Calls for Papers

  CHANGE NOTICE for craft + design enquiry

 Due to non-receipt of funding in 2015, the craft +design enquiry Editorial Board has agreed as a matter of urgency to seek more stable support for the ongoing operations of the journal. These investigations by the Editorial Board, will mean a hiatus in craft +design enquiry ‘s programming schedule. While Issue 7 (currently in production) will be published in September 2015, the Call for Papers for Issue 8 (2016) has been postponed until further notice. 

We will keep you informed of progress, so please check the blog from time to time.

Call for papers craft+design enquiry Issue 8 (2016) 
Postponed

‘Global Parallels: Production and Craft in 

Fashion and Industrial Design Industries’ 

© ellaspede                                            © Briz Vegas – Brisbane  

The craft + design enquiry  Editorial Board welcomes Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, Rafael Gomez and Kathleen Horton, from Queensland University of Technology, as the Guest Editors of c+de#8 with the theme of ‘Global Parallels: Production and Craft in Fashion and Industrial Design Industries’.
Contributors to c+de#8 are invited to submit Expressions of Interest for either the Themed Section or the Open Section by following the Steps to Submitting a Paper outlined below.
Expressions of Interest close on 30 April 2015. For contributors invited to submit papers, the deadline for full papers is 30 June 2015. c+de#8 will be published in mid-2016.

Open Section — call for papers
The Guest Editors and the c+de Editorial Board invite submissions to the Open Section exploring any aspect of contemporary craft and design. Expressions of Interest for the Open Section are assessed by the c+de Editorial Board. All invited submissions to the Open Section are peer reviewed and selected for publication in line with c+de procedures for the Themed Section.
Contributors to the Open Section of c+de#8 should follow the Steps to Submitting a Paper outlined below. Expressions of Interest close on 30 April 2015. For contributors invited to submit papers, the deadline for full papers is 30 June 2015.

Themed Section — call for papers: 
‘Global Parallels: Production and Craft in  

Fashion and Industrial Design Industries’

Guest Edited by Tiziana Ferrero-Regis , Rafael Gomez and Kathleen Horton of Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. They write: 

This special issue of c+de aims to explore questions of design and craft across fashion and industrial design industries in the current global context. In light of de-localisation of manufacturing practices and increasingly complex supply chains, the alternating place and meaning of ‘skills and craft’ in the context of these vast global industries, and the transformational role and status of the designer in a market that is equally flooded with fast fashion and disposable ‘on trend’ lifestyle products, we seek to examine how the two worlds of fashion and industrial design intersect in terms of production, craft and design.

The Wasteland collection by Maison Briz Vegas, Paris 2011,
 top and shorts made from recycled T-shirt fabric,
with original hand-block prints Photo: Carla van Lunn

The geographical distribution of manufacturing in the fashion industry and in industrial design has changed radically in the past 25 years, with much of the production and jobs shifting to low-income countries. The globalisation of production has generated long supply chains of many mediators that are employed neither to solve problems nor invent new styles. In the fashion industry, mediators ‘translate’ pre-existing trends into products at a pre-identified price point and for a specific market. In this respect the term fashion designer is something of an anachronism. Typically, in both fashion and industrial design, the notion of design is bound to the creative celebrity designer (think Karl Lagerfeld or Steve Jobs) who is synonymous with brand or corporate identity. In both industries, however, teams of ‘invisible’ design mediators, whose roles and responsibilities are defined largely through market and industrial imperatives, are scattered across the supply chain and the globe. 
 

Ellaspede Design Studios 2012, design process, sketching and conceptualisation
Photo: Tammy Law Photography, courtesy of Ellaspede

Design mediator, or product developer, is a rather less romantic term than designer, but one that has far more industry cachet. Industrial changes in both fashion and industrial design have shaped and re-oriented conceptual definitions of ‘design’, and introduced the product developer. Thus we argue that the currency of this term is vital in understanding not only the nature of contemporary fashion and industrial design practice, but also the status, profession and evolution of ‘design’ as it is applied across both fields.
We would also like to explore the rise of independent design practices that have purposefully engaged with a reinvigorated idea of craft and local production in response to globalised design production. In these models, design and manufacture is often reconnected via an engagement with craft practices. Therefore, while design and craft have often been posed as oppositional forces (one representing industrialisation, planning and management, and the other standing for the handmade, the material and the authentic), both the fields of fashion and industrial design are witnessing innovative new models of practice linking artisanal values with post-industrial design processes, thus instigating the rise of a new-age designer, one which indeed embraces a more holistic approach


This issue of c+de invites contributions in the following areas:

•  re-orientation of the definition of ‘design’ in fashion and industrial design

•  the emergence of the ‘product developer’ and ambiguities between design and product development

•  the spectrum of possibilities afforded by craft production

•  the creative process and diffusion of creativity along the supply chain

•  design and innovation in local manufacturing

•  design and/or product development in the future 

Issue #8 Guest Editors:
Dr Tiziana Ferrero-Regis is senior lecturer in fashion history and theory, School of Design, QUT. She has a professional background in advertising and fashion and has published in several journals on a range of topics that include memory and history in cultural representations (Recent Italian Cinema: Spaces, Contexts, Experiences 2009), the politics of fashion, the role of the designer, and fashion and film. From her visits to communities of women workers in the textile and clothing industry in India in the mid-
1980s, she has developed a research focus on the division of international labour and sustainability. 

