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ISSN 1833-1866

The International Journal of the Arts in Society aims to create an intellectual frame of reference for the arts and arts practices, and to create an interdisciplinary conversation on the role of the arts in society. It is intended as a place for critical engagement, examination, and experimentation of ideas that connect the arts to their contexts in the world, on stage, in museums and galleries, on the streets, and in communities.

The journal is responding to trends in international arts festivals and biennales, indicating the need for critical discussion on issues in the arts, and specifically as they are situated in the present-day contexts of globalisation, and its social, economic and political artefacts of cultural homogenisation, commodification and militarisation.

Papers published in the journal will range from the expansive and philosophical to finely grained analysis based on deep familiarity and understanding of a particular area of ars knowledge or arts practice. They bring into the dialogue artists, theorists, policymakers, arts educators, and their overlapping roles.

The journal is relevant for artists, curators, writers, theorists and policymakers with an interest in, and a concern for, arts practice, arts theory and research, curatorial and museum studies, and arts education in any of its forms and in any of its sites.

The International Journal of the Arts in Society is fully peer-reviewed with a rigorous refereeing process to ensure a high standard of quality. The editors and advisory board comprise leading scholars in the education field.

Scope and Concerns

The annual International Conference on the Arts in Society (the Arts Conference) and the International Journal of the Arts in Society (the Arts Journal) create fora for discussion and critique, and a place for the publication of innovative theories and practices in the arts.

The Arts Conference and Arts Journal acknowledge the need for critical discussion on issues in the arts, and specifically as they are situated in everyday life, culture, economics and politics. Linked to critical cultural discourse, creative acts of engagement are called for that respond to the needs of our times. What is called for is no less than ‘free speech zones’, which have become ever more pressing in present-day contexts of globalisation, and its social, economic and political artefacts of cultural homogenisation and commodification.

The Arts Conference and the Arts Journal aim to create spaces for open dialogue and exchange in all aspects of the arts, where interdisciplinary discussions can emerge from a variety of format presentations – from more traditional academic papers, to workshops, garden conversations, staged readings, performances, and exegeses – all in the context of an international meeting place and publication.

Conference discussions and texts published in the journal will range from the expansive and philosophical to finely grained analyses based on deep familiarity and understanding of a particular area of knowledge or art practice. They bring into dialogue artists, theorists, policymakers, arts educators, and their overlapping roles.

The Arts Conference and Arts Journal aim not only to be reflective, but also to be active - moving works from the studio to public discourse, inspiring creativity from the public stage and exhibition space to the policy chambers - as well as providing a form of reflexive consciousness for thinking about the role of the arts in society. The Arts Conference thereby contributes to creating an opportunity for forging a design agenda for the arts.

A design agenda asks the question, ‘What is to be done? How can artists, theorists, cultural critics and educators seize the historical moment to create an agenda for the arts which positions them powerfully in relation to the often competing and intersecting agendas of economy, science and technology?’ The Arts Conference and Arts Journal explore key areas within the thematic breadth of Art and Transnationalism - changing and contested sites of globalisation, artistic media and new genres, public policy and public life.

Sites
In our twenty-first century context, longstanding sites of production, consumption and display - such as the theatre, the museum, the gallery, and the publishing house - are being contested by new forces of media, popular culture, and commerce. These various forms of contestation and re-arrangement have given rise to new forms and venues, from the street to the Internet. To what extent have old forms and new forms merged, replaced or challenged one another? In what ways do the various sites of reception and display affect sites of production – from the artist’s studio to the community hall? Is there such a thing as interdisciplinarity? And how do artistic media work with and interpret these cultural flows and institutionalised spaces?

