made during the artist’s solo residency at Kolaj Institute, 24 March-6 April 2025
CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS
Why Collage? Anthropology and Art in a Fragmented World
Edited by Cathy Greenhalgh and Susan Falls
Deadline: Friday, 15 August 2025
Editors Cathy Greenhalgh and Susan Falls are currently seeking chapter proposals for work to be included in a book on the anthropology of collage (in relation to and as against assemblage and montage and within multi-modal approaches). Collage (digital and analogue) as both material and method offers radical approaches to construction and fieldwork, especially with difficult subjects and collaboration. Collage continues to be under-theorised whilst many anthropologists and artists are using it as technique. Issues of justice, ecology, and identity can be well served by using functions of collage: for example deliberate appropriation, cut-up, layered and juxtaposed components, elements of the surreal, absurd and disjunctive use of recycled, waste or previously less visible shaping. Collage has been noted in its use for therapeutic and community empowerment and activism (Farebrother, 2009; Kanyer, 2021) and to be effective in revealing the operations of “undercommons” knowledges (Harney and Moten, 2023). Collage has arisen at times of war, pandemic, collapse and trauma (Banash, 2013; Etgar, 2017; Flood et al 2009). Collage can be cheap to produce, require minimal expertise and therefore can be realised between multiple collaborators and co-authors. This is also why it is often not taken seriously or used as simple ‘decor’, but it can also reveal assumptions, undermine persistent stories, and establish new historiography. This can be a way of building community, rethinking cultural ancestry, and acknowledging equality of different sources of information and knowledge. Material processes can be seen as collaging events and used to point to relationships with the non-human and environmental infrastructure. Collage is a “bordering” mechanism uncovering movement and networks of displacement.
The editors are envisioning a book that contains approximately 20 chapters of up to 5000 words each plus an image allowance.
Proposals for chapters should include a title, an abstract between 250-350 words, one image, and your brief bio (no more than 100 words).
Please send materials to sfalls@scad.edu and cathygreenhalghcinema@gmail.com
The deadline to submit proposals is Friday, 15 August 2025.
(The text for this Call for Chapter Proposals was provided by the book editors, who are solely responsible for its content. Please direct all questions to the email addresses above.)
REFERENCES
Banash, D. (2013). Collage Culture: Readymades, Meaning and the Age of Consumption. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Farebrother, R. (2009). The Collage Aesthetic in the Harlem Renaissance. Abingdon: Routledge.
Etgar, Y. (2019). essay in art catalogue Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland.
Flood R. et al. (2009) Essay in art catalogue (not online) Collage: The Unmonumental Picture. London: Merrell.
Harney, S. and Moten, F (2013). The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. New York: Minor Compositions.
Kanyer, L. (2021). Collage Care: Transforming Emotions and Life Experiences with Collage. Yakima, Washington: Laurie Kanyer.