[Nettime-bold] M/C Call for Contributors: 'logo' issue

["M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture" <mc@media-culture.org.au>]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 6 March 2003

                          M/C - Media and Culture
             is calling for contributors to the 2003 issues of

                                M/C Journal
                     http://www.media-culture.org.au/

The award-winning M/C Journal is looking for new contributors. M/C is a
crossover journal between the popular and the academic, and a blind- and
peer-reviewed journal.

To see what M/C Journal is all about, check out our Website, which contains
all the issues released so far, at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>. To
find out how and in what format to contribute your work, visit
<http://www.media-culture.org.au/submission.html>. 

Below, you'll find the issue topics we're planning for 2003, along with the
article submission and issue release deadlines, and a call for contributors
for the third issue of the year, 'logo'. Please check the M/C Journal site
for further calls and topic descriptions.

Please spread this call far and wide, and remember to archive it for future
reference...


                         Call for Papers: 'logo'

Ever since the printing press gave us the logotype (or since even earlier,
when chattels and communiques carried the owner's specific 'brand') symbols
have been created to condense ideas and functions of ownership,
advertisement, distinction and desire. In concert with the rise and
proliferation of capitalism, the logo gained importance, to the point where
contemporary western capital is primarily concerned with symbolic
production. From a simple distinguishing mark, to seductive enticement, the
logo now rides shotgun on the interface of contemporary capitalism.

The prominence of the contemporary logo is evidenced by the attention given
it in schools of management, design and cultural studies, by the feverish
corporate work attendant upon brand maintenance, and not least by the
recent focus by anti-capitalist movements on the logo as a ready symbol,
and startling vulnerability, in the edifice of corporate capitalism. Naomi
Klein's No Logo, a publishing sensation in 2000, gave a popular account of
(and manifesto for) activism that focuses on the brand-driven
multinational; groups like Adbusters modify advertisements to critical
ends; boycotts and actions target particular logo-dependent corporations.

More recently, though, the "logo-centric" approach embodied in such
critiques and actions has been questioned for its effectiveness, and the
quality of its analyses. It's not only other activists wondering whether
all this reduces to a form of consumer sovereignty-style activism, but
others who want to proclaim the aesthetic value and efficacy of the logo as
a lubricant of flows and exchange. Is logo-based activism the new left-
puritanism? Is it too unsystematic a critique to make real changes? Or is
it the last, best chance to rally critique against an increasingly
pervasive and dromocratic form of capital? Is the logo the brain-candy of
consumerism, or the latest refinement of communicative (t)arts?

M/C invites contributions investigating various aspects of the contemporary
logo: including but not limited to histories of particular brands;
considerations of the "logofication" of anti-capitalist activism;
meditations on the logo's generation of meaning; its functioning in the
creation and maintenance of corporate identity and/or image; critical views
of the relationship between logo, captial and ideology; and appreciations
of the graphic designer's art. 


Deadline for Submissions: 28 April 2003
Length: 1500-2000 words
Issue Release Date: 18 June February 2003

Issue Editors: John Pace & Jason A. Wilson
Email: logo@journal.media-culture.org.au

We look forward to hearing from you.


                 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


                     2003 M/C Journal Issue Deadlines

'fibre' - a collaboration with :: fibreculture ::
             editor: fibreculture group
             fibre@journal.media-culture.org.au
             article deadline: 23 June 2003
             release date: 13 August 2003

'joke'       editors: Paul Denvir & E. Sean Rintel
             joke@journal.media-culture.org.au
             article deadline: 18 August 2003
             release date: 8 October 2003

'text'       editor: Catriona Mills
             text@journal.media-culture.org.au
             article deadline: 13 October 2003
             release date: 3 December 2003

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end

                                                  Dr Axel Bruns

-- 
 Supervising Production Manager          production@media-culture.org.au
 M/C - Media and Culture                http://www.media-culture.org.au/




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