Spanning art, architecture, performance and sustainability, this year’s series of four Salon discussions focus on the matter of ‘matter’ – its nature, substance and the productive forces that govern it. For July Gavin Butt(Goldsmiths College, London), Adrian Heathfield (Roehampton University), and Lois Keidan (Director, Live Art Development Agency) consider Performance Matters.

Co-organised by the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, University of Westminster, London, and the Whitechapel Gallery. Book now to avoid disappointment!

Tickets: £8/£6 (includes free glass of wine)

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org

In 2008, Journal of Visual Culture inaugurated a new Events section, with a multi-authored critical dissection of Documenta 12 (vol.7, no.2). The move is a response to a shift over the past few decades, which has seen the exhibition and/as event encroaching on the territory once steadfastly occupied by the academy and its related publications, as sites for positing theories, exploring histories, and pertinent analyses of visual culture past and present. While the art exhibition, industrial fair, archive, and museum and gallery displays have long played a pivotal role in structuring our public and private experiences of visual culture — temporally, spatially and textually — educational projects, screenings, performances, and festivals have also gained in influence as instances of visual culture in their own right and, simultaneously, as discursive frames for thinking through visual culture. As such, the Events section is envisaged as an experimental forum for analyzing events — very broadly defined as noteworthy occasions or occurrences in visual culture — beyond the limits of their temporal, spatial, and practical boundaries.

We appreciate but do not favour actuality: no event is too far in the past, too present, or too far into the future for our consideration. We encourage reflections that diverge from the formats, perspectives and styles readily available in the weekly or monthly press, or in specialist academic journals; we welcome single, multiple, and interdisciplinary points of view, dialogues, polemics and debates, from artists, writers, academics, curators, and critics alike (as well as none of the above).

Submissions: 1,000 to 2,000 words, following the Journal of Visual Culture house-style where appropriate—for further info, see here.

Deadlines:  End of January (August issue), end of May (December issue), end of September (April issue)

Contact: s [dot] lok [at] journalofvisualculture [dot] org