Bezalel is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design, Jerusalem. The journal wishes to act as a platform for a critical discussion of issues associated with visual studies in the fields of art, design, architecture, and fashion. Two issues will be published annually.
Editor in chief: Ory Bartal
Editor: Dalya Yafa Markovich
Open Call
About Critique
While it shuffles the conventional patterns of discourse, critique has taken a central place in visual thought and practice. Critique challenged the perception of the visual space as an autonomous platform, or at the very least, one that is indifferent to structures, "voices", narratives, and forces. Society, economy and ecology, genocide, sex, and atom bombs have all been the subject of the visual critical shift. The second issue of the magazine will be dedicated to the examination of the visual space as a critical discourse and practice, and to the examination of the role critique holds in the field of art and culture. Whilst doing so, it will look at the manners in which critique was flooded by the industry of capitalist culture, the new technological spaces, and a postmodernist torrent of discourses, words, and images. In addition, the issue will look at the critical attacks on critique accused of sanctioning and normalizing binary juxtapositions that distinguish the existing from the ideal; the perception of critique as (always) tantamount to the desired, the ideal, and the truth; and examining critique as a "bullying" disciplinary practice in which the liberating act becomes the new oppressive hegemony. The discussion of the manifestations of critique, its subjects, and the ethical challenge it offers, will be conducted through selected articles, essays, and images from the fields of visual art, architecture and design.
The issue seeks to discuss these practices through the following topics:
- The manners in which the critical logic is encoded in the visual space
- The semiotic transformation that critique had undergone from a term that referred to righting social wrongs to a term that concerns the manifestation and fulfillment of the self
- The possibility of cultural critique in a reality entrenched in global forces and the logic of late capitalism
- The role of critique in an era in which everything has become the subject of critique and visual critique is all pervasive
- The dangers of the perception of critique as tantamount to the truth and the ethical (and mythical) status it had gained
- The transformation of critique into a site of political and cultural policing
Scholars and artists are invited to submit articles and essays ranging between 3000-6000 words (see guidelines for articles preparation).
Manuscripts should be sent to the editorial secretary via email: m.visual@post.bezalel.ac.il before 1.10.2014
https://journal.bezalel.ac.il/sites/default/files/pdf/call-for-papers-eng.pdf">