Launch of Octopus Magazine

EMST, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, is pleased to unveil its new online magazine of contemporary art criticism and theory, Octopus. 

Featuring texts by writers, theorists, and artists from Greece and abroad, Octopus is agile and multi-tentacled while displaying a decentralised ingenuity. The magazine, designed by Nowhere Design, will be released twice a year in both English and Greek. 

Conjoining art with its wider artistic, cultural, and geopolitical ecosystem in Southern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and beyond, it showcases a particular interest in regional histories and multiple futures, as well as in democracy, participatory citizenship, human and non-human life, and the consequences of excessive growth and development. 

Considering the increasing privatisation, commercialisation of culture and often compromising economic inter-dependencies, together with various forms of “[…]washing,” Octopus produces discourse from the point of view of an entirely public institution, thereby ensuring its independence. Octopus aligns itself with the Mission Statement of ΕΜSΤ and draws inspiration from the museum’s curatorial programming, while enriching and amplifying it.

The first issue of Octopus, with guest co-editor Juliet Jacques, is dedicated to the “cultural and political memory of HIV” and will be released on December 1, World AIDS Day. 

At a time when human and political rights, freedom of speech, liberal democracy and the welfare state are under threat, it is essential to revisit the history of a biopolitical crisis, the forms of solidarity it gave rise to, and the imprint it left not only on art but also on social memory. 

The issue features texts and interviews with leading figures in the field of activism of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as younger thinkers and critics, that stand to remind us that open, inclusive democracy at the heart of political discourse were spearheaded by cultural figures in a struggle for access to public health systems, care, self-determination, and destigmatisation.

In addition to a contribution by guest co-editor, writer, journalist, and activist Juliet Jacques, the issue features texts and interviews by:

–Lola Flash, artist, activist, and leading member of ACT UP in New York, during the height of the AIDS crisis;
​–Panos Fourtoulakis, curator and researcher of artistic responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Greece;
–Max Fox, author, translator, and founding member of Pinko magazine;
–Élisabeth Lebovici, art historian and critic, curator, and writer;
–Ben Miller, author and researcher, co-creator of the “Bad Gays” podcast;
–Dimitris Papanikolaou, Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Oxford, and academic advisor for the project, “HIV/AIDS in Greece: A Political Archive”;
–George Sabatakakis, Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at the Department of Theatre Studies of the University of Patras, and academic advisor for the project, “HIV/AIDS in Greece: A Political Archive”;
–Mare Spanoudaki, researcher and curator, member of the feminist group “This is not a feminist project”;
–Ioli Tzanetaki, curator and writer, EMST.

Octopus also features a distinct section in the magazine entitled “Octopus Garden”, featuring podcasts and videos as well as historical and previously unpublished or hard-to-find archival material. Its first issue hosts works by celebrated choreographer, director, and artist Dimitris Papaioannou and multimedia artists and feminist / queer art pioneers Katerina Thomadaki and Maria Klonaris.

Juliet Jacques is a writer and filmmaker based in London. She writes short fiction, as well as journalism, essays and criticism on literature, film, art, music, politics, gender, sexuality and football. She has published six books: Rayner Heppenstall: A Critical Study (Dalkey Archive, 2007); Trans: A Memoir (Verso, 2015); two volumes of short stories, Variations (Influx Press, 2021); The Woman in the Portrait (Cipher Press, 2024); Front Lines: Trans Journalism 2007–2021 (Cipher Press, 2022); and a novella, Monaco (Toothgrinder Press, 2023), as well as contributed to volumes published by Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, And Other Stories, and others. She has also directed the films Approach/Withdraw (2016), with artist Ker Wallwork; You Will Be Free (2017); and Revivification: Art, Activism, and Politics in Ukraine (2018). She teaches in the Contemporary Art Practice Department at the Royal College of Art. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, London Review of Books, Frieze, Art Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time Out London, New Humanist, and New Statesman, among others. Jacques has been included in The Independent on Sunday’s Pink List of the most influential LGBTQ people in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 and Attitude 101’s 2024 list of “LGBTQ pioneers”.

Editorial team
Editorial Director: Katerina Gregos, EMSΤ / Editor-in-Chief: Theophilos Tramboulis, ΕΜSΤ / Editorial Consultant: Ioli Tzanetaki, ΕΜSΤ /  Design: Nowhere Design.

EMST | National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens is funded by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture & Sports.