Call for Papers
All articles submitted should be original work and must not be under consideration by other publications.
The journal operates on the basis of thematic CFPs only, please consult the current CFPs below before submission.
Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art is an associate journal of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts at Birmingham City University. Please visit Intellect’s website https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-editors-and-contributors to follow its house referencing guidelines.
The Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art is a scholarly forum for new research into and critical debate on the subject of contemporary Chinese art. The journal welcomes contributions that address contemporary art produced in mainland China, Hong Kong-Macau and Taiwan as well as in relation to diasporic and trans-national Chinese cultural communities world-wide. The journal also welcomes contributions that address the relationship between Chinese cultural thought and practice and contemporary art of non-Chinese origin. The journal is open to non-standard contributions such as photographic essays and conversations for publication alongside its more usual peer-reviewed content.
Areas of research and debate that the journal will explore include, but are by no means limited to:
· Contemporary art with a relationship to Chinese society, culture and history
· Art-historical and critical writing related to the reception of contemporary Chinese art
· Curatorial theory and practice related to the exhibition/display of contemporary Chinese art
· Contemporary Chinese aesthetics (as seen from Chinese and non-Chinese cultural perspectives)
· The contemporary Chinese art market
· Issues of historical importance to the development of contemporary Chinese art (e.g. cultural interaction and exchange between China and the West prior to the emergence of contemporary Chinese art)
Journal contributors will receive a free PDF copy of their final work upon publication.
JCCA 12.1: Call for Papers
Special Issue: ‘When the Shadow Flickers: The Moving Image in Contemporary Chinese Art’
A Special Issue co-edited by Yang Panpan and Jiang Jiehong
At a time when the moving image has become a ubiquitous presence in museums and galleries in China and the Sinophone world, the studies of the moving image in the sphere of contemporary Chinese art remain surprisingly scarce. The shadow that flickers on the walls of museums and galleries or on other surfaces has transformed what we understand as the art of curating today. In addition, documentary footage shot by Wu Wenguang, Wen Pulin, Chi Xiaoning and others retells the story of contemporary Chinese art.
This special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art makes a radical gesture towards studying the moving image as an art object, as a curatorial method and as a new form of art historical writing. The collaborative, interdisciplinary endeavour participates in – and hopefully contributes to – what Georges Didi-Huberman, speaking of Aby Warburg’s thought, terms ‘an art history turned towards cinema’: ‘to understand the temporality of images, their movements, their “survivals”, their capacity for animation’.
Possible perspectives for proposals include, but are not limited to:
- Case studies of contemporary artists across Greater China and the Chinese diaspora working with the moving image
- Curating the moving image and the moving image as a curatorial method
- Documentary in relation to contemporary Chinese art
- Discourses across Greater China on yingxiang yishu, and its partial semantic overlaps with video art, new media art, and artists’ film
- Animation as contemporary art
- Issues of acquisition, preservation and access surrounding the moving image
- The market of the moving image
Submission Guidelines:
Please send an abstract, along with a brief bio, in the same file, to guest editor Yang Panpan (py6@soas.ac.uk), principal editor Jiang Jiehong (joshua.jiang@bcu.ac.uk), and assistant editor Lauren Walden (ccva@bcu.ac.uk).
Publication Timeline:
1 March 2024, abstract due (300 words)
1 November 2024, full manuscript due (7000–8000 words)
Publication: Spring 2025
Please follow Intellect’s house referencing guidelines available at: https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-editors-and-contributors.
Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art is an associate journal of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts at Birmingham City University.
JCCA 12.2&3: Call for Papers
Special Issue: ‘(Extra)Ordinary Living: Aesthetics in Contemporary China’
Guest Editor:
Dr Federica Mirra
Birmingham City University
federica.mirra@bcu.ac.uk
From pre-dynastic rites and music to literati art and volumes on the pleasures of life, the notion of living has long inspired Chinese works of art and objects of design, which, in turn, document and inform diverse modes of society and culture, broadly conceived.
Between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an interest in everydayness re-gained momentum. Later, during the Maoist era, life in the countryside and the labour of the masses was brought to the fore with the collective production of paintings, woodblock prints and propaganda posters. Throughout the 1980s, Chinese artists still drew inspiration from living, as suggested by the pioneering work by artist collectives such as the Pond Society (Chishe) and the Polit-Sheer-Form Office (Zheng chun ban), or the early works by contemporary artists in the 1990s, e.g., Geng Jianyi, Song Dong, Yin Xiuzhen and Zhuang Hui.
Today in China, the ordinariness of living remains a key source of inspiration not only for artists, but also for designers, particularly in the areas of product design, fashion design and interior design. Following the evolving socio-cultural and economic circumstances in the Reform and Opening Up era, the products of visual and performing arts, as well as design, have inevitably changed alongside ordinary life. At present, we live in a technologically advanced and interconnected world that is, nevertheless, getting more fragmented, conflict prone and facing global challenges.
The visual and performative arts and design can neither prevent nor provide solutions to current and future concerns. However, their extraordinary power is they contain implicit cues on our modes of living, which need unpacking to get more complex, nuanced and comprehensive understandings of society and culture. In our ‘Society of the Spectacle’ (Debord 1967), where extravagance and novelty are visually consumed and celebrated, artworks taking ordinary living as their focus or inspiration, and privileging other senses (e.g., smell, sound, kinetic and tactile experiences) are more important than ever to multiply and diversify the ways we approach, experience and represent reality.
This Special Issue welcomes papers that can advance critical analysis and broaden multidisciplinary perspectives on the living and the ordinary in the field of visual arts, performing arts and design. Possible perspectives include, but are not limited to:
- Theoretical and art-historical explorations of living in China
- The living and the ordinary in contemporary arts
- Design and innovations that redefine the living
- New methods and strategies to approach the living in contemporary China, including experimental works that privilege the sound, smell, tactile and kinetic experience
- Representations of living in underrepresented social groups, ethnic minorities, borderlands and other organisms
Submission Guidelines:
Please prepare a Word document containing (1) an abstract of up to 300 words and (2) a 100-word biography, contact information and any institutional affiliation, and submit to guest editor Federica Mirra (federica.mirra@bcu.ac.uk) and principal editor Jiang Jiehong (joshua.jiang@bcu.ac.uk) with the subject ‘JCCA 12.2&3’ by 10 November 2024.
Authors will be invited to submit their full paper, if selected, by 25 April 2025. For those presenting at CCVA 17th Annual Conference of the same title, please kindly note your abstracts and presentations will be automatically considered for publication.
The publication of articles is subject to blind peer review. Please follow Intellect’s house referencing guidelines available at: https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-editors-and-contributors.
Publication Timeline:
10 November 2024, abstract due (300 words)
25 April, full manuscript due (7000–8000 words)
Publication: Autumn 2025
About the guest editor:
Dr Federica Mirra is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Birmingham School of Art, BCU. Her project The City as Art: Living Aesthetics in 21st Century China focuses on what is often excluded from aesthetic experience: the everyday and collective practices in Chinese cities.
The Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art is an associate journal of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts at Birmingham City University.
