Call for Work: Arts on Earth, U of Michigan

Published on August 06, 2009 by Christy Tennant

CALL IN BRIEF
Work sought: Scholarly and creative work in any form that can be circulated electronically and illuminates some aspect of the relationship between arts and bodies. Work sought includes but is not limited to performing arts, visual and design arts, language arts, network and broadcast media arts, and scholarly work.

End product: To be published electronically in May 2010, this is the first in an ongoing series by Arts on Earth at the University of Michigan (www.artsonearth.org). Each publication will present 20 pieces of interdisciplinary creative and scholarly work on Arts on Earth’s chosen theme, published by University of Michigan Press and distributed internationally.

Deadline: Submissions are due October 15, 2009, to a&bsubmissions@umich.edu.

Review process: Monica Ponce de Leon, Dean of the Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, is Editor-in-Chief. Submissions will be blindly reviewed by at least two experts in appropriate fields at U-M and peer institutions internationally.

ABOUT ARTS ON EARTH
Launched in 2006 at the University of Michigan, Arts on Earth’s aim is to integrate artistic modes of thinking and working into the life of the research university. To that end, Arts on Earth is piloting a new interdisciplinary, undergraduate course called “Creative Process”; fostering creative collaborations among faculty and students from diverse units on varying annual themes; launching interdisciplinary research on undergraduate creativity; developing an undergraduate living-learning community focused on interdisciplinary creative work in engineering, the arts, and other disciplines; and initiating other programs. For full information, www.artsonearth.org.

Arts on Earth is directed by:
Christopher Kendall, Dean of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance
David Munson, Dean of the College of Engineering
Monica Ponce de Leon, Dean of the Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning
Bryan Rogers, Dean of the School of Art & Design

ABOUT ARTS & BODIES
People often speak of their experience of the arts as “transcendent” – transcendently beautiful, transcending normal human limits of performance and perception, speaking directly to the transcendent “soul.”

CALL FOR WORK
Yet art is inescapably made by corporeal beings, whose very corporeality determines the media, methods, instruments, forms, colors, tones, and materials through which we create. Furthermore, the very experience of transcendence is a corporeal one, determined by the state of the sensory and cognitive apparatus of the co-creating perceiver of art. Finally, the production of art can take a heavy toll on artists’ bodies, through the absorption of lead, the stresses of poverty and creative work, and the punishment of muscles, joints, vocal cords, eyes, and other body parts.

The purpose of Arts & Bodies is to explore the dynamic, tortured, joyful, complex relationship between our arts and our bodies across epochs and cultures. Arts & Bodies has four parts:

• An intensive, interdisciplinary, experiential ArtsLab in U-M’s Video Studio (www.umich.edu/dmc/ video/index.html) (November 5 and 6, 2009).
• A body-music, body-percussion residency by Keith Terry and colleagues (November 1 – 8, 2009; www.crosspulse.com).
• A festival of work in all media on the Ann Arbor campus (October and November, 2009).
• The electronic publication, “Arts & Bodies.”

Through these means the Arts on Earth directors invite examination of how art is delimited and exalted by bodies, and vice-versa; how humans use their arts to affect and reflect their thinking about, and their relationship with, their bodies. The directors invite demonstration and study of how disciplines such as engineering, law, medicine, and business have affected the ways in which arts and bodies interact, and how anthropology, art history, philosophy, psychology, and other disciplines have interpreted the impulses and effects of art/body interactions. The directors invite participation in and study of art that is a direct extension of the body, such as dance and vocal music; art that celebrates the body; and art that probes, explores, challenges, plays in, teases about, and otherwise investigates the perceived gap between “I” and “my body.”

MECHANICS
Type of work sought: Scholarly and creative work that illuminates some aspect of the relationship between arts and bodies is sought. Scholarly papers and other writing should be complete within 3,000 words and submitted as .pdf files. Time-based work should transpire within 8 minutes and be submitted in Quicktime, MPEG, Real Media, or flash Movie formats. Still images should number 20 frames or fewer, submitted as .pdf files. Sound works may be up to 8 minutes in length, and submitted as an MP3 file. For information about forms or formats not listed, contact us at a&bquestions@umich.edu.
Evaluation criteria: Work will be blindly peer reviewed, and assessed for creativity; originality and depth of vision; and rigor of thought and expression.
Copyright will be held by the authors/artists.

Deadlines: All submissions are due at midnight on October 15, 2009 to a&bsubmissions@umich.edu. Submissions must be accompanied by the cover sheet at www.artsonearth.org/artsbodies/submissionform.pdf and otherwise clear of obvious identifying information. Decisions will be issued on January 15, 2010, with final revisions due on March 15, 2010.

For more information: www.artsonearth.org/artsbodies.