[Commlist] Call for Contributions 'Transitory Parerga: Access and Inclusion in Contemporary Art' (The Garage Journal: Studies in Art, Museums & Culture)

The newly founded independent interdisciplinary /The Garage Journal: 
Studies in Art, Museums & Culture /invites contributions to its Issue 2 
(autumn 2020) titled 'Transitory Parerga: Access and Inclusion in 
Contemporary Art' and guest-edited by Dr Martine Rouleau (University 
College London). We welcome contributions from media and communication 
scholars, APCs are not required. Please send your abstracts by January 
20, 2020.


*Transitory Parerga: Access and Inclusion in Contemporary Art*

/
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/The Garage Journal: Studies in Art, Museums & Culture
/Issue 02 (autumn 2020)
guest-edited by Dr Martine Rouleau (University College London)


The discussion of access and inclusion in contemporary art is both 
topical and integral to Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow, 
Russia) which is one of the backers of /The Garage Journal: Studies in 
Art, Museums & Culture /(/The Garage Journal/, hereafter). Founded in 
2019, /The Garage Journal /is an independent interdisciplinary platform 
advancing critical discussions about contemporary art, culture and 
museum practice in the Russian and global contexts. It publishes 
empirical, theoretical and speculative research in a variety of genres, 
celebrating innovative ways to present research. Fully peer-reviewed, it 
provides a source book of ideas for an international audience. The 
journal website will be launched in spring 2020 and the first issue 
entitled ‘The New Museum’ will be published in May 2020.

Finding an approach to the problem of access and inclusion that would 
bypass an inside/outside, included/excluded dichotomy is the challenge 
we raise with this special issue of /The Garage Journal/. Art in itself 
does not include or exclude. Contemporary art is often characterized by 
a lack of uniformity, an eclecticism that is reflective and responsive 
to changing ideologies, cultural diversity, and technological 
advancement. Defining it as an entity is only as transitory as 
identifying what influences it from what might seemingly be perceived as 
an outside.

As a productive framework to reconsider access and inclusion in the 
arts, we suggest a rethinking of Derrida’s concept of parergon, first 
introduced in /The Truth in Painting/ (1978). Derrida discusses the 
parergon as coming ‘against, beside, and in addition to the ergon, the 
work done [fait], the fact [le fait], the work, but it does not fall to 
one side, it touches and cooperates within the operation, from a certain 
outside. Neither simply outside nor simply inside’. The function of the 
parergon is thus to create a framework that recontextualizes what is 
being framed.

Institutions (museums, art colleges), ideologies (value systems, canon), 
architecture (buildings, urban planning), curatorial paraphernalia 
(interpretation, frames, plinths) frame contemporary art. They include 
and exclude, give and withhold access by centralizing contemporary art 
in Euro-centric urban areas, by creating unpaid or poorly paid 
employment opportunities, and by catering mostly to non-diverse 
audiences. By looking at these entities that frame contemporary art, 
point to its significance, signal its value and move in and out of the 
transitory focus of art itself, we have a framework that allows us to 
discuss art and its boundaries without limiting our investigation of 
access and inclusion to intrinsic qualities of art.

There is of course some value to the identification of variables that 
might alienate and welcome various individuals or communities. Some of 
the most cited issues are often lumped under cultural, economic, 
intellectual and/or physical barriers, perceived or actual. Unless this 
exercise is used to remove obstacles to engagement and participation, it 
can quickly become a mere snapshot of a time and place in the history of 
art. More conducive to an analysis of access and inclusion that is not 
as limited in time and reach is a conception of the art world as a 
moveable, permeable locus of attention and production, the centre of 
which moves with external and internal factors that give shape to its 
periphery.

We invite contributions that include but are not limited to:

·Access requirements in art institutions

·Diversity of labour (or lack thereof) in the art sector

·Limiting/enabling function of art education

·Gender and representation in contemporary art

·Race and representation in contemporary art

·Nationality and/or ethnicity in contemporary art

·Health and representation in contemporary art

·Socio-economic variables and representation in contemporary art

·Interpretation, language and the semantics of access

·Critical discussion of the function of interpretation in art institutions

·Political implications of access to culture/art agenda

·Disability and access to contemporary art

·User-design and accessibility in exhibition design

·Outsider art

We invite contributions in English, Russian or German in the form of 
articles, visual essays, data essays, interviews, and archival 
materials. Contributions from media and communication scholars are 
welcome. Article processing charges are not required.


*Timeline / Deadlines*

20 January 2020: deadline for submitting proposals for contributions; 
selected authors are invited to submit full versions of the contributions

15 April 2020: deadline for submissions of contributions

May and June: peer reviews

19 June 2020: workshop in Moscow with selected participants presenting 
their papers

July and August 2020: revisions of the contributions

1 September: deadline for submitting final versions of the contributions

November 2020: publication of the issue


*To submit a proposal*, please provide the following information in English:

·Contribution type (e.g., article, visual essay, data essay, interview, 
etc.)

·Language of contribution (English, German or Russian)

·Title of contribution

·Abstract (300 words)

·Key words that indicate the focus of the contribution (e.g., Access, 
Diversity, Education, Museums, Market, Labour, Curating, Architecture, 
Urban Planning, User Design, Audiences, Disability, Gender, etc.)

·Biographical information: including a short biographical statement of 
maximum 100 words stating research interests and relevant professional 
experience, and a list of no more than 10 publications relevant to the 
themes of the special issue

·Send all the information requested above – as a single PDF document – 
to the editor: (m.rouleau /at/ garagemca.org) <mailto:(m.rouleau /at/ garagemca.org)>

For more information about /The Garage Journal/, please contact the 
editors on (gj /at/ garagemca.org) <mailto:(gj /at/ garagemca.org)>


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