Call for Submissions: Thresholds 43. SCANDALOUS

In 1939, architect George W. Stoddard understood these stakes well when writing his apology to the AIA Board of Directors. “There are times in every man’s life when he does things on the spur of the moment that he later regrets,” Stoddard implored after flouting a professional ban on advertising. The popular newspaper tabloid from the following decades was trafficked in one form of the scandal surrounding the crime of regrettable deeds: originating in the private sphere and then splashed in the public one. These stories trade in schadenfreude while simultaneously performing in the interest of the public good.

Stoddard’s delinquent act barely raises the contemporary pulse. Today, shocking headlines proliferate. If scandal shapes and reflects the historical moment, what does this de-sensitization say about our current condition? Many artists and architects operate fully conscious of an anaesthetized public. Thresholds 43: Scandalous seeks to investigate the relevance of scandal in creative practice. Content should confront a history of devious schemes, spectacular headlines, and pulp fiction by engaging them in critical conversation.

Scandal, we believe, is the red flag of every cultural movement. Sin segues into standards. Take Corbusier’s Plan Voisin and subsequent tower in the park offshoots, or Mapplethorpe’s The Perfect Moment that opened a new era of artistic provocations concerning public funding and censorship. This potential for transition, from shocking to ubiquitous, leads the editors of Thresholds to subvert a pursuit of the ’goods’ and instead ask: what is ’bad’? How does scandal emerge from or act counter to institutional and social contracts? How do changing forms of media, from the catchy hashtag to the news alert, incite slander or even revolution? Why does scandal destroy some while elevating others? Which sites are labelled crime scenes?
 

Thresholds 43 seeks papers and projects of all kinds that complicate and provoke the idea of ’scandal’ through scholarly discourse or inherently scandalous content.
Submission Guidelines.- April 30, 2014.
All material should be submitted to thresholds@mit.edu.
Nathan Friedman and Ann Lui, Editor.

Thresholds editors produce one independently themed journal a year. The best submissions from fine arts, design, graphics, media arts and sciences, film, photography, architecture and theory are selected based on their holistic fit around the given theme. Graphic and pictorial works play as strong a role in each journal as do works of critical writing.