Journal of Visual Culture

04/11/2024

December 2023 Issue is here✨
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and build upon their respective work in architecture, visual art and decolonial theory to produce a collaborative examination of colonial pathologies for Sharjah Art Biennial 15, 2023. Their collaborative installations integrate understandings of space and planning with the contemporary politics of resistance in the context of Palestine and the surrounding region.

"A cultural dream: Europe in the plural" is the English translation of the ‘inaugural lesson’ that began Professor Mieke Bal’s year as professor of the ‘European Chair’ at the Collège de France. How, asks Bal, to overcome Europe as Babel (where no one understands the other), Europe as nostalgia (regretting lost time and idealizing the past), the pessimism close to despair of Europe as apocalypse?

In "Crip curation and the aesthetics of the undeliverable", argues how the conceptual curatorial work of Lucy Lippard imbued similar qualities to those that are embodied in the curatorial work of the ‘aesthetics of the undeliverable’. The aesthetics of the undeliverable is a new genre of disability curating that centers the realities of disability and access within curatorial and artistic practice, alongside exhibition design.

In visual essay “Gaza in plain sight: witnessing in solidarity”, and .traboulsi bear witness to the genocidal violence that has been unfolding in Gaza since 7 October 2023. From Berlin and Lebanon, respectively, Kerbaj and Traboulsi have been chronicling and responding to the harrowing day-to-day news and testimonies from Gaza.

Between 2013–2016, the artist İz Öztat created four distinct bodies of work, all of which engaged aspects of water. This period was marked in Turkey by the heightened tensions around the neoliberal (re)distribution of public space and public resources, which escalated in the aftermath of the Gezi Park Protests of 2013. argues that, beyond its critique of contemporary capitalist appropriation, Öztat’s engagement with water builds relations across time, space, and species to recall histories of the Armenian Genocide.
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&Book reviews from Oğuz Kayır and Gervais Marsh

https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/vcua/22/3

16/10/2024

💡𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐬💡
IAVC International Conference: Kinship.Abolition.Freedom
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The "Kinship.Abolition.Freedom" conference, hosted by the International Association for Visual Culture, will take place at Dartmouth College and online from October 9-11, 2025. This event explores abolition in critical relation to kinship and freedom, encouraging us to rethink relationships, community, and care beyond the punitive structures of the carceral state.

The conference calls for 20-minute presentations—papers, artist talks, performances, and other creative interventions—that explore how abolition can reimagine kinship and freedom. Participants are encouraged to challenge traditional family and social structures, including cisheteronormative patriarchy and settler colonialism, which reinforce division and systemic inequality.

Drawing from Christina Sharpe’s call to “rend the fabric of the kinship narrative” that supports white supremacy, the conference invites participants to think creatively about kinship as an abolitionist practice. This reimagined kinship allows us to rethink freedom as not just a political concept but a practice of care, interdependence, and shared responsibility. Presenters are invited to explore how visual culture and activism can contribute to imagining and creating just, liberatory futures.

This event is part of a larger multi-institution effort, including Dartmouth College, UC Santa Cruz, the University of Wisconsin Madison, and the University of Minnesota Duluth. It will coincide with the "Visual Kinship" exhibition at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art (September-December 2025) and UC Santa Cruz’s "Visualizing Abolition" project.

Submissions should focus on abolition as a transformative and ongoing project that enables hope and new possibilities for freedom. We welcome proposals that engage visual activism, prefigurative justice, and alternative kinship forms, including q***r, trans, and non-human connections.

⏰Submit 250-word abstracts by December 15, 2024 to [email protected].

📸Amanda Russhell Wallace, "(Untitled), How to preserve dead flowers", 2024, image courtesy of the artist.

30/09/2024

💡CALL FOR PAPERS💡

The Journal of Visual Culture (JVC) is inviting article submissions in consideration for its upcoming open issues.

*Deadlines for Full Paper Submission*
4 November 2024 (planned publication date: April 2025)
4 February 2025 (planned publication date: August 2025)
4 April 2025 (planned publication date: December 2025)

*Submission website*
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/vcu

We are looking for critically informed and original interpretations that provide insights into social, political, philosophical or aesthetic concerns and illuminate phenomena that shape visual cultures from global and trans-disciplinary perspectives. We welcome provocative, innovative analyses of visual cultures, especially those that challenge conventional approaches and methods of inquiry.

Recent publications have covered topics such as trans art and visual culture, environmental violence and testimony, Palestine, visual activism revisited, and the critical role that art and aesthetics play in processes of reparation.
Suitable submissions will be double-anonymised peer reviewed.

In addition to our refereed journal published by SAGE, we will consider essays, interviews, exhibition reviews, book forums, and themed dossiers for our online and open access magazine. The JVC Magazine is dedicated to quick publishing on pressing matters and welcomes shorter and multimedia-rich contributions from academics, activists, artists, and all those interested in the diverse political landscapes of visual cultures

*Submission Instructions*
Full length papers between 5,000-8,000 words in length, inclusive of the abstract of 150 words, 5 keywords, references, figure captions, and endnotes should be submitted online no later than the date(s) listed above.

