The Launch of JAWS 1.1 will be on Wednesday 18th March in the Green Room at Chelsea College of Arts. Starting at 2pm, we will be including workshops on submitting and reviewing for journals, and a panel discussion with UAL based journal editors. We will also have a special guest from Intellect​ to tell us about the benefits and pitfalls of starting a journal of your own.

All are welcome but if you are not part of University of the Arts London please RSVP to [email protected]

We have a limited amount of small bursaries towards travel for JAWS editors, reviewers and contributors. 

JAWS Launch 18th March

2:00 Welcome and A general introduction to JAWS and thanks to the contributors and those who helped make this issue possible. Plans for the next issue 
 
2:20 James Campbell from Intellect will talk a little about  of Intellect and the process of setting up a journal
 
2:45 Workshop in two Parts: Kritika Dhariwal and Ruth Solomons will talk about artwork in journals - how do we publish practice based research? Rob and Frank will lead a practical peer review workshop
 
3:20 Coffee Break 
 
3:30 Panel Discussion with Editors of other journals:

Chris Smith - The Journal of Visual Arts Practice
Donatella Barbieri - Journal of Critical Costume
Ruth Solomons - JAWS Journal
Helena Vilalta - AfterAll Journal
 
4:30 Questions and Close
 
5:00 - 6:30 Drinks and Lovely Times
 

FrankPeschier is a PhD student at CCW graduate School who wears many University hats including administrator of Performance Research Network, Creative Opportunities assistant, associate lecturer and member of Process Arts. She is also the founder and Editor in Chief of JAWS: The Journal of Arts Writing by Students. The bi-annual journal was originally published through funding from the student union before being picked up by self-proclaimed publishers of original thinking, Intellect.
If you would like to submit a piece, peer review or find out more about JAWS please email Frank at [email protected]. The current call for papers will run until the end of April 2015. This article was originally published on the CCW Graduate school blog

 In the back of a taxi heading to the Intellect Books Editors convention a few weeks ago, I encountered another UAL based Editor. Discussing our babies, I started to explain JAWS, the Journal of Arts Writing by Students in my best proud mother tone. ‘Oh that’, she sighed ‘I think I’ve seen you speak about that about five times’.

 I reiterate this anecdote, not to prove that everyone is bored of me popping up around UAL in various guises but not how much pushing you have to do to get a project like JAWS off the ground. JAWS began as an extra curricular project lead by myself and other members of CCW’s MRes Arts Practice. We felt we had spotted a gap in the market for a ‘studio space’ for academic arts writing. An experimental platform where students and first year graduates could judge for themselves what they felt were the most current and relevant themes and have the chance to disseminate new thinking.

 Following moral support from CCW (in particular from our champions Paul Ryan, Malcolm Quinn, Cate Elwes and Donald Smith) and financial from the SU we put out three editions completely edited, written, reviewed and designed by students.  During a visit from the late head of Intellect, Masood Yazdani, I asked him to take a look at a copy of JAWS to give us his professional opinion. The incident stuck in my mind particularly as my vintage skirt had ripped in half at the back when I nervously approached him so I spent the whole conversation with my back glued to the wall. Despite this, Masood rand me from the train back to Intellect saying that he loved the journal and he would love to publish.

 What I wanted to share in this blog post, beyond my pride in how hard everyone has worked to get JAWS to where we are now, expecting our first professional, international edition in the next few weeks, was what I have learnt so far. Unusually for a scenography researcher, I am not a great proponent of Rancière but I do feel I have become something akin to his ignorant schoolmaster in this role that I am now giving advice on something I don’t actually know. I have found myself the editor of a professional arts/practice as research focused journal despite not being an artist or a researcher who employs practice.  I am also not an entrepreneurial, branding or a PR expert, I am not even that great at spelling or spotting that bane of an editors’ job: misuse of inverted commas. As Paul Ryan said, us who started the JAWS project simply saw something we wanted was missing and tried to fulfill it.

 So therefor in the spirit of blog posts I wanted to share my five, not quite tips, but perhaps things I have encountered (often unexpectedly) during this ongoing experience.

