We look forward to receiving 
abstracts of 300 words, 3-5 bibliographic references, and a short 
biography of 100 words by *15 January 2023* to (necsus.info /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(necsus.info /at/ gmail.com)>. On the basis of selected abstracts, 
writers will be invited to submit full manuscripts before* 1 September 
2023* (5,000-8,000 words, revised abstract, 4-5 keywords) which will 
subsequently go through a blind peer review process before final 
acceptance for publication.  Please check the guidelines at: 
https://necsus-ejms.org/guidelines-for-submission/ 
<https://necsus-ejms.org/guidelines-for-submission/>
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 for the section Features, which are not tied 
to special section themes. Please note that we do not accept full 
manuscripts for consideration without an invitation.

Linda Kopitz | Lecturer | Editorial Assistant NECSUS | Department of 
Media Studies | Universiteit van Amsterdam |
Turfdraagsterpad 9 | 1012 XT Amsterdam | The Netherlands | 
(l.kopitz /at/ uva.nl) <mailto:(l.kopitz /at/ uva.nl)> | +31 611074255


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