Museum Without Objects
The ‘universal museum’ is a product of Enlightenment thinking, with museums such as the Louvre cast in an increasingly ludicrous position as guardians of global heritage. But is there another way?
24 Articles by:
Juliet Jacques
Juliet Jacques is a writer and filmmaker whose new short fiction collection The Woman in the Portrait is out now.
Behind India’s Iron Curtain
In this week in 2019, India enforced a communications blackout in Jammu and Kashmir. A new writing project chronicles the crackdown which followed and how its techniques of oppression were borrowed from Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Pedro Lemebel’s Last Supper
As Chile emerged from Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship, the stylish and challenging work of poet Pedro Lemebel gave caustic expression to the lives of gender-diverse people, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the Chilean left, and the country’s post-1990 fate.
The Vanquished of Yesterday
In her book ‘Burnout’, Hannah Proctor brings alive the emotional experiences of socialists responding to defeat over three centuries — and how these experiences can inform future victories.
Arthur Russell’s Vanished New York
A new oral history captures the relentless creativity of Arthur Russell and the world of composers and artists he belonged to — many of whom, like him, fell victim to the AIDS epidemic.
A Freedom Only to Switch Channels
The rediscovery of the working-class experimental novelist Ann Quin has been long overdue. Her jagged writing on sexuality and consumerism comes out in a new edition of her last novel, Tripticks.
Come On You Reds
A new book on the beginnings of football in the Soviet Union reveals how the Bolsheviks first regarded it as an opium of the people – and then tried to build a game of their own.
To Infinity and Beyond
A new film depicts the story of a Soviet architectural ‘UFO’ in Kyiv, which still stands as both a resistance to Stalinist philistinism and wild capitalism.
Bad Company
Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller talk to Juliet Jacques about their podcast and book ‘Bad Gays’, and about the ways in which LGBT history and current politics intersect.
Art Workers, Unite!
Kuba Szreder’s ‘ABC’ for workers in the arts advocates ways of out of a system designed to benefit not those who make artworks, but a handful of investors and gallerists.
No One Way Works
The American leftist poet Diane di Prima wrote her ‘Revolutionary Letters’ for over forty years, filling them with both advice and anger.
Travels in Inner Space
The short stories of the Japanese feminist and science fiction writer Izumi Suzuki have an eerie correspondence to the world of the present day.
New Fronts, Old Wars
The history of the British trans community is usually told through non-fiction, as a way of convincing people it has a right to even exist. Juliet Jacques’ ‘Variations’ tries to move beyond the Right’s culture-war turf.
I Know Bono and He Knows Ono and She Knows Eno
A 25th anniversary edition of Brian Eno’s 1995 diaries show just how much has changed since that time, the author included.
We Can’t All Be Max Bygraves
Trevor Griffiths’ 1975 play ‘Comedians’ took a serious look at what makes us laugh, and why. In a political era where comedians, journalists, and politicians are often the same people, it has something to teach us.
Jeremy Corbyn: ‘The Government Could Easily Afford to Expand Arts Funding’
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on how the arts shaped his worldview, why it shouldn’t become a preserve of the rich – and the need to support culture workers fighting the crisis in their industry.
Rishi Sunak’s Freudian Slip on the Arts
This week, Rishi Sunak created a storm when he suggested arts workers find other jobs – but the comment wasn’t just a slip, it was reflective of a government that is overseeing the slow death of Britain’s culture sector.
Marx at the Ecosexual Workshop
The newspaper columns of Paul B. Preciado combine queer history and a sober account of the last decade of left advance.
The Arts for All
In the best of the party’s traditions, Labour’s manifesto for this election promises to open up the arts to those from all backgrounds – breaking a cycle which increasingly restricts cultural expression to an elite.
Poetic Politics
South American poet Néstor Perlongher’s work imagined a solidarity based on “a multitude of comrades, each more extravagant than the next.”