 1. Accept that most ‘collaborations’ will unavoidably become a benign dictatorship. I have often feared that JAWS has been in danger of becoming a cult of personality with my blue haired bonce popping up everywhere as the main point of contact. At JAWS we make sure that the co-editors and image editor (who is a BA student that also heads up JAWS as a society) make decisions and lead elements of the project. However there will always have to be someone who has the final responsibility, not just with decisions but also in terms of organization and delegation.

 2. Organization systems are key and don’t be afraid of them evolving.  Oh how I wish we had had our Intellect editors’ training a year ago! We use a combination of Google apps, doc spreadsheets and dropbox to keep track of submissions and reviews. With any big project like a publication or exhibition, limit your administrators to a maximum of three, otherwise there are emails and dropbox documents flying about all over the piece and no one knows which is the latest version. Social media is fantastic for engaging institutions and students outside UAL, learn to love 140 characters.

 3. Be prepared to hold hands. We are not the same as a normal academic journal as most of our contributors have never submitted an article before. Whilst spare no wrath for those who send you their entire dissertation using you as a free proof reading service or those who don’t even take a glance at the guidelines and send concrete block style experimental poetry, you will have to hold the hand of others. I think whilst this particularly applies to JAWS, this will prove true for any large project. You will end up providing extensive technical help, in my case explaining a hundred times how peer review tracking boxes of word works and why photos taken on IPhone aren’t 300dpi, through to pastoral and academic, with JAWS reviewers steering writers to key texts and arguments they might have missed. In the end it is rewarding, but you are going to spend a lot of time on this.

 4. People are busy and people are flakey. Everyone is busy, you have to learn to not take it as an insult on the importance of your own time when you end up drowning in work and terribly dull admin to make things happen when others turn it down. Initial enthusiasm can quickly disappear for a project when real life takes over. If you can’t take it on, sometimes things have to be dropped.  Try not to take it personally.

 5. Funding is hard. Ah the permanent cry of the life of a postgrad. Even with the most successful projects funding is an elusive unicorn. You will end up spending your own money on big projects and as much as I have stamped my feet in the past, it is systematic of getting something off the ground (A lesson from Dragons Den..) . I had high hopes after we got a professional publisher who covers all our marketing and printing costs but other things mount up. Travel to conventions and the publishers, posting journals out, website charges etc etc. Every penny you are granted you will have to justify repeatedly until you feel like the Victorian deserving poor in a Dickens novel. 

 These experiences are not supposed to put a damper on starting a student led project, they are just things I wish I had thought more about and which became key. I would still do it all again tomorrow and I look forward to seeing the journal continue on, even when I (hopefully) eventually graduate and can’t serve as editor in chief anymore. In fact I especially look forward to handing it on to future students and seeing the publication change and evolve.

 

Frosty was glad he had encountered the latest JAWS and the article on a marxist- existentialist view of temporary sculpture. It comforted him as he began to melt...after all he thought 'all that is solid must indeed melt into the air'
JAWS is now seeking submissions for our Autumn (well Autumn/ slash Winter..) issue. Once again we are champing at the bit to read all the lovely research you have been slaving over this term. Have a look under our submission guidelines for all the nitty gritty of what we can (hurrah essays, reviews and opinion pieces!) and what we can't (interviews, poetry and super geek dating adverts, use London Review bookshop for that, we do - you can find us in the Keates aisle). 
The deadline for submissions is the 17th of December
Please email your submissions to the editorial team at [email protected]
For images we do prefer dropbox files. Much easier on our picture editors hard drives.

by Renee O'Drobinak & Frank Peschier 

Given the sobriety of being exhibited in a national museum setting, we were positively surprised to find we walked out with an enormous grin on our faces, and not purely out of awkward titillation. This comprehensive collection of Japanese scroll paintings, drawings and woodblock prints (and the occasional sex toy) depicts an era in Japan that was surprisingly free in its aesthetically refined expression of sexual pleasure, love and satire. The exhibition reveals an unflinching gaze at human sexuality in its full glory delicately wrapped in an unabashed, absurdist sense of humour.

Curated by a team of specialists under Project Leader Tim Clark, the exhibition closely examines Shunga, literally ‘Spring Pictures’ in Japanese, within the context of a society operating in a strict Confucian status quo on one end, but nevertheless which enjoyed a colourful nightlife that is vividly documented in these works. It is a genre that is historically neglected in Japanese academia; the faded 1970s volume on Shunga produced in Japan also on exhibit in this exhibition, apparently the sole exhibition cataloguing Shunga in Japan until the early 1990s, is testament to this.

The large-scale exhibition touches on a range of subject matter within the genre of Shunga, including the classic works by Hokusai and Utamaro; Edo period fan fiction and one of our favourites, a comical encyclopedia akin to a pornographic Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management – personally highlighted to us by Tim Clark himself during the press view. The exhibited works are at once erotic, warm and hilarious. A great tip from the rewritten household management on cooking rice concludes that one should simply forget the rice and make love of the kitchen floor.

The artisan skills exhibited here require no questioning; though widely available and affordable to the middle class at the time, Shunga is created with a craftsmanship that is all but obsolete in modern pornography, both in Japan and elsewhere. The draughtmanship and woodblock printing show a fluidity of line that sensualises the figures, textiles and landscapes our couples find themselves in. However, the sophistication of Shunga is not limited to sexuality. Parody, satire and macabre morality (where rapists are depicted as hideous and the ghosts of the sexually wronged return to seek gory revenge) converge with the erotic to create a reason to keep reading post orgasm.

Across from the aforementioned ‘Pornographic Mrs Beeton’, we find a reclining penis: yes, a parody of a dying Buddha in the form of a giant member, seemingly quite relaxed amidst a gang of other members (Penis Parnirvana). The ‘Parinirvana’ referred to in the title is traditionally given to depictions of the death of Buddha. Shunga displays a daring attitude to taboo subjects with a subtle quirk, taking the idea of being ridiculous very seriously. The gentle co-existence of the serious and the ridiculous resonates with the Japanese sensibility that throws in Kyogen (a short, often slapstick, satirical skit) inserted between the long, philosophical Noh (classical musical drama) performances. Much of Kyogen consisted of subtle satirical references to the politics of the time, and Shunga is no different:

Lawfully speaking, Shunga during the Edo period was illegal, however the curator’s texts scattered throughout the exhibition inform us that these prints weren’t heavily policed, and in practice they remained an acceptable, albeit hidden, genre in society. The irony here lies in contemporary Japanese media: according to the Japanese Huffington Post, this exhibition is struggling to find a touring venue in its own native country, Japan due to laws surrounding public display of ‘vulgar’ images despite Shunga being classed as the same artistic standards as more conventional arts such as Kabuki and Ukiyo-e.

Further to the Meiji restoration in 1867-1868 when Japan opened its doors to Western traders after 300 years of cultural isolation, some argue that Japan hasn’t quite shaken off the Victorian ideals that infiltrated during this time.

While Shunga depicts consenting adults enjoying themselves regardless of whether the couple is heterosexual or homosexual, sex in Japanese media today paints a more twisted picture: pornography in contemporary Japan depicts a plethora of sexual perversions from the ‘normal’ to the more ethically questionable…but with pixilated genitalia.

While teenagers purred “Don’t take off my sailor uniform” in the mid 1980s and sexualised pop idols (such as AKB48) being as young as 12 nowadays, genitalia is blocked out in adult entertainment due to vulgarity laws, and Shunga is considered too vulgar for public exhibition.

It does beg the question: what, exactly, is vulgarity? The censorship of genitalia is not unique to Japan with the anime vagina often reduced to an elegant little line akin to a macaroon, in western society, the censorship is rife in mass media, especially cinema. The depiction of a vagina or cunnilingus is a direct route to a an X rated certification yet Shunga celebrates the sexual act with all its secretions and often inelegant delights. 

