InTensions, a new, peer-reviewed, open access e-journal published biannually out of York’s Fine Arts Cultural Studies Program, has just released it second issue. The journal is an initiative that brings together interventions by scholars and artists whose work deals with the theatricality of power, corporealities of structural violence and sensory regimes.
The second issue of InTensions, "Uncommon Ground: Everyday Aesthetics and Intensionality of the Public Realm" is edited by guest editor Professor Daniel Ortega of the School of Architecture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Right: An image in the e-journal InTensions by artist Kristen Reynolds
“In proposing ‘Everyday Aesthetics and the Intensionality of the Public Realm’ as the theme for this issue, it was my objective to invite discussion on the relative, discursive, embodied and performative dynamics that complicate hegemonic dictates on how to live life in various specific contexts,” writes Ortega. “Essentially, this issue is dedicated to what Henri Lefebvre has termed the art of living. The compilation of articles and works of art featured in this issue act as an ensemble of procedures investigating and commenting upon the structural, political, corporeal and ideological regimes that form nuanced power structures.”
Ortega continues the discussion started in his editorial in the article “The Ecology of Practice: Spatial Tactics, the Present City and the Ideology of Sustainability”, while Professor Kofi Boone of North Carolina State University’s College of Design explores “The Resilience of Ruinous Futures: Race, Urbanism and Ecology in the Post-Jim Crow South”. Scott Stoneman of McMaster University looks at “Obesity, Health Advocacy and the Imaginary Geographies of Illness.” There are several more articles touching on this issue’s theme along with original artwork.
“Since the publication of seminal works such as French sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life and French scholar Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life, the ingredient practices of the ‘everyday’ have emerged as a critical field of inquiry within a variety of disciplines,” says InTensions co-managing editor Elysée Nouvet, a York social anthropology doctoral student and a Toronto filmmaker. “The resulting discursive montage often counters narratives imposed or implied by existing power systems. This issue, ‘Uncommon Ground: Everyday Aesthetics and the Intensionality of the Public Realm’, crafts new understandings of the public realm, taking off from the mediation between social structures and the subjective practices of those who occupy those places.”
InTensions is a combination of articles and works of arts. Professor Alberto Guevara of York’s Fine Arts Cultural Studies Program is the co-managing editor alongside Nouvet.
The next issue of InTensions, "Suspended", is in the works.
For more information, visit the InTensions Web site.