RUUKKU call: PERIPHERIES

The thirteenth RUUKKU ponders the conceptual, methodical, concrete and practical peripheries in arts. What kinds of roles do margins, peripheries or fringes have in arts and artistic research? Can artistic research itself be conceived as a peripheral zone on the edge of the rationalistic-scientific world? What consequences are expected to follow when the rational world-views are challenged and new kinds of material and discursive spaces emerge and are formed? How can fringes or peripheries be understood in the realm of sensuous, sensable or physical?

Peripheries and margins may be pondered on as concrete or immaterial fields, phenomenon, states of mind, practices and/or epistemologies that are defined as ‘marginal'. Peripheries are always related to things and phenomenon positioned as ‘mainstream'. While challenging the prevailing configurations – how are peripheries, in turn, challenged themselves? Is it possible to reassess the current conceptions and borders stemming from the so called normative thought, visualisation and spatio-temporal representation, through ideas and activities that manifest their status as ‘peripheral'? How do different areas in arts and research get to be positioned as ‘peripheral' or ‘central' in relation to the conditions, structures, contexts and situations created by society and the surrounding communities? What is the role of marginalities in the ontological "turn" where dualisms are cast aside as the focus has turned towards transformation, change and non-essentialistic perception of the world?
 
RUUKKU Peripheries editors invite artist-researchers from varying fields to discuss how can non-mainstream or marginal thought – such as experimental theory, improvisatory methods or other non-conventional approaches – open up new kinds of views into prevailing debates and conceptions.
 
This thematic number calls for questioning the borders of peripheries themselves, or in other words: the limits of borderlines, and marginality of marginal. We hope for expositions from artist-researchers from different fields of for example the following themes, however not limited to the ones listed:
 
Peripheral spaces, sites, practices, epistemologies and conceptions
 
Fringe in arts
 
Materiality and immateriality of marginality
 
Spatial and temporal peripheries
 
Periphery and vision
 
Marginal-mainstream relations
 
The issue is edited by Maiju Loukola, Mari Mäkiranta and Eija Timonen. We ask you to write your proposals for research expositions in the Research Catalogue (RC) at www.researchcatalogue.net. Note! The RC requires user rights and registration (see ‘register'). Please submit your proposals via RC (‘submit to publication', ‘submit unlimited publication to', and ‘ruukku') no later than 1st of March 2019. Complete expositions are to be submitted by 15th May 2019. In need for additional information, contact maiju.loukola@aalto.fi
 
RUUKKU is a multidisciplinary, multilingual, peer-reviewed journal on artistic research launched in 2013. RUUKKU is published and supported by the University of the Arts Helsinki, Aalto school of Arts, Design and Architecture and the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland, with a particular focus on multi-lingual publication. The primary languages of publication are Finnish, Swedish and English.