Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones is a peer-reviewed periodical published by the AVU Research Centre that reflects upon recent and contemporary visual art within a broader cultural and theoretical context. In 2023 has been accepted for Scopus database.
Notebook aims to initiate and develop domestic reflections upon art and to contribute to current scholarly debate at the international level. At the core of this endeavour is the publication of specialist academic studies in the humanities and social sciences that examine the current situation of art and live culture in the Czech Republic and abroad. However, Notebook also tracks key themes by means of essays, interviews and book reviews. During the first few years of its existence, Notebook included a number of translations of important foreign language texts, a knowledge of which was lacking on the Czech scene. Today, we also publish original English-language studies, while selecting from each issue the most stimulating Czech and Slovak texts, English translations of which are published in a publicly accessible online version on our website.
Notebook is not on principle methodologically defined; it is the point of intersection for diverse approaches to contemporary visual culture and gallery art. The most important criteria are quality, relevance, and the degree to which an article sparks further debate. The original studies offered to the editors for publication undergo a thorough double-blind peer review and careful editing, which emphasises clarity of thought, the logic and coherence of argumentation, and the appropriate use of sources and footnotes.
In 2019, the AVU Research Centre published an anthology of English translations of the most interesting texts from the first ten years of Notebook named The Sešit Reader. The First Ten Years of Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones 2007–2017. All of these texts are also available online.
In addition to the original English texts, a crucial step towards making the contents of the journal accessible to an international readership involves translating the two most interesting Czech or Slovak texts from each issue of Notebook and the subsequent publication of these translations online, beginning with issue 29/2020.
Translations published:
Milena Bartlová – Marxist Art History: Directive Model or Radical Inspiration? (Notebook 29/2020)
Marianna Placáková – The Socialist Nude: Marxism and Photographic Theory in the 1960s (Notebook 29/2020)
Vojtěch Märc – Death by Landscape? Geo-Pathogenic Zones as Architectural and Urbanistic Phenomenon (Notebook 30/2021)
Jozef Kovalčik – Where Do Contemporary Academies/Art Schools Collide with Artistic Praxis? (Notebook 30/2021)
Karolina Jirkalová – Housing Estates and Dreams of Living. A study of housing estates undertaken by Jiří Musil and his team at the Research Institute for Building and Architecture, 1976‒1980 (Notebook 31/2021)
Eva Novotná – Sociological Research in the First Half of the 1960s and the First National Housing Debate (Notebook 31/2021)
Ján Kralovič – Actions, Contradictions, Negations. Robert Cyprich´s Early Work and Experimental Poetry (Notebook 32/2022)
Martin Blažíček – Radek Pilař – Dual-Track Video Art (Notebook 33/2022)
Overview of thematic issues:
35/2023 – Exhibitions histories – editor Pavlína Morganová
31/2021 – Architecture and the Voice of the People – guest editor Hubert Guzik
29/2020 – Reflections upon Marxist Approaches to (the History of) Art – guest editor Milena Bartlová
26/2019 – Exhibitions histories – editor Pavlína Morganová
25/2018 – Exhibitions histories – editor Pavlína Morganová
22/2017 – Fine art and film: Siblings or Distant Relatives? – guest editor Tomáš Pospiszyl
21/2016 – Speculation and Art – editors Václav Magid a Jakub Stejskal
Practical info:
- The journal is published twice a year.
- The editorial team regularly announces an open call for contributions, though texts may also be submitted on an ongoing basis.
- Since 2016, one of the two issues published each year has been thematic in nature. The theme and guest editors are proposed and approved by the Notebook international editorial board.
- The editorial staff meet once a month and the editorial board meets approximately once a year.
- Annotations of the current issues are regularly published in Czech and English. The complete issues are then published on a delayed open-access basis (at intervals of approximately one year).
- ISSN: 1802-8918
- MK ČR: E 17945
- The journal is listed in Scopus database
- The journal is listed in the European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS) and in the EBSCO database
- The journal is published thanks to the annual grant support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic