Call for (Non)Papers :: Culture Machine vol. 11: Creative Media; edited by Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska (both at Goldsmiths, University of London) :: Deadline: October 15, 2009.

This is a call for papers and non-papers alike. It is open to artists, intellectuals, writers, philosophers, analysts, scientists, journalists and media professionals who have something to say about the media that extends beyond the conventional forms of media analysis. It is also a call for enacting a different, creative mode of doing “media studies’. Taking seriously both the philosophical legacy of what the Kantian and Foucauldian tradition calls “critique”, and the transformative and interventionist energy of the creative arts, we are looking for playful, experimental yet rigorous cross-disciplinary interventions and inventions that are equally at home with critical theory and media practice, and that can make a difference — academically, institutionally, politically, ethically and aesthetically.

This creative media project arises out of an attempt on our part to work through and reconcile, in a manner that would be “satisfactory” on both an intellectual and artistic level, academic writing and creative practice. This effort has to do with more than just the usual anxieties associated with attempts to breach the “theory-practice” divide and negotiate the associated issues of rigour, skill, technical competence and aesthetic judgement. Working in and with creative media is for us first and foremost an epistemological question of how we can perform knowledge differently through a set of practices that also “produce things”.

“Creative media” functions as both a theme and a methodology for us here then. Our aim is to produce an issue “about creative media” by means of a variety of creative media. We are therefore seeking works which are situated across the conventional boundaries of theory and practice, art and activism, social sciences and the humanities. Such works can take a variety of forms — essays on, polemics with regard to, and performances of what it means to “do media” both creatively and critically. They can also incorporate a variety of media, from moving and still images, through to podcasts, wikis and tweets, to creative writing and traditional papers. (And yes, language also counts as a medium.)

Executive summary (of sorts)

We are looking for surprising, inventive and original work on media that does something different, is equally at home with critical theory and media practice, and plays with the medium of the media.

Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2009

Potential contributors are encouraged to contact the editors prior to this date to discuss their possible submissions.

Please submit your contributions by email to:
Joanna Zylinska & Sarah Kember: j.zylinska [at] gold.ac.uk & s.kember [at] gold.ac.uk

All contributions will be peer-reviewed.

Established in 1999, CULTURE MACHINE is a fully refereed, open-access journal of cultural studies and cultural theory. It has published work by established figures such as Mark Amerika, Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Henry Giroux, Mark Hansen, N. Katherine Hayles, Ernesto Laclau, J. Hillis Miller, Bernard Stiegler, Cathryn Vasseleu and Samuel Weber, but it is also open to publications by up-and-coming writers, from a variety of geopolitical locations.