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CFP-Everyday Revolution: Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary Iran

Type: Calls For Papers [View all]
Posted by: State of California
Deadline: Sun, March 31st, 2024

 

Call for Papers

 

Everyday Revolution: Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary Iran

 

We are seeking contributions for an anthology devoted to activist artistic and cultural practices developed in Iran from the post-revolutionary period to the present. While Iran today stands as a pillar of authoritarian rule, its history over the past four decades has also been defined by remarkable new forms of creative resistance, often unfolding in the vernacular spaces of everyday life. We have much to learn from Iran as a laboratory of dissent in terms of both the ideological protocols employed by totalitarian regimes, and the modes of cultural production necessary to challenge them. We seek essays which explore the myriad ways in which Iranians have sought to contest fundamentalist domination through new forms of embodied and symbolic action, from turban tossing (Ammāmeparāni), to public singing and dancing by women, to the flouting of compulsory hijab regulations, to the creative disobedience of Iranian youth. We are also interested in essays that examine the complex points of interconnection and reciprocal influence between artistic and cultural production and key moments of political resistance, from the pro-democracy protests of the 1990s to the Green Movement of 2009-10 to the Women Life Freedom movement today. Essays and proposals can address projects operating both within, and beyond, conventional art institutions (the gallery, museum and theater) and which unfold in cities and villages, on rooftops and city walls, in public, private and virtual space, and in Iran itself as well as the broader Iranian diaspora. We are especially interested in projects that operate in the interstitial space between art and activism and which foreground the generative and creative dimension of resistance itself. Submissions can include essays, interviews, case studies or project descriptions, translations of key texts, and theoretical analyses that reveal the complexities, tensions and potentials of engaged art. Areas of practice can include performative, participatory or collaborative projects, demonstration-based interventions, covert or surreptitious gestures, media-based practices, and more conventional forms of visual art, music and performance. We will consider completed, previously unpublished essays as well as essay proposals that could be finalized within six months (September 2024). The length of submissions can range from 3000-8000 words. Send submissions or proposals to: Grant Kester, University of California, San Diego (gkester@ucsd.edu) and Saba Zavarei, Goldsmiths, University of London (saba.zavarei@gmail.com) no later than March 31, 2024.

Posted on Tue, February 27th, 2024
Expires on Sun, March 31st, 2024

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