Overview

Fictioning in art is an open-ended, experimental practice that involves performing, diagramming or assembling to create or anticipate new modes of existence. In this extensively illustrated book containing over 80 diagrams and images of artworks, David Burrows and Simon O'Sullivan explore the technics of fictioning through three focal points: mythopoesis, myth-science and mythotechnesis. These relate to three specific modes of fictioning: performance fictioning, science fictioning and machine fictioning. In this way, Burrows and O'Sullivan explore how fictioning can offer us alternatives to the dominant fictions that construct our reality in an age of `post-truth' and `perception management'. Through fictioning, they look forward to the new kinds of human, part-human and non-human bodies and societies to come.

Full Product Details

Author:   David Burrows ,  Simon O'Sullivan
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781474432405

ISBN 10:   1474432409
Pages:   560
Publication Date:   28 February 2019
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

List of Figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Section I. Mythopoesis to Performance Fictioning; A. Mythopoesis: Against Control and the Fiction of the Self; 1. Mythopoesis, Fabulous Images and Memories of a Sorcerer; 2. Against Control: Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted; 3. Overcoming the Fiction of the Self; 4. Mirror Work: Self-Obliteration; B. Performance Fictioning: Pasts, Presents and Futures; 5. Residual Culture and the Magical Mode of Existence; 6. Future-Past-Presents: Neomedieval Mappae Mundi; 7. Fictioning the Landscape; 8. A Journey through the Ruins of Colonialism; 9. Scenes as Performance Fictions; Section II. Myth-Science to Science Fictioning; A. Myth-Science: Perspectivism and Alienation as Method; 10. Myth-Analysis: Lessons in Enchantment; 11. Myth-Science: Alien Perspectives; 12. Afrofuturism, Sonic Fiction and Alienation as Method; 13. Wildness and Alienation in the Networks of the Digital; B. Science Fictioning: Worlds and Models; 14. Feminist World Building and Worlding; 15. The Inhuman Social Imaginary of Science Fiction; 16. From Science Fiction to Science Fictioning; 17. Non-Philosophy and Science Fiction as Method; Section III. Mythotechnesis to Machine Fictioning; A. Mythotechnesis: Promethean and Intelligence Economies; 18. A Renewed Prometheanism; 19. The Subject Who Fell to Earth; 20. Financial Fictions; 21. Post-Singularity Fictions as Mythotechnesis; 22. Technofeminisms ; B. Machine Fictioning: Analogue and Digital Life ; 23. Loops of the Posthuman: Towards Machine Fictioning; 24. The Radicalisation of Singularity; 25. By Any Memes Necessary; 26. Subjects Without a Body; Afterword; Bibliography; Index.

Reviews

'This is a book about loops, the fictional and the real, the virtual and the actual, the past that never was and the people yet to come -- and how to occupy them, to live in the in-between, summon demons, talk to cats, compose new temporalities, all in the name of building a future so alien that none of us could even imagine what it might be like.' --Laboria Cuboniks

'Reading Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy has brought me great joy ... Deleuzian scholars, historians and theorists of the avant-garde, postcolonial and feminist theorists, theorists of the posthuman, artists and occultists will, among others, all find something of value here' --Lilly Markaki, Royal Holloway, University of London, LSE Review of Books. ' Fictioning here alludes to an open-ended, experimental practice that involves performing, diagramming or assembling to create or anticipate new modes of existence and thus not to fiction writing per se, but the book turns out to be just as unputdownable as the best novel you can lay your hands on, or as hypnotic as Plastique Fantasique's tunes for that matter.' --Edith Doove, Leonardo Reviews. 'This is a book about loops, the fictional and the real, the virtual and the actual, the past that never was and the people yet to come -- and how to occupy them, to live in the in-between, summon demons, talk to cats, compose new temporalities, all in the name of building a future so alien that none of us could even imagine what it might be like.' --Laboria Cuboniks.

Author Information

David Burrows is an artist, writer and Reader in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where he runs undergraduate Fine Art Media. Simon O'Sullivan is a writer, artist and Professor of Art Theory and Practice and Head of Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Together, David and Simon are part of the performance fiction Plastique Fantastique which has exhibited and performed widely, most recently as part of the Hayward Touring show Shonky: the Aesthetics of Awkwardness (2017--18) and the TULCA festival We are the Screamers (2017).

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