[rohrpost] Wtrlt: Call for papers - VIRAL - due 10 september

[Oliver Grau]

Junctures issue 15: "Viral"
Full papers due: 10th September
Publication date: December 2011

Parallel discourses of the viral have generated a space where attempts
to contain and drive contagions continue to influence and determine
relationships between people, animals, technologies and ecologies. In
the 1980s and 1990s the virus was seen as a replication machine that
forced a questioning of the boundaries of bodies (whether carbon or
silicon) and the hybrid borders of identity.
At 11.59 on December 31 1999 some held their breath, waiting for an
error in computer clocks that would potentially instigate a mass shut
down; others anticipated the Y2K bug*s destruction of the nascent
networked computer environment. Ever since we were gripped by this
proactive hysteria, viral movements and their oppositional protection
systems have led to an increasingly fluent, yet potentially more
vulnerable, digital and social environment.
In the organic world viral systems penetrate species boundaries at a
nano scale, enacting dystopic and cyborgian fantasies through
inter-species connections, bringing human closer to ape, swine and bird.
Whether described in physical, social or technical terms the virus
shares its distribution, scale and risk with internal powers that
reorientate our definitions of nature (and matter).
This issue seeks speculative writing from the humanities, visual, sonic
and performing arts, social sciences, law, education, medicine, and
*hard* sciences that address relationships and contact, moments
of transformation, replication, growth, and resistance. Topics might
include:
*     relationships between species
*     disease and protection
*     proactive marketing campaigns
*     viral language
*     the hive
*     epidemics
*     computer viruses
*     fear and recognition of difference
*     exponential scales
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Regards
Pam McKinlay


Pam McKinlay
Editorial Assistant
Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue
Otago Polytechnic Te Kura Matatini ki Otago
Dunedin
email: junctures at op.ac.nz