Call for contributions to an edited volume on
Meta- and Inter-Images in Contemporary Visual Art and Culture
April 10, 2012 – Deadline for 500-word proposal submissions
September 30, 2012 – Deadline for 7000-8000-word contribution submissions
Description
Contributions are sought for an edited volume that will be submitted for evaluation and publication with Leuven University Press by the end of 2012. The volume originates in a selection of papers given at the session “Meta- and Inter-Images in Art” that took place at the IAWIS 9th International Conference on Word & Image, Montreal, Canada in August 2011.
Building on and furthering the session’s goal, the volume aims at participating in the theoretical conceptualization and analytic specification of meta- and inter-imaging modalities and processes in contemporary visual art and culture. Although an increasing number of academic disciplines in the arts, humanities and even sciences have been affected since the 1980s by a significant ‘visual/pictorial/iconic turn’, images[1] are still predominantly studied in verbal terms, i.e. through verbal discourses that disciplines construct on, about and around them. This collective volume – which will generate further verbal discourses on visual images – wants nonetheless to investigate, in an admittedly paradoxical manner, ways in which images, which have since always ‘discoursed’ on other images or on themselves without resorting to verbal language, continue to do so at the present time.
Meta- and inter-images are understood for the purpose of this volume in the broadest possible sense, i.e. as second order images whose existence depends on other images or on themselves as such. The already existing contributions by scholars from Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland, UK and USA deal with meta- and inter-imaging contemporary practices both in various artistic media, such as painting, photography, film, installation, prints, casts, comics, etc. and inter-medially. The volume does not operate with an a priori and unique definition of meta- and inter-images. Existing contributions define meta- and inter-images from a variety of disciplinary perspectives including art history, theory and criticism; critical theory and phenomenology; aesthetics and cognitive aesthetics; word-and-image studies; and semiotics. Each contributor to the volume defines and elaborates his/her own (operating) notions of meta- and inter-images often drawing on, furthering, modifying and/or supplementing pre-existing concepts from his/her field of studies.
Authors do not immediately attach the manifold aspects that condition the nature, workings and functions of meta- and inter-images to generalising theoretical positions (such as the modernist-postmodernist opposition) or to overarching and hence somewhat undifferentiated notions (such as remake, recycling or ironical repetition). Rather, contributors probe closely the particularity of meta- and inter-imaging phenomena either as they are at work in specific artworks and visual cultural productions or with regards to their theoretical and methodological implications. They tackle questions such as: What concrete modalities use artistic images to point to other images or to themselves as such? How and what precisely does this indexing mean? How is it constitutive of the image? How does the viewer make sense of it? And what (analytical, methodological and theoretical) challenges does the study of meta- and inter-images pose? Answers to these and similar questions succeed in highlighting several defining functions of meta- and inter-images, namely: they question iconicity; they make visible and reconfigure imaging media; they inter-mediatise images; they re-contextualize and re-present images; and they reshape the (inter-)disciplinary reflexion on and by means of images.
While following chronologically works such as: Victor I. Stoichita. The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting. Translated from the French by Anne-Marie Glasheen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 [original publication in 1993]; W. J. T. Mitchell. “Metapictures”. Picture Theory. Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 35-82; Winfried Nöth and Nina Bishara, eds. Self-Reference in the Media. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007; Werner Wolf, ed. in collaboration with Katharina Bantleon and Jeff Thoss. The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media: Forms, Functions, Attempts at Explanation. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2011 – to name just a few of the most relevant studies dealing with meta- and inter-imaging practices in art and visual culture, the present volume aims at expanding while at the same time focussing their scope in as much as: it deals with contemporary visual art and culture; it covers and zooms in on a wide range of visual art practices; it tackles objects of study produced in a variety of geographic and cultural contexts; and, finally, it looks at meta- and inter-imaging visual phenomena through the analytical, methodological and theoretical lenses of several academic disciplines and fields.
Guidelines
500-word proposals for contributions of 7000-8000 words (everything included, i.e. notes, references and bibliography) should be emailed by April 10, 2012 to the volume editor at carla.taban@utoronto.ca. Since contributions to the volume will be rather short (i.e. 7000-8000 words) they should deal with a narrow corpus rather than an extensive one. In the context of a contribution to an edited volume a discussion in depth is more pertinent than an overview of a broad corpus. (The volume itself, as a whole, will give this extensive perspective on the issue of meta- and inter-images in contemporary visual art and culture).
Proposals should be as specific as possible, including preferably all of the following information: the main purpose of the contribution; the particular definition of meta- and inter-images that will be used herein (be it the contributor’s own or an already existing definition); the corpus that will be discussed; and the methodological or theoretical approach that will be employed.
Preference will be given to contributions that deal with meta- and inter-images in visual art rather than visual culture.
Preference will be given to contributions that focus exclusively/mainly on the meta- and inter-imaging phenomena that are fundamental to the chosen corpus (as opposed to verbal, sonic or other kinds of sensory, media and signifying components that may also be present in the corpus and partake in meta- and inter-discursive processes).
Prospective contributors are advised to familiarise themselves with the papers given at the session on “Meta- and Inter-Images in Art” (http://aierti-iawis-2011.uqam.ca/fr/11-la-m-ta-et-l-inter-image-artistiques-meta-and-inter-images-art) which originated the idea of this volume. Although the conference was bilingual, the language of the edited volume is English.
Preference will be given to contributions that plan to include reproductions of images. NOTE: LUP publishes only black and white reproductions of images. Contributors are responsible for securing reproduction rights.
Timeline
April 10, 2012
500-word proposals for contributions to be emailed to volume editor at carla.taban@utoronto.ca both as an attachment and in the body of the message
April 30, 2012
Outcome of the proposal selection announced. Volume editor sends to contributors of accepted proposals the “Style Sheet” and the “Checklist: Reproductions & Copyrights”.
September 30, 2012
Completed contributions to be emailed to volume editor
October 15, 2012
Feedback of volume editor to contributors
October 31, 2012
Revised contributions to be sent to volume editor
November 15, 2012
Completed manuscript submitted by volume editor to publisher in view of external refereeing
March 15, 2013
Expected decision of publisher regarding the acceptance or refusal of manuscript. If manuscript accepted,
May 15, 2013
Deadline for revisions of contributions in light of LUP’s external referees’ suggestions
May 31, 2013
Final manuscript submitted to LUP
End of 2013
Expected publication of volume
Contact
For any questions please contact Carla Taban (volume editor) at carla.taban@utoronto.ca.
[1] Throughout this Call for contributions ‘images’ and its compounds are to be understood as ‘images in contemporary visual art and culture’.