If you have any questions, or would like to contact us for initial consideration do not hesitate to email the Editors at: [email protected]

*Guidelines*
https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/VCU

Shorter research articles 1,500-3,000 words in length for The JVC Magazine are considered on a rolling basis. Please submit to our magazine editor, Eray Çaylı, [email protected].

20/10/2023

The JVC Palestine Portfolio
Journal of Visual Culture’s Editorial Collective has a longstanding commitment to tracking and analyzing critically the continued unfolding of racialist, colonialist, and jingoistic discourses. The journal often provides a critical space wherein these discourses can be researched and debated so as to redress the social, political, and ethical injustices that continue to plague the world we share. Everything we do in this journal exists under the sign of Stuart Hall’s vital challenge: ‘We must mobilise everything [we] can find in terms of intellectual [and other] resources in order to understand what keeps making the lives we live and the societies we live in profoundly and deeply antihumane in their capacity to live with difference’.

For the full pdf: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14704129211046141

14/09/2023

We are so proud of our colleague, Jae Emerling's latest achievement! Transmissibility: Writing Aesthetic History has been published. Please see the link here: https://www.routledge.com/Transmissibility-Writing-Aesthetic-History/Emerling/p/book/9780367859022Endorsements:

30/09/2022

The editorial team of the journal Topos kindly invites you to contribute to the next issue of the journal devoted to the topic

Transformation of society and academia in the wake of the Russian war in Ukraine: urgent notes

Russia's full-scale military invasion in Ukraine has already caused a humanitarian catastrophe that brought thousands of deaths among civilians, mass displacement and destabilization of life in the country and beyond. While the extent and nature of traumatization of the Ukrainian society is exceptional and must be clearly distinguished from the war's effects in other societies, broader reverberations should be considered as well, both in practical and theoretical domains. Transformations of implicated societies presume new renderings of social sciences and humanities that analyse them. Not least, amidst geopolitical debates and speculations about the motivations of individual political figures, the war urges us to account for the significance of society as a referent object of social analysis. Possible new renderings should incorporate both negative and positive (side) effects: among those, manifestations of social and political solidarity push us to reassess the role of ethico-political values in international relations and in re-assembling the social fabric of affected societies. The need to de-colonize the knowledge production on Eastern Europe also looms large.

The current circumstances invoke the question how an individual's civic role relates to their positions of academician and public intellectual. Since many of us are directly or indirectly affected by the war, having lost home, being involved in volunteering and other public duties, where is the place of research practice? Does personal engagement give access to relevant knowledge production or does it preclude it? How to maneuver and distinguish between debates that might be postponed and those urgent topics that require immediate analysis and discussion? What kind of statements are empirically adequate? Whom shall we address with our interpretations, and should these messages be re-calibrated for different audiences, accounting for their national and/or professional profiles? How could the scientific community support Ukrainian society and, at the same time, respond to the first-hand insights from the ground?

We ask you to kindly share your take on the suggested topic at the length that feels realistic in the current situation. Being aware that the usual academic process is both impossible and unthinkable under conditions of the war, we are open towards less conventional and less time-consuming formats: interviews, essays, commentaries, reports, diaries etc.

We will be grateful if your contribution is around 1000-3000 words. A lengthier contribution is certainly more than welcome.

We are also ready to transcribe interviews and comments from our colleagues in Ukraine for those who would find it convenient.

The deadline is October 20, 2022.



Please, send your submissions to the e-mail address: [email protected]

26/09/2022

The deadline for the IAVC/JVC Early Career Researcher Prize is fast approaching. Check our website for more information: https://www.journalofvisualculture.org/news/iavc-jvc-early-career-researcher-prize-cfp/

22/07/2022

Newsletter July 2022 - https://mailchi.mp/600a47092780/newsletter-july-2022

06/05/2022

Reflections on a Pandemic is out! Many thanks to our co-producers and co-editor at Harun Farocki Institut in Berlin and the incredible contributors!

Tom Holert
Danah Abdulla
Elisa Adami
Alexandra Délano Alonso
Edinson Arroyo
Arts Catalyst with Gary Zhexi Zhang, and Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars, and Tomislav Medak (Pirate Care)
Oreet Ashery
Nika Autor
Daniel A. Barber
Jordan Baseman
Dave Beech
Sara Blaylock
Katarzyna Bojarska
Kimberly Juanita Brown
Eray Çaylı
Teresa Cisneros
Tom Corby
David Dibosa
Death Class
Ruth Ewan
Alessandra Ferrini
Janine Francois
Lina Hakim
Juliet Jacques
Helene Kazan
Dean Kenning
Margareta Kern
Lana Lin
H. Lan Thao Lam
Yve Lomax
Laura U. Marks
Shannon Mattern
Jordan McKenzie
Joel McKim
Vladimir Miladinović
Stephenie Young
Philip Miller
Marcos Martins
Hana Noorali
Lynton Talbot
Bahar Noorizadeh
The Partisan Social Club
Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos
Pil and Galia Kollectiv
Plastique Fantastique
Amit S. Rai
John Ricco
Vanessa Schwartz
Jelena Stojković
Jon Thomson
Alison Craighead
Atej Tutta
Valeria Cozzarini
Isobel Wohl
Andrea Luka Zimmerman

20/04/2022

Only a few hours left to register!

