Open Call: Publication

Call for articles & projects: Cabinet

May 31, 2017

The deadline for contribution proposals is 31 May 2017. The deadline for finished contributions is 15 September 2017.

Collecting photographic images has for long stirred both interest and imagination of photographers, artists, photographic theorists, just as it did those of information loving intelligence officers, flea market loving amateurs and free market loving entrepreneurs. Contemporary proliferation of image production and sharing seems to have only intensified the practices of collecting, appropriating and curating of found, already existing images.

The resulting amassments of images – either in forms of personal albums, institutionalised collections, server farms of social networks or archives of state institutions – are also amassments of narratives, of projections about societies and individuals, of attempts to limit the mere potentiality and contingency of meaning. In particular it was the archive – as a concept, a distinctive repressive social apparatus, and as a pool of (in)accessible images – that has for long been a focal point of theoretical and discursive contestations, creative artistic practices and critical appropriations.

Membrana #3 wants to reinvigorate these discussions from the perspective of ubiquitous photography and re-politicisation of social life in post-democratic societies through the metaphor of cabinet. For us, the notion of the cabinet has multiple meanings and can be seen as a bureaucratic image storage and retrieval system, an image display surface, a desktop icon or an Wunderkammer-ish collection of wonders and curiosities and can be approached literally or metaphorically.

Membrana is a contemporary photography magazine dedicated to promoting a profound and theoretically grounded understanding of photography. Its aim is to encourage new, bold, and alternative conceptions of photography as well as new and bold approaches to photography in general. The magazine builds upon the long tradition of publishing the Slovenian language magazine Fotografija (published since 1997) as well as on the long tradition of the critical and investigative approach cherished by its editors.

Membrana publishes a wide range of contributions, ranging from interviews to theoretical articles, essays on contemporary photography, columns, regional portfolios, exhibition and book reviews. Positioning itself in the space between scholarly magazines and popular publications, it offers an open forum for critical reflection on the medium, presenting both analytical texts and quality visuals. The magazine is published bi-annually in the summer and winter in the English language by the Slovene non-profit institute Membrana.

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