Soapbox: Journal for Cultural Analysis
April 2018 - November 2019
Issues designed, bound and with illustrations by
Stepan Lipatov & Sissel Vejby Møller
Soapbox is a journal for cultural analysis, publishing two biannual issues and online content, featuring students, young researchers and artists alongside more established academics. It has a focus on concept-based, experimental work and experimental forms and approaches to research, such as artistic research. Together with the rest of the board, I produced the first two print issues, and a series of online content as Web Editor.
Our first issue, 1.1 Practices of Listening, addressed both innovative models of attuning for analysis (a response to the particular methodologies of the field of cultural analysis) and more literal examples of listening and sound. Our limited print run, and launch event at Spui25, were both sold out, and me and two colleagues were commissioned to give a workshop at the Sandberg Instituut, on behalf of Pub, about ‘listening’ and digital publishing.
Besides the admin, organisational and communication tasks necessary to start a journal from the ground up, editorial duties included not only sourcing, selecting and editing work, but also an unusually close and extensive collaboration to develop research (usually written in English as a foreign language) to make it thematically appropriate, readable and accessible to a wide audience.
1.2 Off the Grid grounded a similarly abstract concept (’the grid’), through work on city illustration, gender, infrastructure, alternative lifestyles and taxonomy.
We handed over to a new editorial board after this second issue, in autumn 2019. Their first issue 2.0 Contamination, eerily prescient in its theme chosen pre-pandemic, is out now.
Our first issue, 1.1 Practices of Listening, addressed both innovative models of attuning for analysis (a response to the particular methodologies of the field of cultural analysis) and more literal examples of listening and sound. Our limited print run, and launch event at Spui25, were both sold out, and me and two colleagues were commissioned to give a workshop at the Sandberg Instituut, on behalf of Pub, about ‘listening’ and digital publishing.
Besides the admin, organisational and communication tasks necessary to start a journal from the ground up, editorial duties included not only sourcing, selecting and editing work, but also an unusually close and extensive collaboration to develop research (usually written in English as a foreign language) to make it thematically appropriate, readable and accessible to a wide audience.
1.2 Off the Grid grounded a similarly abstract concept (’the grid’), through work on city illustration, gender, infrastructure, alternative lifestyles and taxonomy.
We handed over to a new editorial board after this second issue, in autumn 2019. Their first issue 2.0 Contamination, eerily prescient in its theme chosen pre-pandemic, is out now.
Founding editorial board:
Zoë Dankert
Laura Pannekoek
Callum McLean
Isobel Miller
Céline Hürzeler
Calvin Duggan
Laura van den Bergh
Noura Borggreven
Erica Moukarzel