Deadline: Sep 15, 2015

In the 2013 documentary The Missing Picture Cambodian filmmaker Rithy
Panh revisits his own painful memories and experiences of the Khmer
Rouge genocide by creating miniature dioramas from a deeply
personalized account of historical settings and personages. As Panh
said in an interview, "these aren’t just figurines, they are something
else, they have a soul.” Panh’s traumatic experiences relay not only a
very personalized account of the grainy historical record, they give a
particular agency to artistic objects.

In its 5th edition, Contemporaneity will focus on the concept of agency
in visual culture. As a method, agency examines the dynamics of visual
culture and human relations, questioning the work, its makers, its
audience. The concept of agency has enjoyed increasing currency within
multiple disciplines—the humanities and social sciences among
them—opening up new avenues for understanding social and aesthetic
interactions, including anthropologist Alfred Gell’s conception of the
art object as embedded in a system of action, Michael Baxandall’s
examination of artistic intent, and the extension of relational and
contextual artistic practices by Claire Bishop. Contemporaneity is
seeking submissions that cover a wide range of issues, topics, periods,
and disciplines with an emphasis on the complexity of human and
non-human agents interacting in the visual world. These topics may
include, but are not limited to:

• Historiographical/theoretical models of agency

• Virtual agency, avatars, self-fashioning, branding

• Indigeneity, mestizaje, hybridity, trans-/cross-culturation

• Gendered, queer, ethnic, classed, race/racialized identities

• Embodiment, cult objects, iconoclasm

• Curation, patronage, collecting

• Artist intention, artist workshops and collaboration

• War, counter-histories/memories, politics of testimonial and memorial
practices

• Political agency, activism, riots

• The disappeared, the dead, the missing, the absent

SPECIAL SUBSECTION: REENACTMENT

We are further seeking papers for a special subsection that address,
problematize, or work through the conceptual issues surrounding
“Reenactment” as a mode of artistic production. What may be lost, what
may be gained, when one reenacts? Who is allowed to reenact, when,
where and to what purpose? How does one begin to assess the innovative
work of artists, like Panh, who seem motivated by alternative
historiographical values such as resurrection, embodiment, and
vivification?

This includes but is not limited to the following issues:

• Trans-multi-inter media considerations of reenactment in visual art,
film, or theatre and performance

• Formal strategies of recursive processes

• The body as a means of generating and preserving history

• Paradigms of ritual, re-performance, and altered states

• Revisiting traumatic acts of institutionalized violence

• Techniques of historical staging in curation and exhibition studies

The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2015. Manuscripts (6,000
word maximum) should include an abstract, 3-5 keywords, and adhere to
the Chicago Manual of Style. To make a submission, visit
contemporaneity.pitt.edu, click Register and create an Author profile
to get started. Proposals for book and exhibition reviews, interviews,
or scholarly discussions will also be considered, and we recognize that
these submissions may take many forms. Proposals can be directed to the
editors at contemporaneityjournal@gmail.com.

Contemporaneity is a peer-reviewed online journal organized by the
History of Art and Architecture Department at the University of
Pittsburgh. Visit contemporaneity.pitt.edu and constellations.pitt.edu.