Posted by Raffaele Rufo and Doerte Weig on 2021-11-09
Please note: This call was very successful and received many proposals, which are currently under review by the guest editors. The call is now closed, but general submissions to JER are always welcome (no set deadline), as are proposals for future special issues.
For this special issue of the Journal of Embodied Research we invite contributions that explore how the experience of embodiment is embedded within the larger body of the earth. We call artists and researchers of interdisciplinary practices to propose works that weave threads between somatic, audiovisual and textual ways of knowing. We are curious about proposals that document and articulate the shifts of perception unfolding when we relinquish control and attune our human senses to the sentient presence of plants and the many other nonhuman living systems. Contributors are encouraged to engage the inquiry as a process of co-composing with the more-than-human and to reflect on how our relationship with other forms of life can be reconfigured in accountable and collaborative ways.
Some possible threads of inquiry:
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- Dance, performance, and related art and movement practices as ways of cultivating ecological and eco-somatic awareness and of exploring the embodied connection between humans and other beings and living systems
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- Embodiment as the neurological binding with the wider ecology in which human perception is embedded
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- Ecological crises as crises of perception endangering our coexistence with other species
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- The senses as our first technologies and how the intensified presence and use of digital technologies in everyday life undermines our direct sensory participation in the world
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- How humans can listen and relate with the articulations of nonhuman beings and living systems
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- The role of language in crossing the perceptual threshold into the more-than-human
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- Traditional wisdom, ways of knowing and ecologically embedded perspectives on embodiment
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- The assumed and asserted connections between embodiment, indigeneity and ecological sensibility
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- How our understandings of embodiment are influenced by the ideologies of separation and fragmentation imposed by colonialism and capitalism
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- How our understandings of embodiment are influenced by the whiteness of environmental movements and somatics
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- Embodied research as a response to the extractivism of multinational corporations and neo-developmentalist governments
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- Embodied research and the challenges of environmental justice
The special issue welcomes both shorter video essay contributions (3-8 minutes each) and standalone video articles (15-25 minutes each). Submissions can range from practice-based to essayistic or conceptual pieces.
Deadlines:
Please submit your abstract (text of max 250 words or link to a 1-minute video abstract) by 15 November 2021 to the contact email addresses listed below. Send us a word document that also includes the title, keywords, name of the author(s) and short bio(s). Notices of acceptance will be communicated by 15 December 2021. The authors of accepted proposals will then have until 28 February 2022 to submit the full piece. We intend to publish the special issue during the second half of 2022, following a process of peer review and revision.
Editorial practice:
Guest co-editors Raffaele Rufo and Doerte Weig will curate the composition of the special issue and review the proposals with the support of the editorial team of Journal of Embodied Research. Co-editing will be engaged, explored, and documented as an earth-body practice of mutual healing which recognises our profound need to dance with the more-than-human and bears witness to the individual, cultural and ecological wounds of modern civilisation. Please contact Raffaele Rufo and Doerte Weig at the email addresses below if you would like to discuss a potential idea before submission.
Contacts:
Raffaele Rufo <raffaele.rufo@gmail.com> and Doerte Weig doerte.weig@gmail.com