Bullshit Art
Volume 63 (4/2021)
Submission deadline: June 30, 2021
Editors:Thorsten Botz-Bornstein (Gulf University for Science & Technology, Kuwait)
Adrian Mróz (The Jagiellonian University in Krakow, PL)
Bullshit Studies is a developing scholarly discipline that emerged in the late 20th century. Prominent contemporary researchers include Harry G. Frankfurt, David Graeber, Eva M. Dadlez, André Spicer, Eldar Sarajlic, Jörg Meibauer, Craig Dalton, Martin Harry Turpin, Vladimir Alexeev, and many others. We are witnessing a rise of interest in earlier concepts such as fakery, inauthenticity, Deepities (as defined by Daniel Dennett), fake news, and post-truth.
Art works with illusions, which is why philosophers, such as Plato, evaluated artists and their artworks as both therapeutic and dangerous (as a pharmakon). The status of the artist or any other creator is ambiguous by definition. Philosophers have praised artists for disseminating artistic truths but also accused them of deforming truths or even fabricating untruths. Notwithstanding, knowledge about processes such as bullshiting as well as its products (bullshit) is still very much lacking in philosophy of art and in aesthetics.
The editors of this upcoming volume of The Polish Journal of Aesthetics invite researchers to submit relevant articles on bullshit within the domains of art and aesthetics. Its theoretical framework consists in reworking philosophical assumptions about truth and fiction. The main questions of this issue concern the role of nonsense or deception within the domain of the arts, in addition to its techniques and media. The volume also focuses on the ways in which falsehood, unfalsifiable claims, or nonsense are agential and give a voice to creative and fictive processes, which may then be elaborated by art workers and craftspeople, and exploited by others. The planned volume provides an opportunity for expressing new modes of artistic truth and imagination through in-depth reflections on and interpretations of faux materials, objects, human instruments, relationships, and organizations.
We invite authors to reflect on themes that may include questions about transgression and transcendence, the meaning or legitimacy of art in culture, art theory and practice, the deceptive role of artists, bullshit artists and techniques, the category of “pseudo-profound bullshit”, the art market and profitability, industrialization and media theory, skepticism, the sacred and the profane, acceptability, performance, entertainment, magic, emotion, feeling, judgement, kitsch, camp, and any other area that can be argued to be manipulative of feeling, emotion, or cognition. This list is not exhaustive and other submissions that are relevant to the title Bullshit Art will also be considered.
Author Guidelines:
• We ask authors to read our guidelines posted under the tab “For Authors” (https://pjaesthetics.uj.edu.pl/for-authors) as well as to doublecheck the completeness of each submission (please don’t forget to collectively submit the abstract, keywords, bibliography, and biographical note about the author) before submitting.
• Only complete submissions sent through the submissions page will be accepted. Submission page: https://pjaesthetics.uj.edu.pl/en_GB/wyslij-tekst
• All submitted articles are subject to double-blind reviews. Articles published in The Polish Journal of Aesthetics are assigned DOI numbers. Please do not hesitate to contact us via email: pjaestheticsuj@gmail.com
About the Journal:
The Polish Journal of Aesthetics is a philosophical-aesthetic periodical, which has been quarterly published since 2001 by the Institute of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. The journal has a long editorial tradition and is affiliated with one of the oldest European universities, and at the same time it is continuously growing through systematic development. The editors’ goal is to implement and maintain the highest international publishing standards and practices, resulting in the publication of eminently substantive articles and papers addressing important and topical issues concerning artistic performances and activities. Each year, four volumes of the journal are published: two regular volumes and two thematic volumes, devoted to specific issues of aesthetics and philosophy of art, prepared in co-operation with experts of a particular subject. Calls for Papers of thematic volumes are separately distributed.
Please visit our website at https://pjaesthetics.uj.edu.pl/en_GB/
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