Call for papers

Dispersive Anatomies :: Call for papers :: Guest Editors: Sandy Baldwin, Alan Sondheim and Mez Breeze :: Editorial Guidelines :: Discussion Group: leadispersive-subscribe[at]googlegroups.com :: Deadline: 31 May 2007.

The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is inviting papers and artworks that address dispersion - dispersion of bodies, objects, landscapes, networks, virtual and real worlds. A fundamental shift in the way we view the world is underway: the abandonment of discrete objects, and objecthood itself. The world is now plural, and the distinction between real and virtual is becoming increasingly blurred, with troubling consequences within the geopolitical register. This shift is related to a cultural change that emphasizes digital deconstruction over analog construction: a photograph for example can be accessed and transformed, pixel by pixel, cities can be taken apart by gerrymandering or eminent domain, and our social networks are replete with names and images that problematize friendship, sexuality, and culture itself. One issue that emerges here: Are we networking or are we networked? Are we networks ourselves?
LEA is interested in texts and works that deal with this fundamental shift in new and illuminating ways. Specifically, anything from essays through multimedia through networks themselves may be considered. We’re particularly interested in submissions that deal with the incoherency of the world, and how to address it.

Key topics of interest

Topics of interest might include (but are not limited to):
- Networked warfare in real and virtual worlds.
- The wounded/altered body in real and virtual worlds.
- Transgressive sexualities across borders, sexualities among body-parts, dismemberments and groups, both real and virtual.
- Critical texts on the transformation of classical narrative - from its emphasis on an omniscient narrator and coherent plots/characters, to literatures of incoherency, dispersed narrations, and the jump-cut exigencies of everyday life.
- Deleuze/Guattari, TAZ, and other phenomena at the border of networking.
- Internet visions and their abandonment or fulfillment.
- The haunting of the world by ghosts, virtual beings, dreams and nightmares that never resolve.
- The geopolitical collapse of geopolitics.
- Military empires as scattershot entrepreneurial corporations.

Dispersion has two vectors: the breakup or breakdown of coherent objects; and the subsequent attempt to corral, curtail, or recuperate from this breakdown. How do we deal with networks that are constantly coalescing and disappearing? Where are we in the midst of this? In an era of pre-emptive culture, is guerilla warfare to be accompanied by guerilla culture as the order of the day?

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Publishing Opportunities

As part of this special, LEA is looking to publish:
- Critical Essays
- Artist Statement/works in the LEA Gallery
- Bibliographies (a peer reviewed bibliography with key texts/references in Dispersive Anatomies)
- Academic Curriculum (LEA encourages academics conducting course programmes in this area to contact us)

LEA encourages international artists / academics / researchers / students / practitioners / theorists to submit their proposals for consideration. We particularly encourage authors outside North America and Europe to submit essays / artists statements.

Proposals should include:

- A brief description of proposed text (200-300 words)
- A brief author biography
- Any related URLs
- Contact details

In the subject heading of the email message, please use *Name of Artist/Project Title: LEA Dispersive Anatomies Special - Date Submitted.* Please cut and paste all text into body of email (without attachments).

Editorial Guidelines: http://leoalmanac.org/cfp/submit/index.asp
Deadline for proposals: May 31, 2007
Please send proposals or queries to: Sandy Baldwin, Alan Sondheim, Mez Breeze leadispersive[at]astn.net

and
Nisar Keshvani
LEA Editor-in-Chief
lea[at]mitpress.mit.edu