A person in a white t-shirt, standing against a light bisque coloured wall. The sunlight filters through the branches of a tree on to them.

Job title:

Lecturer in Contemporary Art Theory

Office:

E.27b, Main Building

Biography

Dr Marcus Jack (he/him) is a writer, curator, and Lecturer in Contemporary Art Theory at the University of Edinburgh. His research looks for counternarratives in visual culture through analyses of infrastructure, statehood, and the socio-economics of marginality, with particular emphasis on artists’ film and video. Jack has held academic posts at the University of Exeter (Lecturer in Contemporary Art and Curation, 2023–2025), The Glasgow School of Art (AHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, 2022–2023), and was a visiting researcher with the Archive/Counter-Archive project at York University, Toronto (2022).

Jack recently convened the British Art Network’s annual flagship conference, British Art after Britain (2023), proposing a devolutionary method for understanding art’s recent history and institutions. His writing has been published by outlets including Glasgow International, The Hunterian, ICA London, LUX Scotland, MAP Magazine and CanadARThistories. He is currently developing a full-length monograph on the history of artists’ film in Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, forthcoming).

His recent curatorial projects include DOWSER (2020–2024), an open-access serial for new writing and archival republication which faces the histories and futures of artists’ moving image in Scotland, and CINEMA DESPITE (Tramway, Glasgow, 2023), a one-off three-day festival and edited publication reviewing artists’ film and video in Scotland and featuring the work of 29 artists, filmmakers and collectives. He was Programme Lead at the Scottish Contemporary Art Network (2022–2023) and as founder of Transit Arts has developing screening programmes with arts organisations, film festivals and theatres across the UK since 2015.

Research interests

  • Artists' film and video
  • Cultural infrastructure, policy and institutions
  • Historical materialism
  • Counterhistories and marginality
  • Exhibition histories

PhD Supervision Topics

  • Artists' film, video and moving image
  • Experimental/avant-garde cinema
  • Institutions, infrastructure and cultural policy
  • Political approaches to art, exhibitions and their histories
  • Scotland as a cultural context

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