Aims & Scope
STRATUM Journal publishes scholarly and critical work in contemporary art, performance, visual culture, moving image, curatorial practice, artistic research, and critical humanities.
The journal is especially interested in writing that examines artistic practice as a site of research, embodied knowledge, cultural memory, social relation, historical pressure, aesthetic experimentation, and public thought. STRATUM welcomes work that moves across disciplines while maintaining conceptual clarity, methodological care, and attention to form.
Open Access • Seasonal • Peer-reviewed research articles and editorially reviewed sections
Aims
STRATUM aims to support writing that moves between artistic practice, scholarly inquiry, and critical reflection.
The journal provides a space for research articles, critical essays, reviews, interviews, artist portfolios, field notes, and selected experimental forms that engage contemporary artistic and cultural practice with depth, precision, and editorial care.
STRATUM is committed to accessible criticism, plural knowledge traditions, and editorial approaches that question inherited cultural hierarchies. The journal values writing that can hold complexity while remaining legible to artists, scholars, curators, writers, and culturally engaged readers.
We publish to widen access, deepen understanding, and support long-term cultural presence for contemporary artistic and critical practice.
Scope
STRATUM welcomes submissions in areas including, but not limited to:
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Performance studies
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Dance studies
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Contemporary art and visual culture
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Moving image and experimental media
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Curatorial practice and exhibition studies
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Sound, installation, and interdisciplinary practice
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Ritual, embodiment, and cultural memory
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Asian and diasporic art practices
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Postcolonial and decolonial methodologies
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Feminist, queer, disability, and ecological perspectives
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Media culture and digital vernaculars
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Artistic research and practice-based inquiry
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Public art, social practice, and institutional critique
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Critical theory and global humanities
The journal is particularly interested in work that examines how artistic practices are made, situated, documented, interpreted, and circulated across institutions, publics, geographies, languages, and cultural systems.
STRATUM publishes work across several editorial sections.
Research Articles
Peer-reviewed scholarly articles that make an original contribution to contemporary art, performance, visual culture, moving image, curatorial practice, critical theory, or global arts and humanities.
Research Articles should present a clear argument, engage relevant scholarship, and include appropriate references. They may include visual, archival, field-based, practice-based, or theoretical materials when these support the article’s research contribution.
Interviews & Conversations
Edited conversations with artists, curators, scholars, filmmakers, writers, choreographers, researchers, cultural workers, and interdisciplinary practitioners.
This section documents process, method, artistic formation, research, and the conditions surrounding contemporary practice.
Experimental Writing & Series
Serialized writing, letters, fragments, hybrid forms, creative-critical texts, and experimental editorial formats when they align with STRATUM’s intellectual and artistic scope.
This section preserves space for forms of writing that do not fit conventional academic or critical formats while maintaining editorial selection and contextual clarity.
Critical Essays
Editorially reviewed essays that develop a critical argument, interpretive framework, or cultural analysis.
Critical Essays may be more flexible in form than Research Articles, but they should still demonstrate clarity, specificity, and critical depth.
Artist Features & Portfolios
Editorially framed presentations of artistic practice, research process, documentation, visual work, performance work, moving image, installation, or project-based inquiry.
This section is designed for artists whose work requires visual presence, contextual framing, and critical introduction.
Reviews
Editorially reviewed writing on exhibitions, performances, books, films, screenings, public programs, festivals, and contemporary cultural discourse.
Reviews should move beyond description. They should offer critical attention to the work, its context, its form, and its artistic or cultural stakes.
Field Notes & Public Discourse
Shorter reflections on contemporary art, culture, institutions, public life, emerging cultural conditions, public programs, and field-level observations.
This section supports writing that responds to ongoing cultural conditions without becoming event promotion or news coverage.
What STRATUM Looks For
STRATUM looks for work with clear stakes, careful language, and a strong relationship between form and thought.
We are interested in submissions that:
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Develop a specific argument or critical position
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Engage artistic practice with care and precision
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Situate work within relevant cultural, historical, social, or theoretical contexts
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Attend to method, form, embodiment, image, material, language, or site
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Open difficult ideas without flattening them
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Contribute to contemporary art, performance, visual culture, or critical humanities discourse
STRATUM welcomes work from artists, scholars, curators, critics, writers, filmmakers, choreographers, and interdisciplinary researchers.
What STRATUM Does Not Prioritize
STRATUM does not prioritize purely promotional writing, press releases, unframed portfolio submissions, event announcements, general opinion pieces without critical development, or writing that relies on broad claims without close attention to practice, context, or form.
We are open to experimental and hybrid writing, but the work should still have editorial clarity, intentional structure, and a meaningful relationship to the journal’s scope.
Review Model
Research Articles are subject to peer review.
PEER REVIEWED
Research Articles are subject to peer review.
EDITORIALLY REVIEWED
Critical Essays, Reviews, Interviews & Conversations, Artist Features & Portfolios, Field Notes, and Experimental Writing are reviewed editorially.
This structure allows STRATUM to support rigorous scholarship while making space for forms of knowledge that emerge from artistic practice, curatorial work, performance, image-making, and cultural production.
STRATUM Journal
An international open-access journal for contemporary art, performance, visual culture, moving image, curatorial practice, and critical humanities.
ISSN 3070-8869
Open Access · Seasonal
English, with selected bilingual publication
Published by ELSEHERE International Arts Nexus
Legal Publisher: ELSEHERE LLC
New York / Global
Contact: