Arc 19

The nineteenth edition of Arc, the Royal College of Art’s student-led magazine, is Contagious.

There is something in the air everywhere. Fear is the most elegant weapon is the title of a Jenny Holzer artwork that began our call for submissions for Arc #19. The alternative to action, she says, is terror-induced immobilisation. The discussions in the initial editorial meetings were about urgency, about exploring the potential of art and writing as political force, about insisting on ‘this’ rather than ‘that’. We wanted to make an issue of Arc that could recognise an impossible situation, but through words and images begins to see ways out.

Contagion is spatial. Contagion is disease. Contagion is compulsion and anxiety. Contagion is language. Our contributors are concerned with politics from borders to bodies, disease, territory, and ethics. Nina Power charts the proliferation of the hashtag slogan in post-internet politics, and Bifo Berardi considers the potentials of poetry and disease in conversation with Izabella Scott and Oscar Gaynor. As part of this year’s interdisciplinary research biennial Why Would I Lie? PhD researchers Susannah Haslam and Peter Le Couteur take on contagion as it relates to their ongoing discussion of the ethics and aesthetics of art and design research practices. Arc #19 contains contagious texts and images from students across the RCA, edited by Critical Writing in Art and Design first years, and designed by Minna Sakaria and Carolina Dahl.

Arc #19 highlights the way in which the work we are doing within the RCA can exceed and challenge our small, contested boundaries.

Launch: Thursday 11th June 7pm-late RCAfe Kensington. Please email [email protected] if you would like to come.

ISSN: 1749−8376

A4, 64 pages, full colour