Call for Papers | I.Con – International Journal of Image Theory and Practice

Call for Papers – I.CON – International Journal of Image Theory and Practice

Special Issue: Image as Practice: Performance, Politics, and Visual Cultures

Submission Deadline: 31 October 2026

Accepted languages: Italian, English.

Contributions should be submitted to ariemma.t@accademialecce.edu.it in .doc or .docx format. Manuscripts must be anonymized in order to ensure the integrity of the double-blind peer review process.

The journal welcomes submissions ranging from 15,000 to 40,000 characters (including spaces).

In addition to the anonymized manuscript, authors are requested to submit a separate document containing:

* an abstract in English (maximum 150 words);

* three keywords in English;

* the author's details (full name, institutional affiliation, and e-mail address).

If the submission includes images, photographs, illustrations, or any other visual material, authors must hold the relevant reproduction rights or have obtained the necessary permissions for publication. By submitting a manuscript, authors accept full responsibility for the lawful use of all visual materials and agree to indemnify the journal and the publisher against any claims arising from copyright infringement or violations of third-party rights.

All submissions that pass the initial editorial screening will undergo a double-blind peer review process.

Authors are required to follow the guidelines of the Chicago Manual of Style:

[https://it.bul.sbu.usi.ch/learning/chicago_note](https://it.bul.sbu.usi.ch/learning/chicago_note)

Theme of Issue No. 2: The Image as Practice

Contemporary image theory has progressively challenged the idea that images are merely objects of representation or systems of signs awaiting interpretation. Over the past decades, visual culture has increasingly demonstrated that images are, above all, practices: they are produced, performed, shared, manipulated, inhabited, and embodied through both human bodies and technologies. Images are not simply what we see, but the very means through which we act, establish relationships, organize social life, and transform our experience of the world.

Against this backdrop, the second special issue of I.CON – International Journal of Image Theory and Practice seeks to investigate the image as practice, bringing into dialogue philosophy, anthropology, art history, semiotics, performance studies, media studies, political theory, fashion studies, game studies, and artistic research. Rather than asking what images mean, this issue explores their operative dimension: how they act, the forms of life they generate, the behaviors they enable, and the social and cultural dispositifs they help construct.

This shift from the image-as-object to the image-as-practice finds one of its principal theoretical foundations in the performative turn, inaugurated by J. L. Austin's theory of speech acts and further developed by Judith Butler, according to whom symbolic acts contribute to the production of reality itself. Along the same lines, Erika Fischer-Lichte's aesthetics of performance and Richard Schechner's theory of performance as restored behavior interpret images, gestures, and actions as performative events capable of transforming subjects, communities, and cultural contexts.

Semiotics has likewise shifted its attention from the internal structure of signs to the practices through which meaning is produced. From Umberto Eco's theory of interpretation to Algirdas Julien Greimas's generative semiotics, from the reflections of Jean-Marie Floch and Paolo Fabbri on practices of signification to Jacques Fontanille's semiotics of practices and forms of life, the image emerges as a dynamic operator embedded within social action rather than as a text to be deciphered.

At the same time, anthropology has demonstrated that images are inseparable from gestures, rituals, material culture, and everyday practices. Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice, Michel de Certeau's reflections on the practices of everyday life, and Tim Ingold's ecological anthropology have all contributed to understanding images as situated activities rooted in bodies, environments, and techniques. Hans Belting's anthropology of the image and Alfred Gell's theory of the agency of images have further shown that images function as cultural actors: they shape social relationships, produce effects, orient behavior, and intervene in collective life. The image thus becomes a practice through which human beings inhabit the world, transmit memory, construct identities, and give form to experience.

The political dimension of images represents one of the most dynamic fields of contemporary scholarship. Jacques Rancière has argued that images participate in the distribution of the sensible, redefining what can be seen, said, and thought within the public sphere. Ariella Azoulay has reconceived photography as a civic relationship rather than merely a representational medium, while Nicholas Mirzoeff's theory of countervisuality understands images as instruments of conflict, resistance, and social transformation. From this perspective, images actively produce new regimes of visibility and new forms of citizenship.

Digital technologies have profoundly transformed the production and use of images. Social media, algorithmic platforms, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and immersive environments have turned images into interfaces for action, participatory devices, and experiential spaces. Within game studies, scholars such as Espen Aarseth, Ian Bogost, and Miguel Sicart have demonstrated that videogame images are inseparable from interaction, procedurality, and player agency. Game images are not merely viewed; they are explored, inhabited, traversed, and performed.

Fashion likewise provides a privileged field for understanding the image as practice. Beyond representing individual and collective identities, fashion organizes bodies, constructs cultural belonging, produces social rituals, and stages forms of life. From Roland Barthes's semiology of fashion to the work of Joanne Entwistle, Caroline Evans, and Elizabeth Wilson, and more recent studies on digital fashion, avatars, and virtual garments, fashion images emerge as performative dispositifs in which aesthetics, consumption, politics, and technology converge.

Finally, contemporary artistic practices, from relational aesthetics and participatory art to performance, immersive installations, video art, and AI-generated artworks, progressively dissolve the distinction between image, action, and experience. The image becomes a shared practice, a relational environment, and a space for social and technological experimentation.

Building on these perspectives, this issue welcomes theoretical, historical, methodological, and practice-based contributions that explore the image as a performative, anthropological, political, technological, and cultural practice across different media, historical contexts, and disciplinary traditions.