Fictioning The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy

Maps out the practice of fictioning as a new field of study for art and philosophy

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, they 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.

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).

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. From Financial Fictions to Mythotechnesis
21. Post-Singularity Fictions
22. Technofeminisms

B. Machine Fictioning: Analogue and Digital Life
23. The Expanding and Contracting Loops of the Posthuman
24. The Radicalisation of Singularity
25. By Any Memes Necessary
26. Subjects Without a Body

Afterword
Bibliography
Index