Seismopolite Issue 6
Theme: The future of the biennial: experimental places to reinvent political space?

The upcoming issue of Seismopolite Journal of Art and Politics will discuss the political future of the contemporary art biennial. How can biennials become experimental «sites» to rethink the relationship between art and politics, without lending themselves too easily to the confines of the contemporary art market and neoliberal political geography? While biennials have been criticized for subjecting themselves to urban/ regional marketing strategies, they have also been defended as valuable places for the formation of new alliances among art scenes of the ‘periphery’, that are today steadily changing the global art map.

For this issue we invite reviews, essays and interviews that discuss the future of the biennial and its potential to rewrite the history, political geography and epistemology of places and regions.

Topics may include (but are by no means restricted to):

– The art biennial as a global and regional phenomenon

– Biennials and political activism

– Art biennials as utopian political «sites»

– Mobility, relational geography and regionalization in contemporary art after the Nation State

– The biennial as a potential site for (re)negotiation of political geography, artistic interventions in geopolitical discourses and decolonization strategies

– Biennials as experimental regimes of bodily orientation and their politics of sensation

– Biennials as reimaginations of territorialities, and renegotiations of the concepts of space and place

Please send your proposal, CV and samples of earlier work to submissions@seismopolite.com within December 13, 2013.

Via Seismopolite.com

The upcoming issue of Seismopolite Journal of Art and Politics will discuss the political future of the contemporary art biennial. How can biennials become experimental «sites» to rethink the relationship between art and politics, without lending themselves too easily to the confines of the contemporary art market and neoliberal political geography? While biennials have been criticized for subjecting themselves to urban/ regional marketing strategies, they have also been defended as valuable places for the formation of new alliances among art scenes of the ‘periphery’, that are today steadily changing the global art map.

Does this development indicate a future potential of biennials to rewrite the history, political geography and epistemology of places and regions, and to do so from standpoints that resist annexation by historical master narratives, neoliberal political geography as well as the demands and languages of the global contemporary art market? Or do we need to look entirely outside the biennial system for such standpoints to be realized in a consequential way?

For our next issue we welcome reviews of biennials worldwide as well as essays and interviews that address these questions through a high variety of possible angles.

We accept submissions continuously, but to make sure you are considered for the upcoming issue, please send your proposal, CV and samples of earlier work to submissions@seismopolite.com within November 21, 2013.

Many thanks!