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Call for Papers
Collecting Subjects: The Meanings and Pleasures of Material Culture
We invite papers for a book which explores the interstices between
subjectivity, collecting, and craft, fashion and design. Much has been
written about collecting 'high art' objects such as paintings and
sculpture,
as well as common objects from the everyday. However, how do we
understand those objects which fall somewhere in between? And more
importantly, what to make of the affects of collecting on subjectivity
and the relationship between collector and producer?
The objects we are attempting to examine are in practice used in the
everyday, however, in theory are elevated in large measure due to
subjectivity propped up by the status of authorship and/or uniqueness
(ie. a Issey Miyake dress, William de Morgan tiles, an Eileen Gray
lacquer screen). Conversely, if there is no identifiable
designer/craftsperson, does the collector assume the role of arbiter and
even co-creator (ie. Japanese kimono, Art Deco velvet satee, Irish lace)?
Despite collector's attempts to order, catalogue and systemize their
coveted
objects, collecting on some level is irrational, often emotional and
psychological rather than defined by pure reason and logic. Subjectivity,
as we understand it here, refers to how objects help to create, construct
and/or define a collector's notion of self. As a result, we also do not
understand objects as necessarily separate or distinct from a subject's
knowledge of him/her self in the world. How does collecting of design,
craft and fashion affect the experiences/notions of space, bodies and time?
In other words, how does a collector/designer envision an embodied
subject's
experiences of being in spaces occupied by objects which form either a
homogenous, complete environment or look or an eclecticism created through
varied periods and various cultures?
We welcome a range of submissions including, and not limited to the
following issues/themes:
- collecting objects a means toward creating personal structure to
knowledge
- objects to recreate personal and collective history/memory through the
aesthetic
- producer/consumer relationship
- the identity we attribute to objects
- collector as producer of meaning/knowledge
- the effect of collecting on subjectivity
- collecting painted pictures not as 'fine art', but as objects for a total
design interior schema in tandem with other objects
- collections as part of an aesthetic domestic program
- craft objects and domestic structures
- relationship between collector/patron and designer/craftsperson
- effects of patronage on craftsperson/designer
- private, clandestine collections (fetish and erotic objects)
- the display of objects in the private domain
- the racial, gendered and sexualized associations with the decorative,
craft and design objects
- the relationship of the body to material culture and its objects
- how collected objects figure in writing (exhibition and sale catalogues,
autobiographies, diaries, literary texts, etc.)
- the trans-historical relationship between objects of different periods as
they make up a broader interior scheme
- collecting fashion and clothing for pleasure or as decoration and
adornment for the body, home and beyond
- the performance of collecting/collections
- time, space and body and their theoretical relationship to collecting
The editors invite papers both theoretical and object-centered from any
geographic or time frame.
Please submit a 500-600 word abstract along with a list of images for
completed papers to be in the range of 5000 to 7000 words including
footnotes and bibliography, in addition to a bio of 250 words by email to
both:
Alla Myzelev (Queen's University, Canada)
[log in to unmask]
and
John Potvin (University of Guelph, Canada)
[log in to unmask]
Deadline for abstracts and bio (and if available completed paper):
February 15 , 2006.
Notification of selected abstracts: March 2006.
Dr. John Potvin
Assistant Professor
School of Fine Art and Music
University of Guelph
Guelph, ON
N1G 2W1 Canada
+ 519-824-4120 ext. 56741
[log in to unmask]
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