[spectre] Fwd: CFP: Routledge Companion to Art Biennials

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Nanne Buurman
Date: Nov 23, 2023
Subject: CFP: Routledge Companion to Art Biennials

Deadline: Jan 31, 2024

We invite abstracts for chapters of previously unpublished work to be 
included in the Routledge Companion to Art Biennials, which is under 
contract and is expected to be published in 2025. Editors: Nanne Buurman 
and Panos Kompatsiaris.

Art biennials are periodic manifestations of large-scale, international, 
and group art shows that take place every two or more years in a certain 
city or location. Drawing on the legacies of historical exhibitions of 
this kind, including the Venice Biennale (founded in 1895), São Paulo 
Art Biennial (founded in 1951), and documenta (founded in 1955), the art 
biennial has become a format that not only addresses but also shapes 
publics around the world. Varying in scope, scale and budget, biennials 
can be found on all continents and in over 100 countries, serving a 
variety of cultural, social, political and economic functions. Since the 
1990s, art biennials have therefore been the subject not just of art 
history but of interdisciplinary study touching upon a plethora of 
aspects, including the histories of exhibition-making, the dynamics of 
creative labour and the creation of new urbanities in the context of 
capitalist globalization. As an emerging field in the process of an 
institutionalization, biennial studies draw on art historical, 
anthropological, sociological, political-economic and curatorial 
approaches to explore the cultural, political and economic implications 
of biennials. The Companion aims at producing a comprehensive account of 
biennials in their complexity and ambiguity, grouping together writers 
from diverse disciplinary, geographical, and professional backgrounds 
and stages of their careers. Overall, the volume aims to become a key 
reference point in biennial studies, presenting the current state of 
research in the field as well as opening up transdisciplinary and 
transnational horizons for future biennial research.

We are looking for proposals related but not limited to the following 
topics/keywords:
histories of individual biennials or clusters of biennales in specific 
regions; fields of biennial production, publication and distribution; 
cultural networks, foundations and associations; biennales and museums; 
medialities, formats, forms and displays; (post)digital conditions; 
historiographies and epistemologies, theories and methods of biennale 
research; stories, gossip, speculations; socio political contexts and 
functions; cultural politics and biennale policy;(im)possibilities of 
representation; (post)socialist conditions; (post)nationalism, 
(post)fascism, neoliberalism; gentrification and the urban space; 
cosmopolitanism and nomadism; glocal audiences; (post)colonial 
conditions; posthumanism; ecology and sustainability; exoticization and 
discrimination; identity politics; restitution, repair, reflexivity; 
curatorial discourses and practices; new curatorships; publics and 
outreach; (post)curatorial conditions; artists-as-curators, 
curators-as-artists; collectivity and collaboration; making of publics; 
subjectivation, education, professionalization; paracuratorial aspects; 
biennale professionals and stakeholders (i.e. educators, guides, guards, 
art handlers, press officers, lenders, shippers); geo- and biopolitical 
dimensions; conflicts, frictions and potentialities, subversion, 
resistance, queering; institutional and infrastructural critique; 
alternative models; (de)centering and (de)materialization; curatorial 
ethics and responsibilities; power relations; labour conditions; 
privatization, socialization and funding; gender, race, class 
dimensions; racism, antisemitism, classism; patriarchy, (anti)feminism, 
trans- and homophobia; privilege; biennales in times of crises; war and 
pandemics; the end or futures of biennials

Please send an abstract of up to 400 words including references as well 
as a 150-word biography to companionab at proton.me by 31 January 2023. 
Contributors will be notified by end of February. The completed chapters 
of up to 5000 words should be submitted by July 15, 2024.

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Routledge Companion to Art Biennials. In: ArtHist.net, Nov 23, 
2023. <https://arthist.net/archive/40676>.