Dr Rafael Gomez is an industrial designer and design researcher. He is a lecturer in industrial design, School of Design at QUT, and has practiced for over a decade in industrial design, graphic design, branding, high-end visualisation and projection graphics for small, medium and large enterprises. As a founding member of the Design and Emotion Australia Chapter, his research focus is the converging of design, emotions and experiences with health and medical devices in everyday life. He has written extensively on design and emotional experience with portable interactive devices and automotive design and continues to forge national and international collaborations with a view to establish research strength in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Kath Horton is head of fashion in the School of Design at QUT. Her research and teaching focuses on the aesthetics and politics of fashion across both historical and contemporary contexts. In 2010 Kath founded the stitchery collective, a platform for collaborative fashion design projects. Through both her theoretical and practice-based projects Kath explores the possibilities for alternative forms of engagement with fashion in the 21st century.

Steps to submitting a paper for c+de#8

Step 1
Themed Section: Expressions of Interest (one A4 page) are invited to be submitted before 30 April 2015 to jenny.deves@anu.edu.au. The Guest Editors will review abstracts and respond promptly to contributors.

Open Section: Expressions of Interest (one A4 page) are invited to be submitted before 30 April 2015 to jenny.deves@anu.edu.au. The Editorial Board will review abstracts and respond promptly to contributors. 

Step 2 
 If invited to submit a paper, contributors to both the Themed Section and the Open Section, are required to complete and submit their final papers by 30 June 2015 to jenny.deves@anu.edu.au. Submitted papers must meet the style requirements outlined in the c+de Author Guidelines and be accompanied by a c+de#8 Lodgement Registration Form (copies available from jenny.deves@anu.edu.au or the c+de blog http://craftdesignenquiry.blogspot.com.au/)

 

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Current Call for papers for c+de#7 (2015)
NOW OPEN Now CLOSED

“Landscape, Place and Identity in Craft and Design”

Guest Edited by Kay Lawrence

              The Editorial Board of craft + design enquiry welcomes Kay Lawrence as Guest Editor of Issue 7. Kay has outlined a theme  for this issue of “Landscape, Place and Identity in Craft and Design” which appears below.  She invites contributors to submit abstracts responding to this theme or to submit abstracts for the Open Section exploring subjects on any aspect of craft and design.  

              craft + design enquiry issue 7 will be published in mid-2015.  The Call for Papers for this issue is now closed.  For both the themed section and the open section the submission of abstracts closed on 30 April 2014 (see Step 1 below).  Following the review of submitted abstracts, those authors already invited to submit full papers, must do so by 30 June 2014.

 '

Steps to submitting a paper for c+de#7

This issue of craft + design enquiry will be published by ANU E Press in mid-2015. The call for papers closes on 30 June 2014. For both the Open Section and the Themed Section of issue #7, contributors are asked to follow these steps:

Step 1 — Kay Lawrence (Guest Editor) asks contributors to submit an abstract (1 A4 page) from now until 30 April 2014.  Kay will review abstracts for the Themed Section and  will respond promptly to contributors. The c+de Editorial Board will review abstracts for the Open Section and will respond promptly to contributors.  On the basis of these abstracts, contributors will be invited to submit full papers. Send your abstract to jenny.deves@anu.edu.au

Step 2 — If invited to submit a full paper, contributors are required to complete and submit their final papers by 30 June 2014. Email to jenny.deves@anu.edu.au. Papers must be accompanied by a Lodgement Registration Form.

For further information — A Lodgement Registration Form and Author Guidelines are available from jenny.deves@anu.edu.au or, view the c+de blog http://craftdesignenquiry.blogspot.com.au/

Open Section — call for papers

Kay Lawrence, Guest Editor issue 7, invites submissions to the Open Section exploring any aspect of contemporary craft and design.  Abstracts/EOIs for the Open Section are assessed by the Editorial Board of craft + design enquiry.  All invited submissions to the Open Section are peer reviewed and selected for publication in line with craft + design enquiry procedures for the Themed Section. The submission process is outlined above.

