ARCHIVO PAPERS JOURNAL
V 3, 2023 | ISSN 2184-9218

"INDIGENOUS GAZE: Decolonising Visual Cultures"

Edited by Dr. Polina Golovátina-Mora and Amanda Fayant

The editors of Archivo Papers Journal are pleased to announce the third volume: “Indigenous Gaze: Decolonising Visual Cultures“. This volume aims at drawing attention to the diversity in the meaning of the image beyond the Occidental visual culture and opening a space to discuss alternative sensitivities, aesthetics, meanings, and contexts in photography, filmmaking and animation. It wishes to address the historical, cultural, social, and ontological injustices and disparities embedded within colonial reality, its mentality and the gaze ingrained in it.

While there are increasingly more publications that call for the necessity of decolonising the practices of seeing, listening, sensing, knowing and being, we believe there are not yet enough spaces to discuss, revisit and deconstruct the dominating and imposed gaze. As in the case of the male gaze, conceptualised by Laura Mulvey with her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” first published in 1975, Occidental, colonial gaze establishes the use-value based instrumental and homogenising world-view. This volume of Archivo Papers Journal searches to explore what makes the indigenous gaze in visual artistic practices, in response to colonialism, despite it and as a way of healing from the damage it cost.
We use the term indigenous only as the most widely known word while recognising its possible derogative and inaccurate connotation, and encourage authors to question the conventional terminology and use the more adequate terminology. We recognize and regret that publishing this volume in English may discourage some indigenous authors to submit their contributions but we still hope to attract as many voices as possible. The editors of “Indigenous Gaze: Decolonising Visual Cultures” invite scholars, artists and educators working with indigenous research methodologies and communities, particularly indigenous artists, activists and scholars from all over the world to share their insights, experiences and analyses of photography, filmmaking, and graphics. We hope that this volume can awaken new sensibilities and question the dominating approaches to the visual artistic and social canons.

The questions/topics we propose to address include but are not limited to the following:

How indigenous cosmovisions and relations with the communities and territories:
— shape aesthetics, themes, storylines in photography and visual production in general,
— affect the relations between different media,
— question the authorship in production.

How traumatic history and silencing practices of the present are reflected in the visual art by indigenous artists?
— How is photography used as forms of activism and self-expression
— What does image mean for indigenous communities?
— What is the role of found footage, experimental visual practices, colours, sound, acting, relations between the analogue and digital technologies? 


Editors welcome submissions of both written articles and visual essays.

Proposals must be unpublished complete essays, which have not been published in whole or in part in another publication. The proposals received should not be submitted to another journal while the submission process at Archivo Papers Journal lasts. Interested parties should submit their proposals online by registering at www.archivopapersjournal.com.

Submitted proposals must follow the journal’s instructions for authors.

Archivo Papers Journal is committed to peer-review integrity. After an initial assessment of suitability by the editor(s), your paper will be double-blind peer-reviewed by independent, anonymous expert referees.

If interested, selected contributors will have the opportunity of joining the Archivo Research Network 2023, a platform where they will be able to engage in discussions and complementary activities with an interdisciplinary group of scholars, artists, and other professionals working on this volume’s theme.

Important Dates:
Call for Papers announcement – 24 June 2022
Submission deadline – 15 October 2022
Results announcement – December 2022