Sensing Reparation: Launch of Journal of Visual Culture's Themed Issue

05/04/2022

Another great event coming up! Register here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sensing-reparation-tickets-311765126887

Sensing Reparation: Launch of Journal of Visual Culture's Themed Issue

18/03/2022

10/03/2022

Another JVC event coming up! Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-distributive-tickets-293391049527

THE DISTRIBUTIVE

Contributors: Zeina Halabi/Rima Rantisi (editors, Rusted Radishes); Gary Hall (Director of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University); Zarina Muhammad (one half of The White P**e); Hrag Vartanian (Editor-in-Chief, Hyperallergic); and Ken Wissoker (Senior Executive Editor, Duke University Press). Host: Marquard Smith (Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Visual Culture).
What is the present and future of platforms - projects, forums, academic journals, and academic publishing – for presenting and distributing writing, criticism, academic thought, artistic research, poetry and prose, and image-led contributions? What are these platform’s principles and range of practices? (What do we do, how do we do it, and why?) What purpose can and should such platforms play as communities, collaborations, meeting points, networks, cultures of care, mutual aid? What of the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of sharing? Has the digital democratised, made accessible, globally? Should we re-imagine what such platforms can be and do, and if so, how and to what end?
Our contributors will discuss their position on these and other matters of concern as writers, critics, commissioning editors, editors, academics, and practitioners.

17/01/2022

Don't miss out on booking a ticket for this Thursday's event! The issue will be out any day now and includes contributions from: Eray Çayli, Andrew Barry, Nishat Awan, Mangalika de Silva, Oscar Pedraza / Hannah Meszaros-Martin, Philipp Sattler / Dubravka Sekulić / Milica Tomić, Helene Kazan, Allen Feldman.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/themed-issue-launch-tickets-243000439857

12/01/2022

Join us to celebrate the launch of our themed Issue, Testifying to Violence Enviromentally: Knowing, Sensing, Politicizing, edited by Eray Çayli!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/themed-issue-launch-tickets-243000439857

Join us for the launch of our Themed Issue titled Testifying to Violence Enviromentally: Knowing, Sensing, Politicizing

17/11/2021

Event on Saturday 20th November 2021 (6pm-8pm GMT, 1pm-3pm ET, and 12pm-2pm CT)

Event Contributors: Kara Carmack (UoT at Austin), Jill Casid (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Sascha Crasnow (University of Michigan), Stamatina Gregory (Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York), Jack Halberstam (Columbia U), Cyle Metzger (Bradley U), and Kirstin Ringelberg (Elon U).

Join us in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Journal of Visual Culture and its recent themed issue on new work in transgender art and visual culture studies (guest edited by Metzger and Ringelberg).

For the event, contributors to the journal (writers and editors) and respondent Jack Halberstam share their thoughts on trans visual culture now, and consider what it is to write trans visual culture as well as live in relation to transness. As this event happens to fall on ‘Transgender Day of Remembrance’ and given the fraught or ambivalent feelings that many of us have about such a day, we will also take the occasion to talk about ways of untethering trans visibility from what is lethal to trans viability.

This event will be recorded.

Register here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/transgender-art-and-visual-culture-studies-tickets-205243076567

Join us in celebrating the recent themed issue on new work in transgender art and visual culture studies.

10/11/2021

New event coming up! Please register via eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/transgender-art-and-visual-culture-studies-tickets-205243076567

15/09/2021

Dont forget to book a place! Our first event is happening this Monday 20th @ 6pm, a book launch to celebrate our publication co-produced with the Harun Farocki Institut. Some of the fabulous contributors will be presenting their work: Alexandra Délano Alonso, Daniel A. Barber, Dave Beech, Sara Blaylock, Katarzyna Bojarska, Death Class, Janine Francois, Lina Hakim, Juliet Jacques, Margareta Kern, Lana Lin, Laura U. Marks, Joel McKim, Philip Miller and Marcos Martins, Hana Noorali and Lynton Talbot, Bahar Noorizadeh, The Partisan Social Club, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Plastique Fantastique, John Paul Ricco, Isobel Wohl, and Andrea Luka Zimmerman.

To register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-pause-fervour-reflections-on-a-pandemic-tickets-165201017691

Anniversary Celebrations: Journal of Visual Culture @ 20