Dedicated to quick publishing on pressing matters in urgent times, JVC Magazine is an online, multimedia, and open-access platform for essaysinterviewsexhibition reviewsbook forums, and themed dossiers reaching out to audiences wider than academia. We welcome contributions (1500-3000 words) from academics, activists, artists and all those interested in emergent politics of visual cultures (please email your 200-word pitches to journalvisualculture[at]gmail[dot]com).

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Basquiat’s black-eyed beams
Basquiat’s black-eyed beams
Basquiat’s brushstrokes in UFOs offer a crash course in the history of Black flight, from the Black slave seeking to flee the deadly sugar plantations of the Americas to the minor traffic violator driving his Toyota Camry a little too fast in today's US.
Nothing more than a passport
Nothing more than a passport
A personal reflection on how identity, migration, and bureaucracy intersect visually through the seemingly simple object of a passport.
More than ever do we need to think
More than ever do we need to think
on planetary inseparability, the abolition of all political parties (à la Simone Weil) and today's visual culture that is born of oppression
The heart of a giraffe
The heart of a giraffe
An interview with the artist and the curator behind the project "The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter" (Venice Biennale 2024) on the legacies of colonialism, human-animal relations and the transformative potential of art and education.
One day a general concern: All artists, think of the Earth
One day a general concern: All artists, think of the Earth
Reaching back to a statement uttered by curator Scott Watson in the 1980s, “Art is not a general concern,” the recent wave of environmental art actions are examined within a history of art vandalisms, representation in media and popular culture, and their potential for political agency (or lack thereof).
The power of abuse always comes as a surprise
The power of abuse always comes as a surprise
In 2020, a combination of the pandemic, the police, and public events allowed me to recover my dissociated experience of being abused via the portal of key photographs. It’s a cautionary tale, not a redemptive one. The power of abuse always comes as a surprise. Trigger warnings for sexual abuse, rape, and violence.
This is why we can’t have nice things!
This is why we can’t have nice things!
Much of the debate around documenta fifteen forgets that political change and cultural change might not work in tandem, that denaturalising power relations might be easier than denaturalising gender relations and entrenched racial prejudices, or that the merits or demerits of political artworks, many of which come laden with harrowing backstories, cannot be measured against the yardstick of semiotic theory.
EXTRACTIVISM | Sonic blind spots: Acoustic research in the Lower Mississippi River
EXTRACTIVISM | Sonic blind spots: Acoustic research in the Lower Mississippi River
Documenting the lower Mississippi River as an acoustic space reveals already existing power dimensions at play before they become fully legible as symptoms of extractive dispossession. Analysing the politics of vibration, emission sources, and bandwidth use inequalities can reveal much about the colonial regime of extractive infrastructures by exposing the disassembled temporalities of the extractive event.
Visual Activism revisited
Visual Activism revisited
Co-editors of the 2016 themed issue on Visual Activism reflect back on it in light of recent events.
Contemporary art, activism, and symbolic value
Contemporary art, activism, and symbolic value
Review of the 2019 Venice Biennale
Review of the 2019 Venice Biennale
Themed "May You Live In Interesting Times," the 58th Biennale proceeds from the idea of multivalency, inviting complexity, ambiguity and contradiction, and constituting a point of departure rather than a conclusion.