Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus invites submissions for a special themed issue:
Trans New Media Art as Embodied Practice
Guest Editors: Ace Lehner (University of Vermont) & Chelsea Thompto (San Jose State University)
Deadline for abstracts: Monday, August 1, 2022
We invite abstracts for articles, artist's projects, interviews, and reviews for a special issue of Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus entitled “Trans New Media Art as Embodied Practice.”
Media-N seeks submissions that engage with trans lived experiences, identities, and methodologies as they intersect with digital art, media, and technology. This special issue asks: In what ways does trans lived experience inform new media art practice? And likewise, how might new media art practices inform and shape trans identities? How do trans new media art practices diverge from and/or intersect with queer approaches? And finally, how have artists working with new media illuminated the ways that “trans” is defined, embodied, legislated, and aestheticized differently throughout history and across global contexts?
Over the past few decades, the art world, mass media, and academia have shown an increased tolerance of queer identity–as long as it is assimilable to mainstream culture and late capitalist imperatives. Meanwhile, trans art and artists continue to be sidelined, and trans representation co-opted and exploited, reinforcing essentialist understandings of trans identity. Furthermore, trans of color perspectives, research, and methodologies that critique and resist white supremacist, cis-supremacist, heteropatriarchal paradigms are continually marginalized, misidentified, and silenced.
In a world overflowing with initiatives to erase trans people from public life, trans new media art as embodied practice and rigorous scholarly study is a crucial resource for life-giving insight, resistance, and critique. Technologies used to amplify hypervisibility, promote politicization, and perpetuate violence against trans people are also deployed by trans media producers as generative tools and spaces for trans creativity and self-enunciation.
Possible topics that center trans new media art practices might include, but are not limited to:
Indigenous and two-spirit gender formations
Black politics, epistemologies, tactics
Visibility politics and hypervisibility
Surveillance and sousveillance
Futurity and Utopias
Abolitionism
Autobiographical image-making
Social media and online communities
Trans approaches to creative coding and digital performance
Virtual embodiment and worlding: game studies, VR, and virtual worlds
Revised and recovered histories of trans new media
Distinctions between trans and queer approaches to new media
With this issue, Media-N affirms its commitment to an inclusive understanding of "trans" that encompasses all gender identities that operate outside of or in opposition to colonial and binary logics, including non-binary, Indigenous, and other expansive gender formations. Likewise, we use the terms “trans” and “new media art” in their most expansive and intersectional senses, while remaining grounded in corporeal, locational, and aesthetic specificities.
To submit an abstract for consideration, please send 200-300 word abstracts and a condensed (under 5 pg.) CV to the following individuals by Monday, August 1, 2022:
Guest Editor, Ace Lehner: ace.lehner@uvm.edu
Guest Editor, Chelsea Thompto: chelsea.l.thompto@gmail.com
Executive Editor, Johanna Gosse: johannagosse@gmail.com
Final Submission Length Guidelines:
Articles: 6,000-8,000 word range
Artist's projects: 4,000-6,000 word range
Interviews and Reviews: 1,000-3,000 word range