Call for Papers: The Itinerant Illustrator

Call for Papers: The Itinerant Illustrator

02/27/2014 · by Spike Dennis · in ,

JOURNAL OF ILLUSTRATION/ /ILLUSTRATION RESEARCH/ /INDIA 2014

The Itinerant Illustrator

Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, India

18th and 19th December 2014

The 5th International Illustration Research event joins forces with the peer reviewed Journal of Illustration and is hosted by Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore. The symposium this year will focus on the praxis of illustration in an expanded field, including histories of local/regional illustrative practices and the traversing of diverse media platforms.

Deadline for abstracts: Friday 18th July

Through talks, workshops, performances and exhibited works, we will consider the illustrator in terms of the ‘habitual travelling’ that he or she undertakes. The itinerant nature of the illustrator is evident in the praxis of illustration itself- the oscillation of thought between word and image, page and screen, hand and eye, dream and reality.

Occupying many roles and moving dynamically between them, the itinerant illustrator is an interpreter, a translator, an illuminator, as well as a storyteller, enquirer, performer and a pictorial juggler of ideas. The nomadic nature of the illustrator is to wander between disciplines, search for new contexts and to make images not on one, but several different platforms within an eternal evolution of technologies.

The multi-sited nature of illustration, along with illustrators’ journeys between several positions and places, also involves images that travel. We would like to investigate the fluidity of visual codes and languages, the translations, adaptations and hybrid practices that respond to the movement of cultures within the global village. How are images made and read within shifting regional and trans national contexts? How can we use illustration itself as a methodology to shed light on the praxis of illustration in these multiple contexts?

300 word proposals for 20 minute academic papers and practice based presentations are invited including (but not limited to) the following topics:

  • Illustration within local and hybrid cultures
  • Illustrated Narratives on transnational platforms
  • Image and space – murals, installations and other site-specific images
  • The illustration as palimpsest: reinterpretations of received bodies of knowledge
  • The itinerant storyteller – the book, the scroll, the kaavad
  • Illustration’s relationship to technology
  • Memory and place in illustration practice
  • Illustration as performance and dialogue
  • Local/Regional approaches to illustration practice
  • Post colonialism and illustration
  • The illustrator as tourist within global image culture

Please email abstracts along with your name, affiliation and email address to: Sandeep Chandra Ashwath (), DesdemonaMcCannon (), and and Anna Bhushan ().

Selected papers and presentations will be considered for publication in forthcoming issues of the peer reviewed Journal of Illustration, published by Intellect books.

Deadline for abstracts: Friday 18th July

Click here to download this call for papers a PDF document.