In visual art, Joans is best known for creating a more than 30-foot-long chain of drawings and collages on dot matrix printer computer paper called Long Distance Exquisite Corpse (1976-2003), an extended exquisite corpse of 132 invited contributors, including Paul Bowles, Breyten Breytenbach, William S. Burroughs, Mário Cesariny, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Bruce Conner, Laura Corsiglia, Bill Dixon, Allen Ginsberg, David Hammons, Stanley William Hayter, Dick Higgins, Konrad Klapheck, Alison Knowles, Michel Leiris, Malangatana, Roberto Matta, Octavio Paz, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist, Wole Soyinka, Dorothea Tanning and Cecil Taylor.

He became a participant in the Beat Generation scene in Greenwich Village and was a contemporary and friend of Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Leroi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka), Gregory Corso, Diane Di Prima, Bob Kaufman, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among many others.

Choosing to lead an increasingly expatriate artist's life, Joans became involved in the intelligentsia around the Surrealism art movement after meeting Joseph Cornell and later becoming close to his childhood painter-hero Salvador Dalí in Paris before breaking with him.

[5] He learned the French language and frequented the café Les Deux Magots in Saint Germain des Prés where he received mail and other messages.

[11] As publisher John Calder noted, "Joans adapted himself to the lifestyles of artists in Harlem and Greenwich Village, the London of the 1950s and 60s, the Paris of the 60s to the 90s, as well as to those of other European cities and Timbuktu, where he spent many winters.

He continued to travel and maintained an active correspondence with a host of creative individuals, among them Langston Hughes, Michel Leiris, Aimé Césaire, Robert Creeley, Jake Lamar, James Baldwin, Jayne Cortez, Stokely Carmichael, Ishmael Reed, Paul Bowles, Franklin and Penelope Rosemont.

[13] He was also the originator of the Bird Lives urban legend and graffiti street art in and about New York City after the death of Charlie Parker in 1955.

[5] Joans visual art work spans Max Ernst-like collages, assemblage, paintings and drawings; including many resulting from the collaborative surrealist game of Cadavre Exquis.