FYI,
Kunstlicht, vol. 35 (2014), no.1 Deadline proposals: 10 November 2013
Publication: Spring 2014
?So this is the world, we say, // looking out.? A deceptively simple
observation posed by the poet Wayne Dodd, leads us to reconsider the window
from a twenty-first century perspective. In the first issue of 2014, Kunstlicht
will examine and theorize the complex triangle in which viewer, window, and
view interact. In the Renaissance, the window view was used to exert control
over the world of representation. An imaginary window framed a scene, uniting
the depicted world and the world of the viewer, according to Leone Battista
Alberti in 1435. The viewer was expected to adopt the painter's authorial focal
point, and in doing so, see what he saw. The viewer again becomes part of the
scene in Gustave Caillebotte's Young Man at His Window (1875), but the presence
of a depicted spectator challenges the presumed position of the painter and the
viewer. The depicted spectator, a young man seen from behind, stands in front
of a large window with a French balcony and looks out over Paris. A ro
w of forcefully straight facades is in line with his gaze. However, the angle
from which the scene is depicted renders it impossible for the viewer to see
what he sees: Baron Haussmann's sweepingly modern, new-world Paris. Unable to
participate in the view, our gaze disappointedly returns to the front of the
canvas and settles on the lone man's dark-clad back, which suddenly seems
painfully exposed. In the midst of this frustrated dialogue a sense of
detachment arises, transforming the ostensibly dominant man into an
outsider.The notion of the window as lens makes place for the notion of the
window as kaleidoscope in the early twentieth century (Robert Delaunay; Henri
Matisse); furthermore the window acquires a sculptural form (Marcel Duchamp;
Joseph Cornell). James Turrell's 'skyspaces' deconstruct the viewer-window-view
triad by presenting an aperture in the roof that appears not only to offer a
view of the sky, but also to dislocate the image of the void onto an imaginary
pane. T
he window serves a performative function. New technologies provide the window
with a digital counterpart, and whereas until the start of the twentieth
century a single window revealed a single image, we can say the current period
is characterized by a manifold of simultaneously performing windows. Our living
environment is increasingly becoming a hyperscape, but does this mean the end
of perspective? Regardless of its form, the window continues to frame
ideologies and direct gazes.Kunstlicht's board of editors welcomes proposals
for articles that consider the relationship between the view, the viewer and
the metaphorical, physical, or digital window. Both advances to theory as well
as case studies ? in the fields of visual art and architecture, but also film,
new media, and literature ? will be considered. Proposals (200 ? 300 words)
with attached r?sum?s can be submitted to redac...@tijdschriftkunstlicht.nl
until 10 November 2013. Selected authors will be invited to write a 2,000 ?
3,000-word paper (excluding notes). Papers may be written either in English
or in Dutch, although we insist that native Dutch speakers write in Dutch.
Authors who publish in Kunstlicht will receive three complimentary copies.
Kunstlicht does not provide an author?s honorarium. Two years following
publication, papers will be submitted to the freely accessible online archive.
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