CfA: Journal of Global Pop Cultures: Real Fake / Fake Realness (Deadline: 31.01.2022)

CfA: Journal of Global Pop Cultures: Real Fake / Fake Realness. (Re)appropriation, the Ironic, and Fandoms in Pop Cultures

Deadline: 31.01.2022

Questions pertaining to authenticity, realness and fakeness have been a trademark of approaches to postmodern pop cultures from early on. The bourgeoining Post-Second-World-War consumer and media cultures provided ever growing reservoirs of signs and symbols, narratives and imageries, codes and gestures, materials and products to be combined, deconstructed, reassembled, recontextualized, by professionals but even more so by amateurs. After an era of admiration for the detached genius, it became obvious that nothing comes from nothing, that every cultural act is, to some extent, an act of borrowing and appropriation – or, as Belgian indierock band Dead Man Ray put it in 1998 to further complicate the issue: „We are all copies / But the originals are fake.“

In times of hyperglobalization, transculturality and digitalization, this trait of pop culture is more obvious than ever before. From shanzhai to remixes to fan-created spinoffs, appropriation plays a central role in the 21st century global migration of cultural artifacts and their manifoldtransformations. Dichotomies between authentic and fake have collapsed into a space of “pop” where creativity, style, and humour are entangled with ethics, politics, and consumerism. A space where phenomena like the Japanese Ska J-Ska, the anti-beauty of Ganguro, slash fiction, the pro-fake brand Chinatown Market or the political protest of culture jamming emerge; a space where „high culture“ and „low culture“ are not mutually exclusive but rather two sides of one coin flipped by various players. Last but not least, a space of intrinsic irony – in the fast pace of trends and re-interpretations, specific meanings are inevitably temporary and always seem to imply their own contradiction.

For the first issue of the Journal of Global Pop Cultures, edited by Shared Campus Publications, we invite contributions from all disciplines. The focus of the issue is on (re)appropriation, the ironic, and fandoms with respect to simulation, copying, quoting, repeating or decontextualization as creative methods and artistic practices in transnational pop cultures. In the age of hyperreality and subjective realism, we find ourselves engaged by the question of who is entitled to use which symbols and who claims the copyright for them. Is there a limitation with regard to appropriation in terms of cultural eligibility? Or is philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah right by stating that „the real problem isn't that it's difficult to decide who owns culture; it's that the very idea of ownership is the wrong model“? We are engaged even more in translating and understanding the often weird, ironic and absurd aesthetics that emerge from the plethora of inter- and transcultural „contact zones“ (Mary Louise Pratt) which globalization has brought about, both on- and offline. Last but not least we are curious to learn about time- and place-specific understandings of appropriation and related cultural techniques.

This open access journal accepts not only written scholarly submissions but also video, audio, and image-based works (e.g. podcasts, video essays or hybrid artistic research projects) that are made in response to the theme. Academic papers will be subject to double blind peer review. Artistic research projects will be reviewed by the editorial board and members of the advisory board. They will either be accepted or rejected (no reworking). Experimental in-between formats or insights into projects in the making can be shown in the open section „Insights“ (no peer-reviewing). 

All contributions are published online on journalofglobalpopcultures.com

Stylesheet for academic papers: the journal accepts all established writing styles and formats for academic documents such as (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APA_style) or MLA style (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLA_Handbook). However, each submitted scholarly article has to be coherent in terms of style, i.e. only one style is allowed. Please use Times New Roman, font size 12, 1.5 spacing.

Stylesheet for artistic research projects: artistic research projects and further experimental contributions (e.g. video lecture performances) are not subject to academic styles or formats. However, please make sure to to meet the following requirements:

Images: 4 MB (max.): jpg, png, gif, svg

Documents: 10 MB (max.): pdf, doc/docx, ppt/pptx, xls/xlsx, txt, csv

Videos: URL of uploaded video file (Vimeo, Youtube etc.)

Audio: URL of uploaded audio file (SoundCloud, Vimeo etc.)
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Deadline: 31 January 2022.
Please send papers or video/audio files (via file transfer service) to: Jörg Scheller (joerg.scheller @ zhdk.ch) and Masahiro Yasuda (yasuda @ kyoto-seika.ac.jp). Maximum length for academic papers: 25‘000 characters, including blanks, footnotes, bibliography.

Please attach a short CV (maximum length: 500 characters).

More information here.