[Commlist] Call for Papers: *Connessioni Remote* Journal

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*Gradients of liveness. Socio-technical shaping of performing arts 
between online and offline*

Call for Papers - Connessioni remote. Artivismo_Teatro_Tecnologia
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/connessioniremote/index 
<https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/connessioniremote/index>
Editors: Laura Gemini and Stefano Brilli

Abstracts Due: 15th October 2021

The third issue of Connessioni Remote aims to provide a new contribution 
to the ongoing debate on the concept of liveness. The objective of this 
issue is to understand how the liveness dimension of artistic 
communication is transformed and widened in the current digital media 
ecosystem.

The issue focuses on performing arts as key agents in the 
complexification of liveness, and as a prime field for experimenting the 
live techno-media affordances.

The analysis of live communication in mediatized environments draws on a 
long and important legacy of analysis, starting with Walter Benjamin, 
continuing through authors who have examined the live dimension of mass 
media, such as Scannell (1989) and Thompson (1995), and then arriving at 
the well-known work of Philip Auslander (1999); Auslander, by posing 
liveness as a phenomenological condition rather than as an inherent 
property of a medium, has opened up a branch of study that has been 
exploring the conditions for the liveness-experience to emerge.

Reflection on liveness also underwent a significant acceleration with 
the pandemic crisis, which made the concept even more central, given the 
forced absence of “traditionally understood” live occasions.

The mass-media and online broadcasting of artistic, theatrical and 
musical events has made it possible to distribute and experience a wide 
range of cultural contents, to keep the artistic experimentation alive 
and to stimulate a remote relationship with audiences through 
performances. Most notably, it has allowed (and still allows) us to 
observe how liveness should be understood as a shifting phenomenon, 
where the sense of co-presence is re-articulated according to 
historical, cultural, media and experiential contexts.

In online contexts, for example, it is possible to observe what 
Auslander refers to as "digital liveness", which does not derive solely 
from the properties of digital environments or from the audience 
construction, but which involves "[...] specific relations between self 
and other, a particular way of 'being involved with something'. The 
experience of liveness results from our conscious act of grasping 
virtual entities as live in response to the claims they make on us" 
(Auslander 2012, p. 10).

We can, therefore, understand liveness as a dispositive that produces a 
particular subject position, which depends on certain institutional 
discourses and frames, which is built relationally between audience 
members, between contexts of use and between technologies.

Liveness is a complex process that needs to be observed by looking at 
the reflections on the ecosystem of multimedia arts (Balzola, 
Monteverdi), the digital experimentation on theatre (Giannachi, 
Monteverdi, Pizzo) and the processes of crossmediality, intermediality 
and transmediality of performing arts.

On this basis, it is worth understanding which liveness dispositifs are 
active in the present performative and artistic experiments. Which 
re-articulations of the "here and now" have been produced intermedially 
and transmedially, and on a creative, poetic and dramaturgical level? 
Which new forms of tele-presence with participants and audiences have 
been developed? In which way have the bodily and haptic experience of 
digital environments been employed?

The need of artists and theatre organisations to mitigate the closure of 
theatres and live events during the lockdown, marked a step forward in 
the research on the different gradients of liveness (Gemini, Brilli, 
Giuliani 2020), which began with 20th century artistic experiments and 
continues in the numerous investigations of contemporary performance 
artists.

This third issue of Connessioni Remote intends to map the performative 
practices that reflect on the dimensions of liveness, both in offline 
and online contexts.

Contributions may address but are not limited to the following topics:

  * review of studies and research on the theme of liveness in
    mediatised contexts;
  * analysis of multimedia, transmedia, intermedial liveness practices;
  * performing arts during the pandemic: between streaming and archives;
  * digital liveness and platforms: case studies on Instagram, YouTube,
    Zoom, Telegram, Twitch, etc.;
  * digital liveness and networked publics;
  * re-elaboration of the concept of liveness in the light of recent
    artistic and media reflections and experimentations;
  * audience experiences of liveness.

Authors are invited to submit abstracts of a maximum of 1000 characters 
including spaces in Italian or English together with 4-5 keywords.

Abstracts should be sent by 15 Oct. 2021 to 
(rivistaconnessioni.remote /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(rivistaconnessioni.remote /at/ gmail.com)>.

The Editorial Board will select a maximum of 10 abstracts based on 
thematic and methodological innovativeness for the current critical 
debate. Authors will be contacted by email by the editorial board to 
submit the final text through the OJS platform by registering online. 
Full articles must be between 30,000 and 40,000 characters long, 
including spaces, notes and bibliography, and must be unpublished. 
Authors are requested to consult in advance the guidelines for the 
graphic editing of the article and the editorial standards.  Articles 
not following these guidelines will be rejected. Articles of adequate 
quality and adherence to the objectives of the Journal will be reviewed 
and subjected to double blind refereeing. No payment from the authors 
will be required.

For further information: (rivistaconnessioni.remote /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(rivistaconnessioni.remote /at/ gmail.com)>
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