Call for Papers: "Matèria. Revista internacional d’Art", 21th issue
Monographic Issue: Art and Pandemic
Publication date: second half of 2023
Coordination: Magda Polo and Tania Alba
Art has always been the mirror of our society. In this sense, art and pandemic have shared the same stage and interacted to leave us a testimony of it. In Art History, we can find works that reveal the devastating consequences of diseases such as smallpox, the plague, or the flu, not only on society in general but also on the own skin of the artists themselves. These diseases have caused changes in all areas of our lives, then and now.
In the Times in which the rational logic of everyday life is disturbed, we find an opportunity to reflect and to think differently: art was one of the areas that considered at most how to create new scenarios conditioned by pandemics, by proposing new ways to conceive the relationship between artistic practice, its audiences and the spaces where they are exhibited. The art-pandemic binomial has served us as an unquestionable sample to understand the scope of the spread of diseases and the changes they have caused in society. Although on many occasions and in times such as the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Baroque, there are insufficient data available to know the extent of the deaths that occurred, the types of infection, the characteristics of the symptoms or their effects, art has always shown us some aspect, an outlook that is impressive enough to give us an idea of it all. Art has always recorded for future generations these turbulent times that we have suffered and continue to suffer because of epidemics.
In 2019, Art was one of the areas most affected by the pandemic. Institutions and artists sought all kinds of strategies to maintain the relationship with society by creating a series of experiences that generated new paradigms that are here to stay. And this has manifested itself from museum programming to the new musical production and broadcasting, through TV series -where the change of life due to the pandemic has been evident, etc. All this has favored the rethinking of new policies, pedagogies, economies, etc., on a local and global scale.
The new monographic volume, number 21 of Matèria. Revista Internacional d’art, opens its call for papers around the topic "Art and Pandemic" in any artistic periods in which we find a testimony of this relationship, whether from a historical, aesthetic, sociological, or technological point of view.
Articles can be submitted through the journal's website until 12th December, 2022.
At the same time, the call for papers for the miscellaneous issue, also foreseen for 2023, will be open until October 15th.
