Call for Papers | MIRAJ | Transnationalism and South Asian Artists' Moving Image

Moving Image Review & Art Journal | Issue 7:2

Transnationalism and South Asian Artists' Moving Image

Call for Papers | Deadline: 1 March 2017

This issue will be guest edited by Rashmi Sawhney and Lucia King.

The uncontestably global ecologies of contemporary moving image art have invited some deliberation on questions of regional aesthetics, identity, circulation and transnationalism. Yet such discussions have mainly taken place in the context of exhibiting 'non-western' art in the western world. Contradictions still persist in the project of destabilizing assumed hierarchies within the Euro-American art world (in the most recent Documenta XI and Venice Biennale, for example) whilst artists of the global South gain currency primarily by meeting the expectations of 'western' art markets. Furthermore, Euro-American art historical discourse remains negligent of film and video art's legacies from the South, including experimental film and screen-based arts. As a consequence, moving image art by 'non-western' artists is either caged into essentialist frameworks founded on mythical notions of 'authenticity', or stirred into the melting pot of contemporary art without due attention to their particular cultural and aesthetic contexts. This MIRAJ issue, therefore, engages with the particularities of film and video art practices from South Asia, and leverages these in theorising the relationship between regional, global and transnational moving image cultures.

To address some of these gaps in scholarship, this special edition of MIRAJ focuses on the circuits of production, exhibition and authoring of South Asian artists moving image in order to chart key theoretical terrains of 'regional' practices in a global context. We solicit articles from artists, critics and curators who work within and outside South Asia, that highlight conceptual frameworks and offer insights on the multi-layered relationships between 'home and the world', region and identity, aesthetics and translatability, cultural specificities and contexts of classification/consumption/circulation. We invite articles that build upon foundational work in South Asian moving image art and film histories as well as transnational art practices and aesthetics.

We are particularly interested in articles that address the following:

' Theories of film and video art outside of the 'national' framework that are attentive to influences, collaborations and exchanges across geographic and political regions.
' Examples of significant regional exchanges and collaborations between artists and filmmakers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
' The relationship between region, identity and moving image practice in South Asia.
' The aesthetic pre-cursors (in a pre-cinematic sense) that influence contemporary moving image art in the region, including investigations of artist(s)' methodologies.
' Experiments in film and video art that emphasise 'indigenous forms'.
' Transnational curatorial practices that work with and around the regional/national framework.
' Historicising South Asian moving image art in the post-medium context.
' Spectatorship and post medium/ multi-media art in/from South Asia.
' South Asian artists' moving image engagement with science, political activism, environmentalism, urbanism etc.
' South Asian artists' moving image hybridity with alternate media genres, such as experimental film, documentary, and digital media.
' Digital media and the exhibition and distribution of 'regional' moving image art.
' Digital archives and curatorial practices in/about South Asian film & video art.

We publish the following types of writing: scholarly articles (5000-7000 words); opinion pieces, feature articles and interviews (3000-5000 words); review essays of books, individual works, exhibitions and events (3000-5000 words). Scholarly articles will be blind peer-reviewed and feature articles and review essays can be peer-reviewed on request. Articles submitted to MIRAJ should be original and not under consideration by any other publication, including online publications. We do not publish articles by artists about their own work, nor reviews by curators or venues about their own exhibitions.

Please submit completed manuscripts only.
Send all contributions by e-mail in Word format to the Editorial Assistant: [email protected].

Deadline for completed articles: 1 March 2017
Image: Prisms of perception, (2010) Artist: Gigi Scaria. Medium: Video installation. (Image courtesy of the artist).

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