My thoughts on writing:
Artists need to write. The practice and effects of art in the world are too important to be left to historians, critics, journalists, theorists etc. Artists' voices should be central to the conversation.Also, artists need to write in diverse ways. Here are some of them:
We need to write as artists (through interviews, artist statements, reflective pieces, poetic texts, blog posts, scripts, scores, users manuals, manifesti, media releases, audio recordings); we may choose to write as scholars (through papers, chapters, essays, conferences etc); and where possible, we might include writing within our artworks (with text operating as an integrated component of expanded artworks that circulate beyond the walls of galleries and museums).
The graphics (layout, formatting, visual components, diagrams, maps etc) which frame writing are a key component of the writing itself.
Here's a selection of stuff I've written:
Academic writing:
...is collected here.On Blogging:
Framing Everyday Experience: Blogging as Art, 2009My PhD thesis.
To Follow Things As I Encounter Them: Blogging, Art and Attention, 2010.
Reflections on blogging art projects by Thea Rechner and Lisa Kelly (in relation to some ideas about documentation and performance art by Philip Auslander and Amelia Jones).
Bilateral Blogging, 2007. Discussion around the project Bilateral Kellerberrin. Connects with and critiques Relational Aesthetics.
(more on blogging here)
On Expanded Cinema and Re-Enactment:
Medium Specificity and Sociality in Expanded Cinema Re-Enactment, 2013.Short paper presented at the ISEA conference, Sydney.
Attending to Anthony McCall's Long Film for Ambient Light, 2012.
Published in Perform Repeat Record, edited by Amelia Jones and Adrian Heathfield. An account of re-creating this 1975 work by McCall.
Re-Enacting Expanded Cinema: Three Case Studies, 2009.
A "research report" which accompanied my presentation at the Re-Live conference in Melbourne. Co-written with my Teaching and Learning Cinema colleague Louise Curham. Information on our Expanded Cinema re-enactments of works by Guy Sherwin, Anthony McCall, and William Raban.
Pre-Digital New Media Art, 2005.
Published in Realtime#66. A succinct position statement on Expanded Cinema.
(More on Expanded Cinema and Re-Enactment here)
On Spatial Politics and Social Engagement:
Learning from Experience: In League with the City of Melbourne, 2011.An invited essay looking at the work of the League of Resonance (Jason Maling, Sarah Rodigari, Jess Oliveri). An attempt to create an anatomy of the collaborative process between artists and beaurocracies.
Complexity, Aesthetics and Gentrification: The Tour of Beauty, 2009.
Some critical reflections on SquatSpace's Redfern Waterloo Tour of Beauty - considers the relationship between art and gentrification. Published in There Goes the Neighbourhood, in conjunction with exhibition of the same name, curated/edited by Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg.
An UnReal Estate Guide to Finding Your Own Gallery, 2003.
Published in Photofile Magazine. Deals with SquatFest, Squatting and Art, use of empty buildings as temporary venues.
Art as Situated Experience, 2007.
Essay about SquatSpace Redfern Waterloo Tour of Beauty project. Published in "If you see something say something" publication, which accompanied exhibition of the same name, curated/edited by Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg.
On All Sorts of Things:
The Human Fax Machine Experiment, 2013.Paper co-written with Brogan Bunt, published in SCAN journal.
The Underground, 2010.
A special edition of Artlink Magazine I edited on the theme of "The Underground". I tried to address this theme from multiple angles...
1001 Nights Cast, 2005-8.
I wrote several stories for this project by Barbara Campbell. Click on the following links to read them. Nights 180, 291, 369, 432, 531, 644, 859, 965.
Experiencing Artworks and Events:
Inhabiting Allan Kaprow's Push and Pull, 2009.Published in Locksmith Project Vol. 1, No. 1 (2009), pp. 12-17.
Splint Mate, 2005.
My first encounter with the work of Jason Maling. And the first time I met Kylie Wilkinson and Damien Lawson. At Clubs Project Space.
Marrickville Jelly Wresting and SquatFest, 2005.
Printed in Natural Selection Magazine. Discusses these two community-organised cultural events (of which I was a participant).
Mental Sculpture by Dennis Tan, 2000.
A catalogue essay of sorts, about this experimental sound project by Singaporean artist Dennis Tan.