My paper will present three recent book projects, all of which are concerned with writing, performance, and what I call myth-work. As far as writing goes, it is especially the 'new' genres of writing that I will address, such as theory-fiction, auto-writing, and art writing. All of these involve a performative element in some manner as well as often being writing from and for more marginalised communities. Myth-work is a name for the claiming of narrative and for practices of self-determination. I will offer up some examples from contemporary art of this kind of practice, attending specifically to those that are performance-based and/or involve a turn to the past as a resource for producing new and different subjectivities in the present and for the future. I will also introduce my own performance-based collaborative practice – or 'performance fiction' - that deals with some of these issues. Lastly, I will link the above with previous work I have done on fictioning, or the materialisation/enactment of fictions within reality. In particular, I will be concerned here with drawing out the implications of fictioning for a critical/creative writing practice and also in developing the idea of fictioning as time-travel (especially in relation to what I will call archaeofictioning).
Simon O'Sullivan is Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has written various books and articles including, most recently, From Magic and Myth-Work to Care and Repair (Goldsmiths Press 2024); The Ancient Device (Triarchy Press, 2024); On Theory-Fiction and Other Genres (Palgrave 2024); and (in collaboration with David Burrows), Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Other writings can be found at: www.simonosullivan.net. He is also part of the performance collaboration/collective Plastique Fantastique (www.plastiquefantastique.org).