Themed Section — call for papers

Landscape, Place and Identity in Craft and Design

Kay Lawrence, Guest Editor of issue 7, invites submissions in response to the theme of “Landscape, Place and Identity in Craft and Design”.

 

Chrissie Houston in the Barmah forest NSW Photograph, Nici Cumpston 2001

           

The words used to describe the physical environment and our relationship to it, are always nuanced. The concept of 'place' refers to a particular portion of space that may or may not be occupied by people, while also encompassing the idea of dwelling, of living in a particular place. The word 'landscape', on the other hand, suggests a slightly different relationship of humankind to the environment. Derived from the 16th century Dutch word 'landschap', [i]signifying a unit of human occupation, that is, places shaped by human intervention and use, the contemporary meaning of landscape, 'natural or imaginary scenery as seen in a broad view', conceives this relationship in terms of human vision, of looking at a landscape rather than dwelling in a place. These words posit different relationships to the environment; landscapes encompassed by the gaze or places known through the intimacy of bodily sensation. Both words are culturally inflected. Our understanding of both landscapes and places is shaped by sensory experience as well as by memory and myth, and are thus bound up with complex questions about human identity.

If we accept that 'identity' is not a given, but constructed in response to an intricate array of social, cultural, economic and physical forces, then how we think of ourselves as individuals, communities or even nations, will be shaped in part by the places and landscapes where we live, and mediated through language. 'Language' here is interpreted broadly to refer to the codified systems of representation used in the practices of craft and design as well as written and oral language.

Craft and design practice, even when speculative, is engaged with the physical world, as practitioners work with its visual, material, spatial and temporal qualities to create objects and environments. Recently Glenn Adamson advocated the usefulness of considering craft as process as well as product. Craft is 'an approach, an attitude or an action … a way of doing things'.[ii] So craft and design in this context can also be considered as processes underpinned by particular ways of thinking and making.

This issue of craft + design enquiry invites papers that explore and reflect upon these ideas about landscape, place and identity in relation to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous craft and design practice in Australia and globally. Or, to put it another way, writers might wish to consider how craft and design practitioners have employed the visual, material, spatial and temporal processes of their disciplines to interrogate questions of identity in relation to concepts of place and landscape.

These questions are further elaborated below.

The Western landscape tradition is predominantly graphic and, although craft can be pictorial (like woven tapestry), craft also affords meaning through the actual materials used. How does craft reflect or interrogate ideas of landscape (or place) through the use of its physical substance; plant, sand, clay, timber and rock? Representations of landscape can take on ideological ramifications in the formation of identity. In white Australia, for example, the land has been variously constructed in the popular imagination as beneficent or lacking, dangerous and hostile, sometimes with gendered connotations as a nurturing or devouring mother. The concept of 'wilderness' has also been used to construct an understanding of the natural environment as untouched by people, separating humankind from the natural world and effacing the long history of Australia as a peopled land cared for and shaped by its Indigenous inhabitants. Writers might wish to consider how such tropes of landscape or place have been employed in craft and design to formulate or question concepts of identity, whether individual, community or national.

In Australia, the term 'country', with its many associated meanings that pertain to territory, nationhood and the rural, has taken on additional meaning to signify 'traditional, Indigenous land and sea with its embedded cultural values relating to the dreamtime'.[iii] The anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose tells of Indigenous elder, Daly Pulkara from the Victoria River district in far north Australia, speaking sadly and heavily of 'wild' country; country that bears the devastation of misuse and neglect of the introduced pastoral industry. He compares 'wild' to 'quiet' country 'in which all the care of generations of people is evident to those who know how to see it'.[iv] While craft practices have historically been used to express human connection to place through use of traditional processes and local materials, writers might also wish to consider how the idea of human obligation to place, implicit in Indigenous use of the word 'country', is being addressed in contemporary craft and design.

craft + design enquiry #7, invites papers reflecting upon these questions from practitioners, researchers and scholars across the broad field of contemporary craft and design practice and theory.

Kay Lawrence AM is a visual artist and writer and Adjunct Professor in the School of Art, Architecture and Design at the University of South Australia. She has an internationally recognised textiles practice with work held in many public collections including the National Gallery of Australia. Through her art-making she critically engages with matters of personal and community identity in relation to place, exploring ideas of loss and connection through a practice centred on hand-making and grounded in the materiality and meanings of textiles. She has completed a number of significant commissions for public spaces, and was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1989 for her work designing and coordinating the making of The Parliament House Embroidery. Her scholarly writing on contemporary textiles practice has been published by Berg Publishers, Cambridge Scholars Publishing and Melbourne University Press. 

Contributors to the Themed Section of c+de#7 should follow the Steps to submitting a paper for c+de#7 listed above. Submissions close on 30 June 2014.

