The 250-page annual publication, States, is a platform for global creators to engage with key contemporary questions. Interviews, analysis, opinions, reviews, short stories, recipes, comics, photographs, and illustrations come together in a luxury art object to advance and bring diverse perspectives to cultural debate.
The production and publication of States, in both its magazine and podcast iterations, is one of the four major content and programming pillars of Villa Albertine, alongside (1) a groundbreaking residency program (2) a portfolio of 15 cross-disciplinary grants and programs and (3) a calendar of public programs throughout the country. States mirrors the institution’s ambitious scope to tackle issues and projects across the entire varied US landscape, and provides Villa Albertine’s residents and other leading multidisciplinary creatives another medium through which to incubate and share their ideas for a better global future.
The magazine’s name is a double reference to both the American cultural landscape (the magazine’s primary analytic subject), and to the “states” and manifestations of contemporary thought and creation.
The magazine is presented in three sections:
- Food (is) Culture is a multidisciplinary dossier dedicated to food as an object of artistic representation and cultural meaning. Each year States will explore a different central theme that is important to contemporary creative debates.
- Coast to Coast is a panorama of content by international artists, researchers, and curators in residence with Villa Albertine. The section distills field reports and creative analysis of the US, seen from the “outside.”
- Ailleurs curates work penned by a variety of international contributors, de-centering the US to explore the Middle East through graphic novels, the Ethiopian desert with poet Arthur Rimbaud, and more.
Please find a more detailed selection of content highlights from the magazine below.
States is spearheaded by Villa Albertine’s Editorial Director Raphaël Bourgois, a French public radio veteran and founder of the online daily AOC, which has established itself as an indispensable interface between the worlds of culture, academia, and journalism.