Thomas Söderqvist The NSU Press is planning to publish an anthology about “Things” — not about “things” in general, but about “the pursuit of filtering away human experience from the thing — possibly to give it back to the world, or to let it speak for itself”, or, in other words, “all attempts at omitting human experience for the sake of things” (see below). Here is their call for abstracts:
What does it mean for Man to expel himself from art, to leave it to machines, structures or random generators to impart meaning and significance to things? To what does art owe its tendency in the 20th century towards an objective sensibility?
The many endeavors to sever Man from art have indeed been characteristic of the past century. Artists,
composers, writers and thinkers have been hard at work expounding new artistic strategies, inhuman machines and conceptual structures in the pursuit of filtering away human experience from the thing — possibly to give it back to the world, or to let it speak for itself.
For the forthcoming anthology on THINGS, to be published by the NSU Press, we invite academic abstracts in the area of cultural studies, critical theory, art history, the history of ideas, literature-, film-, media-, and music studies. We encourage the development of new concepts, alternative scholarly approaches and enterprising perspectives on the notion of THINGS and on the turn toward objectivism. We also solicit a rethinking of the history of THINGS, for the benefit of a new genealogy.
Possible subjects might be (but are not limited to) the use of materiality in various avant-garde
movements, serialism in music, abstract textures, diagrams, cybernetics, bioart, morphogenesis,
intelligent machines, mathematical and computational aesthetics, techniques of Verfremdung — in short all attempts at omitting human experience for the sake of THINGS.
The anthology will consist of the following texts:
– one short editorial introduction to the volume
– two articles of about 30 pages that introduce the field in terms of science and art
– ten shorter articles of about 15 pages that work as case studies
Abstracts of no more than 2.000 characters pertaining to any of the latter two types of texts should be sent to the editors no later than 15. July 2006.
Kristine Samson, Editorial Manager, Mifune Film Journal , Copenhagen, Denmark, kristine@mifune.dk
Dag Petersson (Ph.D.), Senior Researcher, The Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark, dpe@kb.dk
Thure Munkholm (MA), Chief Editor, Mifune Film Journal, Copenhagen, Denmark, thure@mifune.dk
