Dear community!
We invite you to check out our CFP for the ICA 2026 preconference "Decolonizing the Visual: Community, Memory, and Resistance."
This preconf brings together scholars, artists, activists, and community practitioners working with videos, images, sounds, platforms, archives, and visual storytelling in contexts shaped by colonial histories, conflict, displacement, and structural inequality. At its core, our preconf centers on the urgent question: who gets to be seen, remembered, and believed in today's distrusted visual worlds?
We welcome work that engages a broad range of issues, including visual activism, testimony, community archiving, platformed witnessing, memory and erasure, algorithmic visibility, and decolonial audiovisual methods. We wish to create a space for thinking together about how communities use visual practices to reclaim history, tell their own stories, and challenge dominant ways of seeing and believing.
Please note that the submission details in the full CFP are *outdated*. The current submission guidelines are as follows:
*Formats*
-> Research Presentations - Extended abstracts of up to 1,000 words (excluding references); submissions should clearly articulate the research focus; follow a coherent structure of your choice; explicitly state the contribution of the work; include author(s) names, affiliation, and academic status.
-> Interactive Roundtable on Decolonizing Visual Communication Methods and Practices - Short proposals of up to 500 words (excluding references) outlining a central theme or provocation; submissions should clearly articulate key questions, tensions, or challenges related to decolonizing visual communication; emphasize dialogue, collective reflection, and methodological experimentation rather than completed research; indicate the intended format and level of audience participation; and include the facilitator's affiliation and academic or professional status.
Tom Divon and Ashley Ajumoke Stewart
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