​We wrote and edited this themed issue throughout 2013 and 2014.  Below are some reflections from the editors, written February 2021:   Dominic Willsdon:  I remember that we included the page of BLM-related hashtags quite late in the production of the issue, while the waves of protest in Ferguson were still taking place. We wanted to make sure that the publication didn't omit something that was about to dominate visual activism. From where I am now in Richmond, Virginia, the themes of the Visual Activism issue have exploded around the Robert E Lee monument and the amazing tran ..read more

May You Live In Interesting Times, 58th Venice Biennale 2019 There is a clear resistance to a more polemical and didactic use of art in Ralph Rugoff’s curatorship of the 2019 Venice Biennale. When the curator distinguishes art from the “texture of facts” of journalism or historical reportage, one can’t help but see it as an implicit critique of the documentary and archive-heavy 2017 Documenta 14. There is instead a faith in form, with artworks not being reducible to being ‘about’ a particular issue or subject. But that does not mean the biennale does not address issues— forms open out to ..read more

Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2019 The International Association for Visual Culture and the Journal of Visual Culture invite submissions for their Early Career Researcher Prize. Current doctoral students and recent PhDs (within 5 years of degree) may submit original, unpublished essays on any topic related to visual culture. The selected essay will be considered for publication in JVC, pending revisions advised by the committee and the journal’s editorial team. Final selections will be made by a group of IAVC and JVC board members comprised of Brooke Belisle (Stony Brook University ..read more

​The International Association for Visual Culture is pleased to announce its fifth biennial conference, "Visual Pedagogies." The conference will take place September 13 - 15, 2018and will be hosted by UCL's Institute of Education (London).  The IAVC is now soliciting papers and creative proposals that address the issues of visual pedagogies from different starting points. Please visit the IAVC website at https://www.iavc.info/conference/ for a list of prompts and questions that we hope to address in 2018. A partial list of contributors, including keynote speakers, is als ..read more

Cover for the June 1967 issue of Artforum Edited by Alison Green and Joanne Morra Arguably the most discussed piece of art criticism published since the 1960s, ‘Art and Objecthood’ written by American art historian (and poet) Michael Fried (1939-), and published in the June 1967 issue of Artforum magazine, has been variously described as ‘world dividing doxology’ (Caroline Jones) and ‘a theoretical wedge’ (Rosalind Krauss). What is clear is that the ideas it addresses are remarkably durable. ‘Art and Objecthood’ comments upon and agonizes over what is perceived as the major paradigm sh ..read more

Jan De Cock, Motif 1, 2015, Courtesy of the artist. © Jan De Cock This special themed issue of the Journal of Visual Culture entitled Architecture! has two aims. First, to present a collection of essays and shorter provocation/position pieces about the failure of contemporary architecture to address the full complex of issues engaged by visual culture studies. Second, these lines of inquiry are meant not merely to critique architecture and its discursive conceits, but rather any critique is only valid to the degree that it identifies what is significant and vital about architecture for visua ..read more

THE SOCIAL, the biennial conference of the International Association for Visual Culture is being held at Boston University, from September 28 to October 1. It is the culmination of a call for "papers, presentations, interventions, collaborations, and events from researchers, artists, academics, curators, and activists on post-democracy, post-society, anger, violence, future visions, crisis, zombie democracies, social media, neo-slavery, post-capitalism, post-data, social evolution, revolution, actionism, post-state, interventionism, cannibalizing corporativism, post-colonialism, economic vampi ..read more

​Photo: President Barack Obama gives his acceptance speech at Grant Park in Chicago Tuesday night. (AP /Morry Gash) As our August 2016 issue is our last to be published before the United States elects a new President, we thought it would be timely to spotlight (and make freely available through November) our August 2009 "Obama Issue" as a document of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign and early presidency, in which his unique, highly-charged, and often contradictory place in visual culture was already apparent to our contributors. For the 2009 issue, our Editorial Group sent out a ..read more

Zanele Muholi, ZaVa XXI SF 2014, 2014, courtesy the artist; © Zanele Muholi This themed issue was conceived as a way to extend the conversations generated out of the 2014 "Visual Activism" conference of the International Association for Visual Culture (IAVC). The phrase "visual activism" puts pressure on its constitutive words and raises questions abut how we define both the regimes of the visible and the boundaries of activism. Contributors explore, but do not resolve, how art can contribute to political discourse and how activism takes on specific, and sometimes sur ..read more

Abstract Submissions Due Feb 20, 2016 THE SOCIAL is the title of the 4th International Association for Visual Culture Biennial Conference (IAVC2016@Boston). IAVC2016@Boston invites papers, presentations, interventions, collaborations, and events from researchers, artists, academics, curators, and activists on post-democracy, post-society, anger, violence, future visions, crisis, zombie democracies, social media, neo-slavery, post-capitalism, post-data, social evolution, revolution, actionism, post-state, interventionism, cannibalizing corporativism, post-colonialism, econo ..read more