CPCL Vol 6 no 2 Call for Papers "Public Art, Urban Arts: Aesthetics, Practices and Languages in the City"
Call for papers. Download this call in PDF.
The European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes, Vol 6, no 2 (2023).
https://cpcl.unibo.it | cpcl@unibo.it
Edited by Alice Borchi, Filippo Fimiani, Enrico Chinellato, Francesca Sabatini.
Art is a grammar of urban space. As tangible or intangible products of human action imbued with symbolic and aesthetic value, ‘works of art’ proliferate on the streets and squares of cities, partaking in expressing relations, catalysing social life, embodying power, and entailing conflict. By being either an integration to, or an intervention in the urban space, art has assumed over time a variety of context-specific forms and languages, diversely responding to the expressive patterns of local cultures and political formations. As a result, it is necessary to examine the relation between different manifestations of the ‘arts’ and their use in either asserting or contesting power. Indeed, many artistic interventions in urban public spaces have been enacted to articulate ideologies, achieve consensus, enforce political agendas, or memorialise and celebrate people and events - sometimes in the guise of community - and public-centred endeavours.
Urban spaces and their transformations, as well as the very notions of ‘public’ and collective memory, have grown into increasingly critical, complex, and fragmented subjectivities. At the same time, we observe a significant proliferation of artistic practices situated in the contested terrain of social struggles and urban futures, often in the form of ephemeral agencies by performative artefacts (e.g., installations, performances, murals, graffiti, sculptures, and many others). This momentous surge of culturally diverse and politically conflicting artistic expressions is centred on pressing contemporary matters. Critical events such as the COVID-19 pandemic have shifted the relationships among humans, and between humans and the environment, whether built, natural, or digital. While new artistic experiences have been conceived for technological mediums, the mediation of human interactions through digital devices and the twinning of reality with its virtual avatars (such as AR and VR) have opened new challenging spaces of sociopolitical debate through the digitalization and dematerialization of the city, as well as its aestheticization. Besides, globalised communication, new media, migrations, and the escalation of human mobility, among many other factors, have multiplied cultural identities in the city, making up a fertile ground for the development of a plurality of artistic languages that either dialogue or clash with each other. Moreover, the aftermath of colonialism has raised critical issues of representation which claim a resignification of the city’s contested entities, such as monuments and memorials, aimed at rewriting dominant narratives and reappropriating spaces of belonging through aesthetic enactments.
By acting across the cultural and political guerrilla for the control and ownership of shared spaces, these practices participate in the engendering of counter-institutional narratives, transforming the urban landscape into a political palimpsest where institutionalised displays of art, artification, and aestheticization are challenged by radical interventions that leverage on social engagement and collective mobilisation.
This issue of the European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes explores the manifold intersections between art and urban space as partaking in contemporary urban transformations and social struggles, while intertwining matters of representation and identity, ownership, relations of production, and modes of reception.
This Call for Papers welcomes cross-disciplinary contributions of both researchers and practitioners on (but not limited to) the following topics:
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The practices of artification, and the implications of art in urban space as ‘object’ (artwork, ‘work’ as a noun) vis-à-vis art in urban space as ‘process’ (the work of art, ‘work’ as a verb); ephemeral urban art as heritage.
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The convergences and frictions of the aesthetic dimension in the political and the political action in urban art; art as expression of power relations in urban space.
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Art, the practices of inclusion, exclusion and recognition in urban space; issues of representation and identity; urban art as a form of both social criticism and empowerment, or ‘art in the public interest’: which ‘public(s)’? Who participates, and how?
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Art, gender and hierarchical spaces in the city: novel forms and styles of gendered, queer and feminist narratives and self-expressions.
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The relation between art and collective memory, as forms of memory-work confronting urban remembrance and loss; recent artistic practices for the re-semantization of contested monuments and memorials.
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Commissioned, un-commissioned, or unauthorised art in urban space; on art as a mean of transforming, developing, or regenerating urban space
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The circulation, communication, and re-mediation of works of art across the urban space and the digital public space through new media and social media; new modes of artistic production and consumption through mobile devices; the implications of AR and VR as intersections, replicas, and extensions of the urban space; the algorithm and the art of surveillance.
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The intersections between art, urban space, and the body; somatic, experiential, and performative art practices in urban space.
Vol 6, no 2 timeline
- Mar 2023. Launch of Call
- 30 Jun 2023. Deadline for paper submission
- Jul-Aug 2023. Peer-review process
- Sep-Oct 2023. Copy editing and proofreading
- Dec 2023. Publication
CPCL accepts full papers, written in English, 6,000 words maximum, including footnotes and bibliography. Manuscripts should be submitted online at cpcl.unibo.it. CPCL does not accept e-mail submissions.
For more information, consult our focus and scope and author guidelines.
