[Commlist] CFP: Picturing Post-Industrialism

** On behalf of Frances Guerin, (picturingpostindustrialism /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(picturingpostindustrialism /at/ gmail.com)> **

Call for Papers for edited volume

Title: *Picturing Post-Industrialism*

Editors: Frances Guerin (University of Kent), Magda Szcześniak 
(University of Warsaw)

Since the 1970s, many of Europe's one-time industrial landscapes have 
been redefined as locations of leisure through art and visual culture. 
The best of these projects typically imagine the uneven, contradictory, 
and often troubled transitions to post-industrialization. However, 
regeneration efforts can also make invisible the work, labour and 
production of the past. Similarly, they often cover up the ecological 
spoils and social devastation of the present. /Picturing 
Post-Industrialism /is an edited collection that will investigate 
artistic initiatives that make the industrial past visible, negotiable, 
reimaginable in the wake of closures, unemployment, diminished social 
services and shattered identities across Europe.

Art and visual culture incorporating the residues at and of former 
industry at post-industrial sites continue to thrive across Europe – 
including the former coal and steel production plants in Duisburg and 
other Ruhr Valley cities, the shipyards of Gdańsk, Newcastle and Bilbao, 
the coal mines of Loir, Silesia and the English Midlands, the textile 
factories of Łódź and other Eastern European cities, breweries in 
Kladno, petrol and oil refineries in Ploiești and Cluj, Romania. 
/Picturing Post-Industrialism /will examine art and visual culture at 
these and other European sites for their aesthetic, historical, and 
geographical role within regeneration and re-articulation efforts.

Scholars in the disciplines of sociology, geography, economics, cultural 
studies, anthropology, urban design and architecture have examined the 
fallout of the post-industrial upheavals. However, while artists 
continue to produce varied and multiple visual representations of 
processes of ongoing de-industrialization and the post-industrial 
condition, these have not yet been fully analyzed within art history, 
film studies, visual studies and related disciplines.

Similar to the lengthy and culturally specific processes of 
industrialization in the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century, the 
decline of industrial production and its economic models continue to 
differ in scale, pace and effectivity from one European country to 
another. In addition, the politics and history of each country has 
uniquely influenced the processes of de-industrialization and the 
formation of post-industrial societies. Art and visual culture have 
consistently taken up the challenge to engage with the specificity of 
these processes. While terms such as “de-industrialization,” and 
“post-industrialization” flatten out the contours of the processes in 
question, art and visual culture have been committed to representing and 
re-animating, interrogating and re-visioning the scale, substance, and 
consequences of specific, often ongoing, processes. In addition, visual 
culture has been instrumental in recognizing the impact of 
de-industrialization on all areas of public life: social, economic, 
political, historical and environmental. /Picturing 
Post-Industrialism/**will examine these heterogenous images 
post-industrial landscape across Europe, in its broadest terms.

We seek contributions for /Picturing Post-Industrialism/*,* that engage 
questions of the role of art and visual culture at and across diverse 
European landscapes, as they are defined geographically, politically, 
economically and socially. In addition, we seek texts on a variety of 
visual media: from traditional art forms such as painting and sculpture, 
through film, and photography, to vernacular visual forms such as murals 
and social media production. The collection will include analysis from a 
variety of theoretical and research perspectives. The diversity of the 
contributions to /Picturing Post-Industrialism/**will generate a complex 
discussion of the many roles that images and visual cultures have 
played, as well as in our conception of them, in the (ongoing) 
post-industrial moment.

We welcome proposals on topics including, but not limited to:

•The politics and history of the representation of de-industrialization 
and post-industrialization in specific European countries;

•The contemporary reappearance and reuse of media and genres, which were 
critical for understanding industrialization in modernity (e.g. 
landscape painting and photography);

•Use of new media to address, navigate and create the new social scenes 
of post-industrialization;

•Use of art and visual culture to re-spatialize former industrial 
landscapes;

•Art and visual culture as memorial to the industrial past;

•Documentation and exhibition of the remnants of industrial heritage;

•The political and social effects of industrial heritage as representation;

•The role of art in the amelioration of local communities devastated by 
de-industrialization;

•The perils of using art in post-industrial landscapes, such as the 
risks of reinforcing processes of gentrification;

•The cultural differences and specificities of the visual culture of 
post-industrialization;

•Use of art and visual culture to facilitate a deeper understanding of 
processes of de- and post-industrialization;

•Use of art and visual culture to reanimate de-industrializing/ed areas.

Please send inquiries, and/or 400-500 word abstract, a one to two page 
CV to:

Frances Guerin and Magda Szcześniak: 
(picturingpostindustrialism /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(picturingpostindustrialism /at/ gmail.com)>.

Abstract due: March 15, 2020

Notification of Acceptance: May 15, 2020

Full essay of 5,000-7,500 words due: May 15, 2021

The anthology has been solicited by a commercial UK academic press. 
Contract will be offered on basis of abstracts of selected contributions.

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