Please circulate the following CFP for Octopus Volume 4
thanks,
Ari Lee Laskin
Octopus: A Visual Studies Journal
Call for Papers: Volume 4: Surface
Deadline for Submissions: April 15, 2008
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www.octopusjournal.org
Octopus solicits submissions for our fourth volume, “Surface.” Surfaces
mediate a first encounter, and are often posited in opposition to the
“authenticity” or “depth” of what lies below them. The question of
surface encompasses a wide variety of practices and perspectives,
including art practice and theory, film and media studies,
historiography, the question of virtual interfaces, topography, urban
studies, architecture, race and ethnicity, and the sciences of
knowledge, optics, and biology. Octopus invites essays that question,
examine, and engage with the encounter between subject and surface or
surface and depth, as well as those that challenge or contribute to the
epistemology of “surface.”
In some ways, surface has come to have pejorative connotations. Often
thought of as superficial or even artificial, the surface is dismissed
as one-dimensional, something we are encouraged to see beyond. The
reproduction of images has led to theories of simulacra, in which
copies—infinitely-reproduced duplicates of a lost original—have removed
us from what is “real.” Likewise, constructions of the self, put forth
in the popular medium of self-help books, tell us that the truest
condensation of the self resides below the surface. In all these
configurations, the surface is constructed negatively against notions
of supposed “authenticity” or “realness.”
Surface has not always been viewed skeptically; in some fields it has
been used as a tool for the creation of knowledge. Until the late
nineteenth century, pseudosciences of the surface, such as phrenology,
biotypology, and physiognomy, claimed to decipher inherent pathologies
through analysis of the surface of subjects’ skin or the shape of their
skulls. Early uses of the photographic medium included the
documentation and cataloging of “archives,” which used photographic
likenesses to posit subjects in relation to notions of deviance or
normality. Colonialist theories also fixed colonizer and colonized in a
matrix based upon the characteristic of skin tone. Despite later
refutations of these practices, they nevertheless demonstrate the
powerfully ubiquitous belief in the “authenticity” of “reading” the
surface, with a careless disregard for what perhaps lies beyond it.
In the art world, too, surface had a clear moment of ascendancy with
the configuration of surface and depth offered by Clement Greenberg’s
influential notion of formalism, which posited the “essence” of a
painting in its inherent flatness—the surface as a unique expression of
the artist’s psyche. Later artists continued to embrace flatness by
valorizing the shallow or attempting to do away with depth; pop artists
used the surface in different ways: politically, polemically, and
aesthetically. Postmodern artists have also challenged the modernist
dichotomy of surface and depth through an embrace of hyper-visuality
and superficiality.
In science studies and film and media studies, constructions of the
surface, as a template for study of what is beyond it, are integral to
its ontology. Films project images onto reflective surfaces; a famous
anecdote tells of the audience’s inability to reconcile or comprehend
the screen’s flatness when faced by an early film of a locomotive. In
the contemporary world, the screens of televisions, computers, and cell
phones offer increasingly heightened immersive “realism” and accuracy,
while thinness or flatness is coveted in the devices themselves. At the
same time, we embrace low-resolution images that are the result of
glossy compression technology, heralding perhaps a new era less
concerned with depth and accuracy of color than with speed and ease of
transmission. With the rapid development of medical imaging and
biometric technology, we are also increasingly able to see both the
surface and interior of the body at once. In light of these
developments, how might we reconfigure critical ideas of permeability,
opacity, or transparency based on the development of new media and
technologies?
Paper topics may include but are not limited to:
- Mechanical reproduction, simulacra
- Fakes and counterfeits
- Science imaging: optics, microscopy, virology, membranes,
spectroscopic studies
- Optics: reflection and refraction, mirrors, the cornea
- Ontology of the photographic medium, the indexical, the photographic
archive
- The screen: film projection, virtual reality, media interface
- Microsoft Surface, iPhone, Nintendo Wii: technologies that allow
users to manipulate digital content using “natural” motions, such as
hand gestures
- Topography and cartography: mapmaking, surface transportation,
mining, military technology such as surface-to-air missiles
- Architectural surfaces: surface and volume, architectural “skins”
- Artistic mediums: bas relief, canvas, fresco
- The body: skin, scabs, acne, plastic surgery
- Pseudosciences treating race and ethnicity: phrenology, physiognomy
- Palimpsests
- Theories of surface: Deleuze & Guattari’s “faciality,” Charcot, Freud
& Breuer on hysteria, Derrida & Freud on the Wunderblock, David
Joselit’s “genealogy of flatness,” Lacan’s “surface stain,” Saussure’s
“parole”
Deadline for Submissions: April 15, 2008
Submission Guidelines:
Submissions should be sent as Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format
(.rtf) attachments to [log in to unmask]. Please put the word
“submission” somewhere in the subject line.
All submissions must include a detachable cover page including the
following information: the title of the work, the name(s) of the
author(s), a brief biographic entry about the author(s), and contact
information including a mailing address, e-mail address, and phone
number. Manuscripts should also be accompanied by an abstract of no
more than 150 words. Because Octopus follows a policy of blind
peer-review, no material identifying the author(s) should appear
anywhere other than the detachable title page.
Manuscripts submitted to Octopus should not be under consideration at
any other journal. It is the responsibility of the author to obtain
written permission to reproduce film and video stills, artworks,
photographs, song lyrics, or any other copyrighted material from the
copyright holder before publication.
Octopus is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal published by the
graduate students of the Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies at the
University of California, Irvine. We are committed to publishing work
by emerging scholars engaged with visuality, culture, history, and
theory from a range of contexts, disciplines and methodologies.
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