CALL FOR PAPERS: ISSS SURREALISMOS BOGOTÁ 2025

Convocatoria – Julio 23, 24 y 25

Call for papers – July 23, 24 y 25

In 2025 the seventh conference of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS) will be held in Bogotá, Colombia, continuing with the aim of facilitating interdisciplinary and interregional exchanges on surrealism. The ISSS promotes the study of surrealism in all its meanings and dimensions, and presents new approaches to its artistic, literary and other forms of expression. The ISSS conference contributes to the creation of an international network of researchers, artists and writers from all continents working in this field.

ISSS Surrealismos Bogot á 2025 will take place in Bogotá, Colombia, on July 23, 24 and 25, 2025, on the campus of the Universidad de los Andes.

Across geographies, languages, and histories, the Global South has engaged surrealism as a multi-faceted tool of defiance, subversion, and connection. With Bogotá as the site of the 2025 ISSS conference, there is renewed opportunity to foreground artists in Latin America and the Caribbean and their solidarities with non-aligned and (de)colonized artists and collectives around the world. The Colombian painter Heriberto Cogollo, for example, was inspired by a realm of the invisible found among sorcerers in Senegal (nohors ); the FIARI manifesto written in Mexico City by Diego Rivera and André Breton found strong support among artists in Egypt; Cuban artists including Wifredo Lam and Agustin Cárdenas participated in anti-Algerian war happenings such as Anti-procès in Paris; and Cuban intellectual Lydia Cabrera translated the poetry of dissident Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka. In the meantime, international exiles residing and visiting throughout the Americas participated in liberation and civil rights movements in the region and beyond, harnessing surrealist potentials against dictatorships, imperialism, hetero-cis-normativity, and their coincident erasures.

Martinicans Suzanne Césaire and later Édouard Glissant viewed European surrealists as “fellow travelers,” and new surrealist activities emerged in places including Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico into the 1960s and beyond. Yet the Americas have also been a ground of generative and tense critiques and even rejections of surrealism, from Frida Kahlo’s statement that she “painted her own reality” to the literary movements of the Marvelous Real and Magical Realism, to later scholarly discourses dismissing any surrealist framework for the region. With these concerns in mind, ISSS Surrealismos Bogot á 2025 seeks papers and panels to address and nuance transregional collaborations in Latin America and beyond, alongside presentations regarding surrealists and surrealist groups throughout the Global South and in exile. Expanded topics for the conference include (but are not limited to):

• Transatlantic and transpacific surrealisms

• Anti-Colonial projects throughout the histories and geographies of surrealism

• Surrealism and anti-war projects

• Feminist collaborations and critiques

• Queer Surrealisms

• Legacies, Critiques, and Inspirations: The Marvelous Real, Magical Realism, Afro-Surrealism, Afro-Futurism, Latinx Futurism, the New Baroque, Antropofagia.

• Contemporary responses to Surrealism and Anthropology/Archeology

Proposals for individual presentations (20 minutes) should include a 250-word abstract, title, professional affiliation (if applicable), email address, and a brief bio of the presenter. We especially encourage proposals for pre-organized panels consisting of 3-4 papers; these proposals should include a supporting paragraph explaining the rationale for the panel with a title. Roundtables and other alternative formats are also welcome. We encourage proposals from PhD candidates working on topics related to surrealism, as well as from independent artists, filmmakers, poets, and writers interested in presenting their work in an academic context.

The languages of intervention will be Spanish, English and French.

Submit your proposals before February 28, 2025 in the following link: http://facart.es/isss25

Answers will be given before March 30, 2025

For more information write to: isssbogota@uniandes.edu.co

Organizing Committee of the ISSS Bogotá 2025:

María Clara Bernal (University of the Andes, Bogotá)

Terri Geis (New York University Abu Dhabi)

Advisory Committee

Tessel Bauduin (University of Amsterdam)

Andrea Gremels (Europa-Universität Viadrina, Germany)

Felicity Gee (University of Exeter, UK)

Camilo Hernandez (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)

Juanita Solano (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)