Shunga does not only dismiss the Western constructed mythology of the geisha in permanent submission to the kinbaku wielding man, but it must also raise questions about modern pornography and erotica as a whole. In the same year as the London Feminist Network have relaunched the anti-porn manifesto of the 1970s with a four day conference in September ‘Porn is Toxic’, and Routledge have launched the first academic of pornographic studies, the timing of Shunga serves to add a new voice to the exhibition’s debate on the 25th October regarding the question ‘Whose Pleasure?’ For the women in Shunga are most definitely being pleasured. Here are women depicted in toe curling ecstasy, men enjoying and encouraging the women into cunnilingus and vaginas realistically depicted,(if rather exaggerated in  scale, especially the one with sailboats drifting blissfully across it). 

The age restriction on access to the exhibition is of course necessary but then our current culture hysteria of sexualisation of children, rape culture and the pornification could learn a valuable lesson from the grown-up attitude of Shunga’s graphic depictions. Through the unflinching, explicit imaging of the private act of love Shunga artists produced a sophisticated erotic that presented men and women within society with an unsanitised handbook of love-making. Although be careful with the instructions;

‘Loving couple

Read Shunga. Decide to try

Dislocate Ankle.'


Shunga; Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art is at the British Museum until the 5th January 2014
Student Tickets £5 and 2 for 1 on Weekdays after 14:30pm  Friday evenings from 17:30pm

Here at JAWS we are very proud of many things that we feel we do really rather well. We are very good at reading lots of your lovely essays, journals and articles (often with a cup of tea and perhaps in our slippers). We are excellent at hunting out exciting research and we are simply spiffing at not taking ourselves too seriously.

However we, And by we, I must lay special blame with editor Frank, have sucked at social media. This had to change.


As JAWS will now be having two issues a year we are making some change sot the blog. Instead of being little bites of what we are thinking about (and mainly we think about lame philosophy jokes and how we can get a walk-on in the latest Zizek film) we are developing a project space for all your lovely reviews and ongoing projects.

This also means we now have a whole extra place for which to publish tasty material, and are kicking off with JAWS' visit to Shunga; sex and pleasure in Japanese art, at the British Museum. Although we made some very interesting alignments with the current feminist porn debate and the state of censorship in modern Japan, we can't promise that we didn't giggle. However since the project leader throughly encouraged us in our amusement, we decided that they were at least, informed giggles.

So please  forgive our past online apathy and come join us here

Oh go on one last one then
Confucius say 'A good joke is like sex, neither is any good if you don't get it...'

Curated by Jean Kim and Ruth Solomons

‘Repeated elements of signification, communication, representation, and consciousness of drawing interweave in the exhibition, in an echo of JAWS Journal’s intention to provide a broad basis from which many authors can speak, at a high standard of academic rigour. The curation of the exhibition aims to make the academic motives of these works apparent, while echoing the interweaving of subjects and media enabled by issue 2 of JAWS, which will be published in parallel.’

Blair Martin Cahill, Chara-Styliani Drandaki, Cadi Froehlich, Jean Kim, Xiaoyang Li, Cheryl Papasian, Arthur Prior,Shabnam Ranjbar, Paul Ryan, Alejandro Salcedo, Ruth Solomons


The launch party for the summer edition of JAWS will take place on the 28th June in the Green Room at Chelsea at 5.00pm, more details to follow...

JAWS are now seeking submissions for our Summer issue and with this one we are also planning an accompanying exhibition to better showcase practise based, led, running alongside or perhaps limping after research. 

Thank you to everyone who turned out despite thesis/critical-research paper writing fear and Glastonbury for our Summer  launch. We still have copies available - one free for JAWS alumni and contributors, additional copies available at £3.00. Drop us an email at [email protected] to get your hands on a copy. We will be opening our call for submissions for Autumn in the very near future..ready for your critical research papers. 
We will be having some interesting updates before then with many of the editorial team moving onto pastures new as they finish their one year courses so we will be under going some changes. If you are interested in joining the JAWS team we will be recruiting soon, feel free to give us a nibble...