“Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.”

- Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition

What are artists to gain from taking a PhD? How does the mantle of ‘artistic research’ enable art objects and those invested in them? And where does art’s autonomy reside when its criticality comes from within an academic institution?

Over the last 20 years art has eased its way into academia. Past the door of the artist’s studio and… ]]> Thu, 21 Jul 2011 02:58:04 -0700 http://www.fuel.rca.ac.uk/articles/thoughts-on-art-practice-phds http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/and-there-it-is

The hatches have been nailed shut, the creak of a rusty armature silenced with globdules of lubricant. And There It Was, the website; the event, stuttered into life.

UPDATE: The event took place on Thursday 23rd of June 2011 at Chisenhale Gallery. Photos from the event can be found here:

We start from the position of the ‘and’. A neglected conjunction, moulded by the incidents, events or ideas that came before – often just before – its… ]]> Mon, 20 Jun 2011 07:33:57 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/and-there-it-is http://www.chisenhale.org.uk/events/21st_century_event.php?id=47 Chisenhale Gallery - 21st Century Events: And There It Is:

Goldsmiths MFA Art Writing colleagues present an evening of performances, readings, projections, objects and contemplation. And there it is will chart the outcome of a sustained collective engagement with the decisive enigma of disaster and its many possible presences. 

What if the word and its manifestations are perceived as events? The word might be a thing in the world, said, written or performed, the word might mark both a place of effort and a failure of presence. If the word is an event, a… ]]> Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:31:00 -0700 http://www.chisenhale.org.uk/events/21st_century_event.php?id=47/chisenhale-gallery-21st-century-events-and-there-it-is http://stock.mrfootage.com/Disaster_Disaster_reenactments_panic_people_31_footage.php Men in lab coats race across streets, meet up with kids. Kids into building. Panic in streets. People running from cover. Montage of panic. Panic in streets. Flying saucer blasts buildings. Loud speaker blasts warning to crowd ]]> Tue, 28 Sep 2010 07:00:00 -0700 http://stock.mrfootage.com/Disaster_Disaster_reenactments_panic_people_31_footage.php http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/07/a-diatribe-from-the-remains-of-dr-fred-mccabe.html

by Daniel Rourke

About a month ago in handling the remains of one Dr. Fred McCabe I found rich notes of contemplation on the subject of information theory. It appears that Fred could have written an entire book on the intricacies of hidden data, encoded messages and deceptive methods of transmission. Instead his notes exist in the form of a cryptic assemblage of definitions and examples, arranged into what Dr. McCabe himself labelled a series of ‘moments’.

I offer these moments alongside some of the ten thousand images Dr. McCabe amassed in a separate, but intimately…

]]> Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:25:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/07/a-diatribe-from-the-remains-of-dr-fred-mccabe.html http://rattlejournal.org.uk/issue-one-contents/

first issue of rattle journal

I have an article in the first issue of rattle journal, available now

]]> Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:55:00 -0700 http://rattlejournal.org.uk/issue-one-contents//first-issue-of-rattle-journal http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/speaking-about-ants-superman-and-centaurs

This text was read out loud on the 21st November, as part of the Volatile Dispersal: Festival of Art-Writing, held at The Whitechapel Gallery

Thanks must go to Maria Fusco and Francesco Pedraglio for asking me to take part…

In one of the most uncanny revelations in science fiction, the protagonist of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine awakes from his anthropic slumber: the museum is filled with artefacts not from his past, but from his future.

Like… ]]> Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:29:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/speaking-about-ants-superman-and-centaurs http://acertainrealism.blogspot.com/2009/11/known-unknowns-4-hours-continues.html The Known Unknowns is a scheduled cycle of continuous readings running parallel to Volatile Dispersal: Festival of Art Writing, an evening organised by Maria Fusco and Book Works at Whitechapel Gallery. The festival reflects on the materialisation and dematerialisation of art writing through six newly commissioned works by Adam Chodzko, Ruth Ewan, Babak Ghazi, Beatrice Gibson, Nathaniel Mellors and Gail Pickering. The aim of The Known Unknowns is to gather an interesting number of contributors to publicly read extracts or entire sections of their own texts. The fluidity and the continuity of the act of reading-aloud will unveil a focus… ]]> Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:45:00 -0700 http://acertainrealism.blogspot.com/2009/11/known-unknowns-4-hours-continues.html http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/27/product_id/385?session_id=1258455028383f96137d95bc221d98b5ce7b7b0bfb Saturday 21 November, 6pm - 11pm Showcasing UK artists and writers, this parley-based event speculates on the materialisation and dematerialisation of art writing through newly commissioned works, together with readings drawn from open submission. The event is hosted by Maria Fusco with Book Works and structured around issue three of The Happy Hypocrite, themed ‘Volatile Dispersal: Speed and Reading’. A specially produced publication is available on the day, published by Book Works. New commissions include a lecture, readings, performances and installations by Adam Chodzko, Ruth Ewan, Babak Ghazi, Beatrice Gibson, Nathaniel Mellors, and Gail Pickering, together with The Known Unknowns,… ]]> Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:43:00 -0700 http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/27/product_id/385?session_id=1258455028383f96137d95bc221d98b5ce7b7b0bfb http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/11/mapping-the-cracks-part-two.html

In Part One of this article I wrote about the instability of the art-object. How its meaning moves, and inevitably cracks. In this follow-up I ponder text, the book, page and computer screen. Are they as stable as they appear? And how can we set them in motion?

Part Two

"There’s a way, it seems to me, that reality’s fractured right now, at least the reality that I live in. And the difficulty about... writing about that reality is that text is very linear and it’s very unified, and... I, anyway, am constantly on the lookout for…

]]> Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:02:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/11/mapping-the-cracks-part-two.html http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/10/mapping-the-cracks-part-i.html

Part One

by Daniel Rourke

"The spacetime of the lightcones and the fermions and scalar are connected to the chocolate grinder. The chocolate grinder receives octonionic structure from the water wheel."

- Tony Smith, Valdosta Museum Website

In 1927 Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass was broken in transit. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, Duchamp's title for the piece, depicts a mechanical Bride in its upper…

]]> Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:04:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/10/mapping-the-cracks-part-i.html