Media
We live in an increasingly visual culture, where all forms of media intersect with the “crisis of information” that overloads everyday life. These media include the visual arts, the textual arts, the aural and musical arts, the gestural and performative arts, and the spatial arts. These categories roughly correspond to standard classifications of artforms as music, theatre, literature, poetry, dance, painting, sculpture, photography, film and television, and architecture. Such are the disciplines and artforms of our historical experience. While these disciplines undergo various processes of transformation and at times destabilisation, they are sometimes displaced by new means of production and their related meanings (the raw materials and methodologies of representation), reproduction of forms and meanings (first mechanical and now digitial), and distributions of meaning (the methods of reaching audiences and interacting with them). To what extent do we need to develop new research approaches alongside creative tools to redefine these rearrangements of classical disciplines?

Policy
How does art shape educational, cultural and national policy? Given the proliferation of cultural institutions, such as museums, what role do these institutions play in larger projects of nation-building or international relations? How are hierarchies of art world classifications reproduced or challenged by new forms of institution-building and policy-making? Artists and the arts themselves are often referred to as ’cultural ambassadors’ in international fora. Such terms raise issues of political relevance and call into question related concerns of value neutrality, and the deployment of art forms and practices to signal or help to dissolve social and political conflict at local, regional and international levels. What is the role of public education in these debates? ‘Which publics’ are represented or included?

Participants
Who are the participants in today’s globalised art world? Has the art world fragmented into a scattered hegemony of “art worlds”? Who are the players, the gatekeepers, and to what extent do our mainstream institutions reinforce or reflect the hierarchies of art world structures and opportunities for artists? How do artists and cultural workers reconcile their visionary projects with the mundane pursuits of marketing and profit as measures of success? What are the structural constraints that create and perpetuate the motif of the "starving artist"? How do shifting contexts – such as moving from a community festival to a world festival event – create and redefine audiences and audience participation? What is the responsibility of the artist to explore these and other issues? What, finally, is the role of art in society?

More than ever, these are open questions. As a space to engage these questions and others, and to broaden a participatory base, the Arts Conference and Arts Journal provide a setting to make linkages across disciplinary, geographic and cultural boundaries.

Editors and Advisory Board

Editors |Advisory Board

Editors of the International Journal of the Arts in Society

  • Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.
  • Bill Cope, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.

International Advisory Board

  • Robyn Archer, Paddington, Australia.
  • Mark Bauerlein, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C., USA.
  • Tressa Berman, BorderZone Arts, Inc., San Francisco, USA; Melbourne, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; and San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, USA.
  • Judy Chicago, Belen, USA.
  • Bill Cope, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.
  • Nina Czegledy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada and Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.
  • James Early, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA.
  • Mehdi Faridzadeh, International Society for Iranian Culture (ISIC), New York, USA and Tehran, Iran.
  • Jennifer Herd, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.
  • Fred Ho, New York, USA.
  • Andrew Jacubowicz, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.
  • Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.
  • Gerald McMaster, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.
  • Mario Minichiello, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (part of Birmingham City University), Birmingham, UK.
  • Fred Myers, New York University, New York, USA.
  • Darcy Nicholas, Porirua City Council, Porirua, New Zealand.
  • Daniela Reimann, University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz, Austria.
  • Arthur Sabatini, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.
  • Cima Sedigh, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, USA.
  • Peter Sellars, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
  • Ella Shohat, New York University, New York, USA.
  • Judy Spokes, Arts Victoria, South Melbourne, Australia.
  • Tonel (Antonio Eligio) , University of British Columbia, Canada and Havana, Cuba.
  • Marianne Wagner-Simon, World Art Organization, Geneva, Germany.

Associate Editors


The International Journal of the Arts in Society, Volume 1(Download PDF)

The International Journal of the Arts in Society, Volume 2(Download PDF)

Journal Profile


STATISTICS/CITATIONS

Statistics/citations

At this stage we are unable to provide citation statistics as the journal is relatively new. However, we envisage a high impact factor insofar as the journal is both part of the conventional world of academic publishing and highly visible to internet search engines.

Abstracted/Indexed in

Cabell’s Directory in Educational Psychology and Administration - http://www.cabells.com/


Contact

Email Address
journals at commongroundpublishing com
Mail Address
PO Box 463
Altona
Victoria
3018
Australia