CFP Special Issue:
Time Machines, Quantum Temporal Deformations and Escaping Linear Chronology Across Media Arts
deadline for full submissions: May 31, 2024 (for publication in May 2025)
Guest Editors:
Dr Michael Goddard (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Dr James Burton (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Dr Aleena Chia (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Inspired by the recent renewal of interest in time travel, time loops and alternative history narratives across digital platforms such as Dark (Netflix, 2017-2020), The Peripheral (Amazon Prime, 2022) Watchmen (HBO, 2019) and Lovecraft Country (HBO, 2020), as well as longer histories of resonant developments across other time-based media arts including installation art and electronic music, this special issue invites scholars from film and TV studies, contemporary art, popular music, social sciences and science and technology studies to submit articles or practice work that explores the questions raised by deformations of linear chronological time in contemporary media. If, as Deleuze suggests, it is the chronic, or chronological time that causes suffering, what resistant or therapeutic potentials might be offered by non -chronological modes of temporality?
A key question in this regard will be whether links can be constructed between the rich legacies of Afrofuturist challenges to Eurocentric temporalities such as John Akomfrah and Edward George’s Black Audio Film Collective work The Last Angel of History (1996) or the more recent Black Quantum Futurism collective’s ‘quantum’ interventions into linear time, with the cultural implications of quantum physics as seen for example in the work of Karen Barad and feminist New Materialism, as well as with popular cultural depictions of quantum temporal deformations. These synergies may be partial, incomplete, and full of tension but nevertheless also highly expressive of the ongoing challenges to linear temporality of digital audiovisual platforms themselves with their abandonment of ties to any schedule or interior life of the nation-state. While all fictional narratives could be considered time travel machines in the sense that they transport us from the present to particular times and spaces through the deployment of different rhythms and speeds, explicit time travel or time loops make these temporal transports both perceptible and subject to multiple modulations in ways that correspond closely to digital networks themselves.
These synergies are not only aesthetic or philosophical but political as they call attention to chronological time as an agent of Western imperialism and domination and attempts to unwork this domination from both inside and outside as a fundamental resource for future cultural political strategies.
Submissions are sought for the following specific areas:
Afrofuturist challenges to chronological temporalities in media arts, music, and writing
Black Quantum Futurism and quantum time (travel)
Time travel narratives and time machines in recent film and television (Dark, The Peripheral, Primer)
Time loop narratives on recent film and television (Palm Springs, Russian Doll, Source Code)
Alternative racialised pasts in film and TV narratives (Lovecraft Country, Watchmen)
Non-chronological temporalities in contemporary installation art
New Materialism and quantum temporalities in media arts
Challenges to linear temporality in digital cultures and platforms, including production platforms such as game engines
Philosophies and theories of non-chronological time and their impacts on 21st-century media arts (Barad, Benjamin, Bergson, Braidotti, Delany, Deleuze, Dery, Eshun, Fisher, Hayles, Serres, Stengers, Womack)
Challenges to linear temporality in contemporary drone, electronic, post-hardcore and experimental music
Non-chronological temporalities in audiovisual media practices (experimental film, TV, video art, drone cinema)
We invite full submissions in the below categories:
Long Essays (5000-6000 words)
Practice-based Studies: Short essays (1,000-2,000 words) that are composed around at least one historical or original media art project.
- Media art for submissions in Practice-based Studies may include (but are not limited to) media installations, sound and video arts, virtual/augmented/mixed reality projects and web-based projects, among others. We plan to maintain a contemporary 21st-century focus in terms of media artworks but are open to some exceptions, such as in the case of Afrofuturist works.
- All essays will be assessed based on the originality of theoretical argument and relevance to the scope of the journal and the themes of special issue. Essays must be previously unpublished to be considered, and all copyrights for published images and artworks must be cleared by the authors themselves before the publication date.
- Long or short essays must also include a 200-words abstract, 3-5 keywords and the author’s info (name, institution of affiliation, a 100-word bio, and a valid email address). All aspects of the submission should be included in one Word document file. Authors are encouraged to include 3-4 images of the work (and if applicable, a link to the work in its entirety).
- For formatting, style, and full submission guidelines, please visit Submission Guidelines.
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Please send your submissions (and questions) to the editors’ emails listed below with the subject heading TIME MACHINES by no later than May 31, 2024.
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About Guest Editors:
Dr Michael Goddard is Reader in Film and Screen Media at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has published widely on international cinema and audiovisual culture as well as cultural and media theory. He is also a media theorist, especially in the fields of media ecologies and media archaeology, as well as in digital media. In media archaeology, his most significant contribution is the monograph, Guerrilla Networks (2018), the culmination of his media archaeological research to date, which was published by Amsterdam University Press. His previous book, Impossible Cartographies (2013) was on the cinema of Raúl Ruiz. Email: Michael.Goddard@gold.ac.uk
Dr James Burton is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Cultural History at Goldsmiths. His research interests include cultural theory, science fiction, posthumanism, process philosophy, ecology and theories of fiction. He is the author of The Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip.K.Dick and associate editor, alongside Erich Hörl, of General Ecology: The New Ecological Paradigm, (2017) a collection of theoretical essays on the contemporary imbrication of different kinds of ecology. Email: J.Burton@gold.ac.uk
Dr Aleena Chia is Lecturer in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. She uses ethnographic and textual approaches to research creativity and innovation practices in video game production and computational wellness. She is co-editor (with Ana Jorge and Tero Karppi) of Reckoning with Social Media (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022) and co-author (with Joshua Neves, Susanna Paasonen, and Ravi Sundaram) of Technopharmacology (University of Minnesota Press / Meson Press, 2022). Dr Chia is co-editor (with Paolo Ruffino) of a special issue of Convergence on Politicizing Agency in Digital Play after Humanism. Her work is published in Television and New Media, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Journal of Fandom Studies, among others. Email: A.Chia@gold.ac.uk
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Important Dates:
- Deadline for full submissions: May 31, 2024
- Notification of acceptance/rejection: June 20, 2024