Issue 4

The latest issue of Afterall introduces a new design and marks the beginning of a more expansive ambition for the journal. When we began in 1999, we determined to commit ourselves to detailed analyses and discussions on the work of individual artists, whilst also attempting to place the implications of their investigations into an appropriately wide frame of social, philosophical and political developments. We sought to demonstrate our belief that the work of artists touches upon vital questions concerning our way of life and values in this slippery period at the turn of the century. After two years and four issues, we feel it is necessary to reassess our policies and see if they still hold good. Above all, the commitment to individual, or collective but singular practice seems essential to maintain. This is because, in a world of specialisation, the uniquely permissive license granted the artist to stray into diverse areas of knowledge and report back to a wider public is ever more valuable. We have to ensure both that the balance between the individual and the social is constantly adjusted and that the affinities between the artists illuminate their individual practice without closing down ways of seeing and interpreting it. Allowing writers to stray from straightforward analysis, to go off the point, or develop allusive, tangential writings in relation to the artists’ work is a, perhaps contradictory, ambition that we would like to reinforce. Increasingly, we also feel that there is more room for a broader sweep of ideas to be covered in the journal and under the Afterall imprint. Art is a generator of new possibilities and ways of thinking about the world but, simultaneously, it is a great consumer of intelligence discovered in other areas. Bringing these two elements together – research by artists and research that might inform art – will be a new point of departure for the journal.

Over the next year we will introduce an Afterall Books imprint in which people working in different fields and cultural activities can discuss research topics. Likely topics for the future include art and capitalism and the shape of cultural politics after 1989.