[SIGCIS-Members] CFP of Possible Interest? On Media and Climate

[Corinna Kirsch]

Hello All,

I'm co-editing an upcoming issue of *Media-N
<https://iopn.library.illinois.edu/journals/median/information/authors>*,
the peer-reviewed journal of the College Art Association's New Media
Caucus, on the topic of digital art, media, and climate. *The deadline for
abstracts is July 31. * I've included a list of suggestions for book
reviews below the CFP, too. Please share widely.

Thanks,

Corinna

*Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus **invites submissions for a
special themed issue:*
                 [image: A cartoon dog in a small hat sits calmly in a
wooden chair at a dining table while flames and smoke consume the room.]

Image: KC Green. Alt text: A cartoon dog in a small hat sits calmly in a
wooden chair at a dining table while flames and smoke consume the room.
*As the World Burns: On Media and Climate* Guest Editors: Corinna Kirsch,
PhD (Pratt Institute) and Rebecca Uliasz (Duke University) *Deadline for
abstracts: Monday, July 31, 2023*

For this special issue of *Media-N*
<https://iopn.library.illinois.edu/journals/median/information/authors>,
the editors invite abstracts on topics related to the history, theory, and
aesthetics of digital media and climate.

We hope to shed light on the long history of digital art and media’s
participation in planetary processes connected to climate change, including
the challenges posed by new media art’s ongoing culpability and
participation in its advancement, and the overarching effects of these
actions on social, perceptual, and cognitive registers, both globally and
individually. Through this form of eco-criticism, we approach two acute
developments faced today, each bearing enormous and unevenly distributed
threats to a globalized world: climate change and the proliferation of
data-driven technology across nearly every social sphere. We also seek
alternatives
to climate discourse’s hyper-focus on present-day structures by appealing
to deep histories and non-western approaches to the ambiguous
interconnection of media and “nature.” In so doing, we see that the
relationship between media and climate is not a new situation by any means,
nor is it a universal one: the Anthropocene began prior to this century,
with geological shifts recorded at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution and, even further back, to the European colonization of the
Americas. As Andreas Malm has put it, “We can never be in the heat of the
moment, only in the heat of this ongoing past.”

Questions informing the special issue include: In what ways are new media
scholars, activists, and artists engaging with the Earth-altering processes
of technology? How have practitioners, scholars, and activists working with
digital media illuminated the way agency, subjectivity, and environment is
defined and operationalized in diverse geo- and socio-political contexts?
What alternatives might be sought through appealing to indigenous and other
forms of climate knowledge, cultivated by communities that have long found
themselves subjected to colonially-induced climate change? As a method of
promoting cross-disciplinary conversation among the new media community, we
are seeking project reports, exhibition and event reviews, interviews, and
manifestos in addition to formal research papers.

Topics of potential interest to the editors include, but are not limited to:

   - Questions related to weather, climate, and digital infrastructures
   - Weather and meteorology in media and systems-based practices, e.g.,
   climate control in museums, solar powered art, and media projects with
   natural radio
   - Relation between media aesthetics and environmental “injustices,”
   e.g., eco-fascism and climate-change denialism
   - Elemental, thermal, atmospheric, infrastructural and other forms of
   media that aren’t exclusively digital
   - Non-western and indigenous histories and theories of art, digital
   media, and the environment
   - Environmental media and digital or financial capitalism, e.g.,
   blockchain, algorithmic forecasting, and predictive simulations
   - Climate fiction, futurities, and imaginaries, including multi-species
   assemblages
   - Environmental media and digital colonialism and neocolonialism
   - Labor, subjectivity, and psychic dimensions of environmental media

*To submit an abstract for consideration, *please send *200-300 word
abstracts* and a condensed (under 5 pg.) *CV* to the following individuals
by *Monday, July 31, 2023*:

   - Guest Editor, Corinna Kirsch: *corinna.kirsch at gmail.com
   <corinna.kirsch at gmail.com>*
   - Guest Editor, Rebecca Uliasz: *rebecca.uliasz at gmail.com
   <rebecca.uliasz at gmail.com>*
   - Interim Executive Editor, Chelsea Thompto: *chelsea.l.thompto at gmail.com
   <chelsea.l.thompto at gmail.com> *
   - Executive Editor, Johanna Gosse: *johannagosse at gmail.com
   <johannagosse at gmail.com> *

*Final Submission Length Guidelines:*

   - *Articles: 6,000-8,000 word range*
   - *Artist's projects: 4,000-6,000 word range*
   - *Interviews and Reviews: 1,000-3,000 word range*


Book reviews of possible interest:


   -

   Boaz Levin, et al., Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of
   Image Production
   <https://i-n-g-a.com/products/mining-photography-the-ecological-footprint-of-image-production>
   -

   Stephen J. Pyne, The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What
   Happens Next <https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520391635/the-pyrocene>
   -

   Sabine Himmelsbach, et al., Coding Care Towards a Technology for Nature
   <https://www.hatjecantz.com/products/64542-coding-care>
   -

   Jennifer Gabrys, Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental
   Struggle, 2022
   <https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/citizens-of-worlds>
   -

   Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky, Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and
   Power
   -

   Nicole Starosielski, Media Hot and Cold
   -

   A “Cloud” round-up? Possible texts include: Yuriko Furuhata, Climatic
   Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control; Alix Johnson, Where
   Cloud Is Ground: Placing Data and Making Place in Iceland
   -

   A “Plastics” round-up? Possible texts include: Heather Davis, Plastic
   Matter; Amanda Boetzkes, Plastic Capitalism: Contemporary Art and the
   Drive to Waste


-- 
*Corinna Kirsch, PhD* | Visiting Assistant Professor

*PRATT INSTITUTE*
History of Art and Design
ckirsch9 at pratt.edu
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