JER 3.1 (2020): Special Section on Embodiment and Social Distancing

Deadline: 1 June 2020 

The age of social distancing brings the relationship between embodiment and audiovisuality to the fore in many contexts where it may not have been previously explored. The massive implications for performing arts and ethnographic research are immediately evident, but social distancing restricts all forms of face-to-face embodied encounter, derailing many of the most prevalent strategies for pedagogy, health, celebration, protest, intimacy, and the sharing of knowledge.

Responding to this moment, JER invites proposals for a special section in issue 3.1 (2020) on digital communication and audiovisuality in the age of social distancing. How do we connect with each other in these challenging times? What are the affordances and limitations of existing and future internet platforms when it comes to embodiment and communication, health and politics? What new digital strategies are being developed and what transformations or distortions of time and space do these imply? How do our current actions and behaviors shape future bodies and future worlds?

To allow for timely and inclusive responses, this section invites shorter contributions of up to five minutes, which may be published separately or in a combined form. These will be curated by a panel (Nathalie Fari, Caroline Gatt, Cara Hagan Gelber, Elizabeth de Roza, and Ben Spatz) rather than peer reviewed. Full-length, peer reviewed articles are also welcome. Please submit via the online journal system.

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JER 4.2 (2021): Special Issue of Illuminated Video

Deadline: 1 November 2020

For those of us who are in social isolation but otherwise well, this may be a time to undertake further work with our existing video archives. While unable to generate new embodied moments together, we can take this opportunity look back at video material we have previously created and further unfold its meanings. With this in mind, JER proposes a special issue of illuminated video.

Submissions to this special issue should strictly follow three parameters:

1) The audiovisual material should no longer than 20 minutes and uncut. There can be no editing of the video or audio track, no added effects (except for basic color correction), no voiceover or other added soundtrack, and no montage — in other words, this is a single “raw” video recording.

2) To this uncut video, authors may add any number of textual annotations or “illuminations” in addition to the title and author(s). These may include subtitles, annotations, explanations, descriptions, analysis, and scholarly or poetic quotations. The size, color, and placement of these texts should be given attention, as well as their density or sparsity. (In a 20-minute video, there might be five or fifty textual illuminations.) All sources must be properly cited within the video.

3) The authors of the video article — those who select the video material and write and append the textual illuminations — should appear in the video itself, or otherwise demonstrate accountability to those whose bodies appear. Ideally, you should be writing on your own audiovisual body.

The purpose of this special issue is to explore the relationship between textual and audiovisual layers, as well as the potential for sharing ethically grounded and embodied knowledge by textually “illuminating” one’s own audiovisual body. The raw video material should be of interest by itself, but it does not need to be “high quality” in videographic terms. This is intended as an opportunity for practitioners to return to your own video archive and generate a new work, in which you speak/write back to your own practice through textual annotation. Depending on the number of submissions, this issue may be peer reviewed as a whole, rather than each article individually.

For an example and definition of illuminated video, see “Diaspora (An Illuminated Video Essay)” by Ben Spatz with Nazlıhan Eda Erçin, Agnieszka Mendel, and Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz. Global Performance Studies 2.1 (2018): 30 minutes. https://gps.psi-web.org/issue-2-1/gps-2-1-1/

Please feel free to get in touch well before the deadline to discuss your proposal.

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JER 3.1 (2020) / JER 4.1 (2021): Open Call for Video Articles

Deadline: Ongoing 

JER invites the submission of video articles on a rolling basis. These can focus on any topic related to embodied practice, embodied knowledge, or embodied research. Previous articles have examined actor training, contemporary choreography, screendance, phenomenology, eco-performance, disability, pregnancy, song, and migration. JER video articles should be between 15 and 20 minutes in duration. No material (such as an explanatory note) is permitted outside the video itself. Formal drafts must be submitted via the JER website, while informal enquiries can be sent to the Editor.

There is no formal style guide for JER video articles, as the video article form is understood to be still in development. Please see the indicative submission guidelines and resource links on the journal website. All published JER video articles go through a process of single-anonymous peer review, receiving feedback from at least two anonymous reviewers plus the journal Editor. This process is at the heart of JER’s mission to advance video as a medium for embodied research.

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Journal of Embodied Research is the first peer-reviewed, open access, academic journal to focus specifically on the innovation and dissemination of embodied knowledge through the medium of video. With an editorial advisory board drawn from across the arts and humanities, it aims to pioneer the scholarly video article as a new form supporting diverse embodied research projects.

Informal inquiries can be sent to Ben Spatz at the email address below. Formal submissions must be submitted through the JER journal management system. JER is published by Open Library of Humanities, a leader in gold open access publishing with a unique consortium funding model.

Journal of Embodied Research is the first peer-reviewed, open access, academic journal to focus specifically on the innovation and dissemination of embodied knowledge through the medium of video. With an editorial advisory board drawn from across the arts and humanities, it aims to pioneer the scholarly video article as a new form supporting diverse embodied research projects.

Informal inquiries can be sent to Editor Ben Spatz at <b.spatz@hud.ac.uk>.

Formal submissions must be submitted through the JER journal management system. JER is published by Open Library of Humanities, a leader in gold open access publishing with a unique consortium funding model.

http://jer.openlibhums.org