[Oberlist] NL* CfP: Theorizing Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Potentialities

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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Artinfo Digest, Vol 54, Issue 18
From:    artinfo-request la lists.c3.hu
Date:    Fri, August 31, 2007 13:00
To:      artinfo la lists.c3.hu
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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:07:56 +0200
From: "Firat, B.O." <B.O.Firat la uva.nl> (by way of Janos Sugar)
Subject: [artinfo]  CfP: Theorizing Cultural Activism: Practices,
	Dilemmas and Potentialities


Call for Contributions: Theorizing Cultural
Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Potentialities

Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex, Race invites
articles for an upcoming volume in its series,
titled Theorizing Cultural Activism: Practices,
Dilemmas and Potentialities, which will focus on
contemporary cultural activism that deals with
issues of gender, race, queer, inter-cultural
dialogue, political agency and societal
transformation within the broader framework of
contemporary anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist
and alternative-globalization struggles with
their particular forms, existing practices, and
their further implications and potentialities.

The Yes Men, the Guerilla Girls, Adbusters,
Reclaim the Streets, Critical Art Ensemble,
Genderpranks, the Rebel Clown Army, Reverend
Billy, Bansky, the Space Hijackers, Yomango,
¨TMark, Biotic Baking Brigade and Billboard
Liberation Front are now as famous and inspiring
as T. W. Adorno, Guy Debord, or Jean Baudrillard.
The actions and campaigns of such groups have
brought about alternative modes in which
political activism can be innovative and
destructive. Simultaneously they proved to be
inspiring forms of political art that moves
beyond its institutional boundaries as well as
beyond the dichotomy between autonomous and
committed art. These contemporary practices, all
of which are directed towards disturbing and
reorienting the cultural and political sphere by
attacking the narratives of truth in the society
in one way or another can be summed up under the
notion of a cultural activism that involves
different tactics, such as culture jamming,
sousveillance, media hoaxing, adbusting,
subvertising, flash mobs, street art, hacktivism,
billboard liberation, and urban guerilla, to name
but a few. While theoretical and historical roots
of these cultural practices can be found in the
avant-garde art movements of the past-from Dada
and Surrealism to Situationist International-the
socio-cultural contexts in which these actions
take place differ greatly from that of the
historical avant-guards and hence deserve to be
theorized in their contemporary specificity.

Therefore, we invite scholars and activists to
think together to provide various responses and
establish a productive dialogue between the
theorizations of the intricacies of our times and
activist/subversive practices that deal with
them. The encounter between the insights of
political, social and critical theory and
activist visions, suggestions and actions is both
urgent and appealing. We aim to explore this
confrontational collaboration, its limits and
productiveness, both in theory and in practice.

An important concern is to contextualize
practices both in their specificity and in a
broader framework, by considering their
predecessors, their temporal and theoretical
neighbors, and allied or hostile relatives. By
doing so, the various manifestations of activist
practices in different localities and their
transnational qualities can be elucidated.

Activist practices are situated at the juncture
of power, desire, identity, political practice,
political agency and the dialectic of subversion
and recuperation. Contributions should try to
engage with these coordinates so as to generate
various suggestions about the present and future,
subjects and politics, as well as the formation
and reformation of images, spaces, meanings and
everyday life. Contributions are expected to be
concerned with rethinking and exploring
theoretical concepts and tools through practice,
and comprehend and develop political practice by
the help of theories, both for a better
understanding of theory and practice, and more
importantly, for new practical transformatory
critical suggestions for our times.

Please send an abstract of your contribution (300
words maximum) and a short biographical note by
October 15, 2007 to Aylin Kuryel -
aylinkuryel la gmail.com
<<mailto:aylinkuryel la gmail.com>mailto:aylinkuryel la gmail.com>
and Begum Ozden Firat - B.O.Firat la uva.nl
<<mailto:B.O.Firat la uva.nl>mailto:B.O.Firat la uva.nl>.
The deadline for the final articles is February
1, 2008.


End of Artinfo Digest, Vol 54, Issue 18
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