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Call for papers

« Patching Up / Rapiécer »

n° 50 (Fall 2027)

Intermediality. History and Theory of the Arts, Literature, and Technologies
Intermédialités. Histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques

 

Editors:

Karine Bellerive, Université du Québec à Montréal and Université de Sherbrooke

Sandrine Lambert, Concordia University

 

Deadline to submit proposals: June 15, 2026
Announcement of selected proposals: July 10, 2026
Submission of completed texts for peer review: November 15, 2026
Publication of the texts approved by the Editorial Committee: Fall 2027

 

Patching up means adding pieces—patches—to maintain, repair, and extend the life of something; at times, it goes beyond simply filling a gap to become a creative act. These aims rely on bringing into relation a range of humans and non-humans, materials, techniques, gestures, memories, trajectories, and narratives. Like a quilt, patching up brings together heterogeneous elements. It draws on forms of knowledge and know-how that are learned and transmitted across different contexts, sometimes giving rise to communities of practice.

In this sense, patching up can be understood through an intermedial lens, where relations precede the things they bring into being, reshape, and allow to exist otherwise. It operaties through the coming into contact and recomposition of media, supports, and materials whose singularities do not dissolve in the assemblage but are negotiated within it. As such, it demonstrates that works, practices, and objects do not have fixed identities and, to borrow Méchoulan’s terms, operate “through recourse to institutions that enable their efficacy and to material supports that determine their actualization” (2003: 10, our translation). Long associated with women and confined to domestic and artisanal spheres, patching up interests us precisely because it unfolds through time and matter.

We start from the premise that objects and infrastructures, like bodies and communities, can be patched up—and that what is patched up is never quite “as it was before.” Its appearance, function, and meaning may shift; the pieces themselves are redefined by what they join. Patching up is therefore less about restoring a previous state than about producing something that did not exist before: a different object, a new reality. This creative, poietic, and performative dimension lies at the heart of this issue, which seeks to explore both the material act of patching up and the political gestures and worldviews that accompany it.

In the context of concerns around reuse, care, and resistance to obsolescence (whether programmed or not), patching up can become a way of pushing back—by choice or necessity—against the logics of production and overconsumption. Against more romanticized visions, however, patching up is both a privilege (for those who have the time to do it) and a constraint or necessity (for those who cannot afford to endlessly replace and consume). At times, it may also serve as an attempt—whether futile or effective—to mask the troubling or overly celebrated aspects of the past, in line with capitalist logics that require a veneer of social acceptability.

In all cases, patching up is entangled with multiple temporalities. On the one hand, it requires taking time. On the other, it draws on the past to compose possible futures. Does it make the future less threatening—or more desirable? If patching up involves, in a sense, “making something new out of the old,” how does it unfold in practice? What motivates it? These questions open onto broader ethical and political concerns, including:

  • However virtuous it may appear, does patching up sometimes carry within it forms of retreat that may feed conservatism, folklorization, or an excessive valorization of the past?
  • Or are we, instead, attempting to patch up our memories in order to weave the story of a world we wish to bring into being?

We welcome contributions that engage with one or more of the following four dimensions of patching up, which hold together heterogeneity without seeking to resolve its tensions. Particular attention will be given to work that addresses both their material and tangible aspects as well as their symbolic and discursive dimensions.

Arts and Media

This axis foregrounds both analog and digital practices inspired by remix culture (Allard 2016; Jenkins 2006; Navas et al. 2021), hacktivism (Fourmentraux 2020), and multimodality (Dunbar-Hester 2012; Gauntlett 2018). From digital media to AI, including collage (Taylor 2004), photographic art (Leon-Quijano 2021; Rouillé 2005), performance (Taylor 2016; Taylor 2003), and situated forms of storytelling such as tabletop and video games (Duret 2017; Unger 2012) or graphic narratives (Bonanno 2019; Chute 2016), patching up operates both at the level of media forms and their content—encompassing artworks as well as the worlds they generate.

Techniques and Objects

This axis focuses on practices of repair (Nova and Bloch 2020; Gil 2024), tinkering (Lederlin 2023; Meyer 2012), and maintenance (Denis and Pontille 2022; Johnson 2021). It also includes efforts to revive abandoned or obsolete media (Hertz and Parikka 2012), as well as to divert or repurpose them (de Certeau 1990). Such practices are often found in maker and DIY communities (Dunn and Farnsworth 2012; Trigeaud 2013), as well as in digital fabrication spaces (Bosqué 2021; Lallement 2015; Lambert 2023). We also welcome contributions that examine how patching up operates within industrial and artisanal contexts as a way of sustaining—or reactivating—heritage, including techniques, machines, gestures, forms of know-how, and collective memory (Morisset 2024; Bellerive 2025).

Bodies and the Social Fabric

Echoing the figure of the cyborg (Haraway 1991), bodies—whether by choice or necessity—are also subject to processes of patching up. This axis includes work on biohacking practices (Delfanti 2013; Meyer 2020), augmented or technologically mediated bodies, particularly through prosthetics (Tehel 2019; Caccamo and Bonenfant 2021), aging bodies and failing memory, as well as reflections on the narrative, relational, and material gestures through which people attempt to patch up what is coming undone. We also invite contributions that address often-invisible care practices as everyday forms of patching up bodies and relationships (Tronto 1993; Molinier 2013), as well as approaches that treat narrative patching up as a method of research and creation involving participants in the (re)construction of their lived experiences (Bellerive 2021). This axis also welcomes work on efforts to patch up the social fabric through urban commons (Lefebvre and Grant-Poitras 2023; Levy et al. 2024), such as community gardens (Petrescu 2010; Zask 2016) and self-managed spaces (Tadjine and Dazé 2023; Tremblay and Pilati 2008).

Infrastructures and Urban Life

Cities are continuously being patched up in response to new models shaped by, namely, urban sprawl, smart cities, environmental transitions, and sustainable mobility (Mattern 2021; Sadowski 2021). This axis prioritizes work on the infrastructures and networks that underpin urban development (Anand et al. 2018; Hetherington 2019), and which are shaped by both public policy and large-scale private initiatives (eg. data centers (Jacobson and Hogan 2019; Lopez and Diguet 2023)). Contributions that examine processes of deindustrialization (High, MacKinnon, and Perchard 2017; High 2022) and the futures of post-industrial cities—particularly the dynamics through which the urban fabric is patched up, whether in large cities or company towns—are also welcome within this axis.

 

The visual for the call for papers and the issue is a work by Véronique Buist (https://www.veroniquebuist.com/), a Québec-based artist represented in Québec by Galerie C.O.A. (https://galeriecoa.com/artist/veronique-buist).

 

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Intermédialités/Intermediality is a biannual journal, which publishes original articles in French and English evaluated through a blind peer review process.

Proposals (350–400 words) in English or French should include an abstract, a preliminary bibliography (five books or articles), and a brief biographical note (discipline, fields of interest, 5–10 lines). Proposals will be evaluated based on the originality of the approach,  thematic relevance and fit with the journal. They should be sent to the guest editors (karine.bellerive@usherbrooke.ca and sandrine.lambert@mail.concordia.ca) by June 15, 2026.

Completed texts will be due November 15, 2026. They should be no longer than 6,000 words (40,000 characters, including spaces) and can incorporate illustrations (audio, visual, still, or animated) whose publication rights should be secured by the authors.

For more information on Intermédialités/Intermedialities, please consult the journal issues available through the online portal Érudit: https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/im/

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