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[i] S. Schama, 1995, Landscape and Memory, New York: Alfred A Knopf, p. 10.

[ii] G. Adamson, 2007, Thinking Through Craft, Oxford: Berg, p. 4.

[iii] Bill Arthur & Frances Morphy (eds), 2005, Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia, Macquarie University: Macquarie Library Ltd, p. 262.

[iv] D. Bird Rose, 2004, Reports from a Wild Country, Sydney: UNSW Press, p. 4.

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Calls for Papers for issue #6, 2014 

 Calls for Papers Closed

Call for  New OPEN Section

craft + design enquiry has introduced a  new OPEN section to complement the THEMED section in each issue of the journal.  The OPEN section will publish selected papers on any aspect of contemporary craft and design research. All papers submitted to the OPEN section will be peer-reviewed in accordance with existing craft + design enquiry procedures. Papers will be selected to go forward for peer-reviewing on submission of a completed paper. Submission Closedfor publication in c+de#6 (2014)

For further information, a Submission Lodgement Form and Author Guidelines contact jenny.deves@anu.edu.au

Call for Themed Section  -  Craft · Material · Memory

Guest edited by Anne Brennan and Patsy Hely

Craft is often invoked as an antidote to change, its materials and practices described and inscribed in terms of continuity and tradition. However, this is a comparatively recent idea that has its roots in the turbulent moment of the Industrial Revolution, a way of negotiating and at times resisting the huge economic, social and cultural changes that were sweeping Europe at the time. Some argue that we are currently experiencing a similar period of profound upheaval as we grapple with the implications of climate change, globalisation and the impact of the information revolution on our societies and cultures. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this period of change is mirrored by a resurgence of interest in relationships between craft and memory, particularly in relation to the specific histories of certain practices, and also to the histories and experiences of individuals. This issue of craft + design enquiry invites papers that will re-examine and re-evaluate relationships between craft, materials and memory at a time of global change.

One possible thread of enquiry might address material histories, engaging with the way in which the histories, usages and even composition and production of traditional craft materials has shifted and changed over time. What might be the implications of these shifts and changes, and how have contemporary political, social, cultural and environmental exigencies shaped the way in which such materials are made, used and considered today?

Another thread of enquiry might explore relationships between craft and the archive. As museums and archives shift and change in response to the contemporary world, new ways of viewing objects and different interpretive strategies are constantly in play. Craft and design scholarship has expanded considerably over the last decades. How are crafted objects in collections being differently interpreted and understood in the light of these changes?

A third line of enquiry might attend to relationships between craft, memory and individual histories. Autobiographical strategies on the part of both makers and writers about craft developed as a way of undermining the imposition of the aesthetic priorities of the fine arts on craft, and as a way of investing craft’s objects with meanings that recognise the way in which objects circulate through lives and cultures. The editors are particularly interested in papers that re-evaluate and re-imagine these strategies, in particular papers that question some of the more comforting connections that have been made between craft’s histories and practices and autobiography as the locus of an unproblematic and idealised past.

— Anne Brennan and Patsy Hely, Editors craft + design enquiry #6

          Anne Brennan is an artist and writer and the head of the Art Theory Workshop of the ANU School of Art. A founding member of Gray Street Workshop, she has written extensively on the visual arts, craft and design. Her research interests encompass the ways in which private and public memories coalesce in institutions such as the memorial and the archive. She has undertaken a number of projects in archives and museums, including Secure the Shadow at the Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney, with Anne Ferran in 1995 and Archives and the Everyday at the Australian War Memorial in 1996. She is currently engaged in a writing project about memory and place.

          Patsy Hely is an academic and artist working in the field of ceramics and is Convenor of the Graduate Coursework and Honours programmes at the ANU School of Art. Her work is held in many national public collections, in the V & A (London) and in the Musee de   Mariemont (Belgium); she has exhibited widely in Australia and in a number of countries internationally. Her PhD, 'Ceramics and the Articulation of Place', was awarded in 2007 and           she is currently engaged in a project investigating early Australian ceramic objects and ideas about place and identity. She has worked at a number of institutions, including Sydney University Tin Sheds, the College of Fine Arts (COFA) and Southern Cross University.

Steps to submitting a paper to the themed section of  c+de#6

This issue of craft + design enquiry will be published by ANU E Press mid 2014. The Call for Papers Closed

Step 1: Anne Brennan and Patsy Hely (guest editors) ask contributors to submit an abstract from now until 30 April 2013. They will respond promptly to contributors about their proposed papers. Send your abstract to jenny.deves@anu.edu.au

Step 2: Following advice from the guest editors, contributors are required to complete and submit their final papers by 30 June 2013. Email jenny.deves@anu.edu.au  for a Submission Lodgement Form to be submitted with your paper.