Doing Away With Borders: Jornal de Borda Goes Beyond the Frontiers of Art

Abstract

Artists' publications are often used in contemporary art studies in discussions about the printed page. However, these publications go beyond their nomenclatures and place in art institutions. The boundaries of visual arts are increasingly blurred, and discussions of works of art become more potent when viewed within the broader spectrum of visual culture. Aesthetics have the power to produce knowledge and establish relations with ways of living and being in the world and throughout history. Publications, as such, are social places that can mediate these relationships between people, especially when it involves issues like feminism, capitalism, and decoloniality. The Jornal de Borda — an anarchist visual culture newspaper circulated in Latin America in Portuguese and Spanish between 2015 and 2021 — is an example of artistic expression through printing. It strategizes the name of dissenting bodies — referred to as “corpas” — in the context of art within visual culture; it establishes relations between these bodies and anarchism within the Latin American context; and the aesthetic relates directly to other newspapers from the last century, such as A Plebe, honoring history as it makes history.